SpiderPen's Lost Twin

The Spiderpen's Lost Twin ?

I found this pen at Walmart, which is remarkably similar to the Spiderpen. It would be great to have a spare pen "housing", since my first Spiderpen suffered (some don't, some do) from stripped threads and loose battery connections. I quickly threw up this page, but later I'm paying a visit to Pilot's website in the hopes that they have an online catalog of their products to sort through.

To the right we have Spiderpen and it's packaging, to the left is a Pilot pen I found at Walmart. Note the similar pocket clip, the coloring, size and general shape. Even the end cap is very similar. In fact, even the striations in the plastic bear an extreme resemblence.
You can see that the pen's overall color is a very close match. You can also see the end cap a little better here, wrong color, but otherwise strangely similar. I am almost convinced that Yigal Mesika had Pilot make the Spiderpen for him, based on this pen or one very similar.
With the pen open, the differences obviously become more apparent, but the overall internal length is about the same. This would definitely need some heavy modification on his part.

Well, it turns out it was a good thing I found this remarkably similar pen, because I needed to use it's plastic clip cover thingy, after the one on my spider pen broke. Grrrr..
Yes, it broke on the spider pen that was a replacement for the one that was intermittent due to stripped threads in the cap. So here is a new picture showing what it looks like now. It was a bitch getting the plastic part off the pilot pen, the metal part of the clip holds the plastic "cover" in place with a fork like tension bar.
On the bright side, I now have a unique Spiderpen that looks more like a regular pen now... slightly.

Besides the other issues, this is a nitpick - but even more ridiculous is the blister pack it came in. I've never seen anything packaged so poorly before. They actually glued the plastic blister pack on the wrong side of the package !! Duh !
Was somebody on the assembly line stoned ? Or just 8 years old ? Maybe 8 years old and stoned !

duh

Here's the side it's supposed to be on !
------------------>

duh again

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, however, I'll state that I did this page when I was good and rightly angry. The first pen was flat out broken, the second faired slightly better. Overall, however, I think the Spider pen is better than any mechanical thread reel out there. The idea is quite good, the motor itself appears to be quite reliable. The only real problem, and I know I'm not alone because I've seen other posts on the Magic Cafe, (where I have also frequently recommended the product) is that the cap threads sometimes strip. When you get a good pen, it works great. If you get one with bad threads though, there's not much you can do.
I've have lamented again and again, that a Spider Pen version 2 should be made to address this issue. If the threads (ergo, the plastic) were stronger, that would make the reel unbeatable.

I know for a fact this would help, because I've already had emails from viewers of this page thanking me for showing them how to fix the clip when the same thing happened to theirs. They were ready to throw it away and go buy a mechanical thread reel from a competitor instead.

Still, what I want to know is, where is the quality control in magic merchandise anymore ? I'm not seeing it. I've bought magic booklets with pages missing, duplicated, or missing pages, or with the staples backwards. I've bought items that fell apart after a few uses. You don't typically see this in other industries.
Four out of five magic items that I buy anymore are defective to some degree.
You see the same complaints online at sites like http://www.mylovelyassistant.com and http://www.magicreviews.com. There is something very wrong with the industry and it needs to stop!