What Caused the Shift in Our Default Pen Color?

An Inconspicuous Consumption inquiry.

My girlfriend and I recently stopped at a roadside picnic table and decided to play a few hands of cards, so I reached into my car’s glove compartment and retrieved a pen so we could keep score. To my surprise, the pen — the one shown above — turned out to be blue.

I have no idea when I acquired this particular pen or how long it had been stowed away in my glove box, but the surprise I felt regarding its ink color is a measure of the sea change that’s taken place in the ballpoint pen world during my lifetime.

When I was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, blue ballpoints were definitely the norm. Everyone in school used a blue pen — usually a BIC Cristal, with its signature hexagonal shaft: