About a month ago, Sharpie came out with its brilliant “liquid pencil” idea. Basically, the appeal is that it’s a pencil that uses liquid graphite to mimic the sensation of writing with a pen. At the same time, the liquid pencil is also erasable for roughly the first three days, and then becomes a more permanent marking (quite practical if you think about it).
Now, I’ll admit that I’m no school supply nerd (and to those of you that are, I’m sorry your life had to turn out that way), so I only just found out about this. And here’s how I did:
So I’d just watched Agent Cody Banks for the second time (in widescreen though this time) and I was feeling inspired. I pictured how life would be as a spy… You’d go on missions to save the world, no one would ever be able to know where you were, and no one could ever find out about the secret messages you sent to fellow spies.
Wait. If you never wanted anyone to see those secret messages, how could you prevent them from being seen? What if you wrote the messages in ink that erased itself?
Sounds straight out of Harry Potter, eh? Well, frankly, I think it’s very possible to formulate a substance that would quickly disappear from any paper. Maybe the ink would be able to evaporate after a certain period of time. Or maybe the ink could dissolve into the air or the paper after a week. Or maybe the ink could gradually blotch until it became utterly illegible after about a month.
This would ensure that very few people other than the desired recipient would get a chance to read the message.
And think about all the other uses… What if a negotiator was in a tight situation and could only get out by signing an undesirable contract? He could use his trusty temporary pen to satisfy his counterparts for the time being.
Wanting to see if such an invention already existed, I googled “temporary pen” and landed on this page about the Sharpie liquid pencil.
http://marketinginnovation.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/08/the-new-sharpie-liquid-pencil-a-temporary-marker.html
On the contrary, if you think about it, my idea was the exact opposite of Sharpie’s: I want a pen that becomes temporary while Sharpie wants a pencil that becomes permanent.
Neat, huh?
