The Parkette Hopalong Cassidy Ballpoint Pen

The Jotter was advertised as Parker's first ballpoint pen, but a novelty item that played on the Hopalong Cassidy culture craze predated it.

- TIM LAROS

Ballpoint pens were a hot item in the mid-1940s and became the disruptive technology of writing instruments. Business Week, Time, and Fortune magazines all covered the new technology. In the May 13, 1946 edition of Time, the Parker Pen Co. was accused of napping while other pen companies introduced ballpoint pens. Kenneth Parker responded with a letter to the editor stating that Parker was not napping and that to suggest so was an insult.

In fact, Parker was following the ballpoint pen business closely and conducting its own research. Parker applied for numerous U.S. patents pertaining to ballpoint pens in the early 1940s. Parker Pen Co. "Tool Room" time sheets from 1945 indicate that Parker was conducting "Development Project X-301" on a "Ball Pencil."

Between about 1946 and 1949, the ballpoint pen garnered a reputation as being a piece of junk that would never be accepted as a writing instrument: they leaked, skipped, smudged, and stained clothing. Ballpoint pens were not approved for legal or banking documents. Pen dealers struggled to give them away.

In 1950, the ballpoint pen was rescued from the brink of extinction by new ink formulations from Fran Seech of Paper Mate and, independently, by Clarence Schreur of Formulabs. Suddenly the ballpoint pen was reliable, respectable, and more importantly, "Banker Approved."

In 1951, the Parker Pen Co. was ready to get into the ballpoint pen business...kind of.

The January 1951 edition of its PARKERGRAMS newsletter announced: "The Parker Pen Co. had been selected by Hopalong Cassidy Enterprises to manufacture and distribute a novelty pen bearing a $1.49 price tag. Pen design appropriately incorporates symbols of the wild and wooly West, and the item should prove irresistible to the millions of youngsters who comprise the 'Hoppy' cult."