Zebra Dual Tip Permanent Marker meets its cousins

I was doing some office organization when I found this Zebra dual-tipped marker in my collection. The body of the pen, with the exception of the brand name, is written in Japanese but I’m pretty sure I acquired this gem from my company’s Hong Kong office or from a hotel in China last spring. Sorry its taken me so long to share it.

Its basically a similar tool to a Sharpie Twin Tip marker or other permanent marking pen. I think every office should have a few of these permanent tools floating around to mark file folders, envelopes and boxes. I don’t find them great for everyday writing because on plain paper, they all have a tendency to bleed. But for writing on a manila envelope, cardboard, plastic, glass or other unusual surface, these tend to be just the ticket.

What made the Zebra notable was that the bold end of the marker is just a little bit finer than the “fine” end of a Sharpie marker. I write pretty small, even on a box or envelope so the difference is just enough to make the Zebra marker appealing. The fine point on the Zebra was comparable in size to the “ultra fine” Sharpie marker or the Le Pen Permanent.

You can see how much these permanent markers bleed and show through on the reverse side of plain paper but that’s not really what they are designed to do.

There appears to be a few Zebra permanent pen options but as recently mentioned by Brad Dowdy on the Pen Addict podcast, pen manufacturers seem to NEED to create complex naming systems for pens sold in the US. There is a single “needle tip” version from Zebra listed on their site called the Z-PM. The closest cousin I could find to my dual-point is the Zebra “Mackee Care” Double-Sided Pen on JetPens. It sells for $2.