To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the safe return of our intrepid travelers: Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, it seemed only appropriate to post this Eye Candy unboxing of the Colorverse First Moon Landing Ink Set ($100).
Once again, Colorverse did a spectacular job with the packaging and presentation of this set. They included drawings on the box of the revolutions around the moon of the LEM and the Command Module (CSM) as well as the famous quote “… the Eagle has landed” on the top of the box.
Hidden on the closure flap is distance traveled from the earth to the moon.
On the inside of the box are diagrams of the various stages of the Saturn V rocket, Apollo 11, the CSM (Command Module AKA Columbia) and the LEM (Lunar Module AKA Eagle).
On the box flaps is a photo of the moon surface with points indicating where Tranquility Base is located, the date and various points where the two astronauts visited. On the right hand flap is the quote from President John F. Kennedy that to the fateful moment in 1969 that we are commemorating.
There are more beautiful photos inside the flaps of earth, the LEM and more.
As always, Colorverse includes a set of stickers and a napkin with the inks.
The First Moon Landing set comes with a numbered card since this set is limited to just 1969 sets. An appropriate number, I think.
Once all the packaging is finally removed to reveal the contents, the first layer of 15ml bottles of inks can be seen. Three bottles are on the top layer plus the metal pen rest with the moon boot tread mark. This tray lifts out to reveal the fourth 15ml bottle and the larger 65ml bottle.
Here are all five bottles together plus the pen rest. The bottles feature a raised, dome-shaped, enamel-like sticker with the name of the color on it rather than the standard glossy paper sticker found on the regular inks.
The ink colors are appropriately named Eagle, Columbia, Tranquillty Base, One Small Step and Apollo 11. Apollo 11 is the 65ml bottle while the other colors are the smaller 15ml sized. All the inks are standard water soluble colors. None of the colors are metallics.
The four 15ml colors are a medium grey, a turquoise, a green and an almost fluorescent red. I think the grey is amazing. It’s not too dark or too light. One Small Step is a cool grey. Eagle is a gorgeous aqua. I keep thinking its reminiscent of a color on some part of the NASA insignia but I can’t put my finger on where or what would make me think so. Maybe the worm logo?
The aqua and blue echo the colors of earth seen from space. The red is the other NASA logo color and the grey is the color of the moon’s surface? Does that sound plausible?
They are all really pretty colors and I wish they were much bigger bottles.
The large 65ml blue is an almost exact match for the NASA meatball blue.
My instinct was to compare Apollo 11 to the Colorverse Saturn V ink (of course) and Parker Quink Blue-Black (the other steely-eyed missile man ink). Amazingly, there is still a difference in the colors. Apollo 11 is a tiny bit more violet but not as much as Purple Rock. And the Blue-Black inks were all too black, as demonstrated by the Parker Quink and Diamine 150th and they were the least black.
In order from top to bottom: Oster Purple Rock, Colorverse Apollo 11, Colorverse Saturn V, Diamine 150th Anniversary Blue-Black, Parker Quink Blue-Black.
Can you see the subtle differences? I realize they look slight on screen (and maybe not at all depending on screen brightness and calibration) but there is a noticeable difference in person.
Can I justify a purchase like this? I did some janky math and determined that the average Colorverse ink costs about $0.45 per ml assuming each regular set is a total of 80ml for $36. So, with that rationale, the 60ml bottle costs $29.25 and each 15ml bottle costs $6.75 making the ink costs for the First Moon Landing set $56.75. Add in another $5-10 for the metal pen rest and fancy extras and the set should come in at about $66, not $100. Ouch.
Even with the deluxe packaging and attention to detail, the premium price is a bit much to swallow, even for an ultrafan like myself. I still love my set and I’m glad I purchased it. I did the above math in hopes of proving to myself that price was not that exorbitant. Sadly, I only proved to myself that, despite fabulous packaging and attention to detail, it was worth it. However, I don’t think it was worth the extra $34 of good packaging. Unless that pen rest was solid gold.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own. Please see the About page for more details.
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