The new Penman range of inks consists of Blue and Black, and mine, like my new Quink inks, were made in Shanghai, China. It doesn't quite show in the picture, but the new Penman bottle is oval, but it still has the little plastic inkwell in the neck of the bottle.
Table-top chromatography showed that the dyes in the new Black are the same as those in the original Ebony.
The new Black is a bit thinner than the old Ebony. However, this may simply be because the old ink has been sitting in a Quink bottle for the past decade and may have evaporated a bit. Alternatively, Parker may have tweaked the formula to minimise the original problems that Ebony had.
I got my Penman black from melpens on eBay. As of this moment, he seems to have one set of three bottles left. They cost me US $22 for the three bottles, cheaper than I can get Quink locally. (We all ignore postage costs, don't we!) Even with postage, it was still a good buy for three bottles.
I contacted Mel at melpens to ask about the availability of the Blue ink, and got a very prompt reply saying "Till now we have yet to receive any news about the blue ink being made available for the market." I have also contacted Sanford with a similar question, and am awaiting a reply.
I call my new Hero 100 the bling-bling one because the barrel and cap are made of gold-decorated metal (aluminium, I think).
I bought this because I liked the look, but I also wanted a slightly heavier pen than the standard, all-plastic version. I have two more pens in the mail, a stainless-steel 100, and a Guanleming clone of the bling-bling 100. (I really like the idea of a clone of a clone...
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A combined review of all three pens will be posted when they have all arrived and been tested.