Robert Oster Fire & Ice

[visvamitra]

Robert Oster is new player in fountain pen ink market. He operates worldwide through distributors. The inks are sold in 50 ml PET bottles with a tightly secure twist cap. I don't know who makes the inks for the shop, but the colors look interesting and fresh. At the moment Robert Oster inks are available in billion colors - I lost track how many.

I know some poeple love sheen. I'm not one of them, though. For me, Fire & Ice is a mediocre ink with potent sheen that will appeal to many users. The ink properties are below average - it tends to dry out fast, causes some hard starts and skipping if you leave the pen uncapped. I don't like it.

Drops of ink on kitchen towel

Software ID

Color range

Field Notes, Diplomat Aero, M

Rhodia, Parker Urban, M

Water resistance

 

[crahptacular]

A friend of mine swore by this ink, so I borrowed a few fills from his bottle to try. I got the impression of a brighter Ku-Jaku. It wasn't bad, but a bit garish for my tastes. Looking at the swatch card I made at the time, the bottle I tried was a bit greener than what I'm seeing here, though I'm not sure if that's due to inconsistent formulation, monitor calibration, or something else.

[titevm]

Meh, I already have a bottle of Yama-dori for those sheeny teals and I don't really like it, lol

 

Thanks for the review!

[lgsoltek]

Me too, I fail to understand why all the fuzz about this ink. Colour-wise there's nothing special about it. There are tons of similar blue green colours on the market. Sheen-wise there's nothing special about it either. Yama-dori beats it hands down. Ku-jaku is not bad either. If you want glitters there's Émeraude de Chivor. Behaviour-wise it's mediocre at best. Medium flow and little lubrication. Maybe somewhat better than most RO inks, but it's actually pretty sub-par compared to some other brands in terms of flow and lubrication.

[TheDutchGuy]

It's a lively ink that sort of jumps off the page without being neon-sign overwhelming. As you can see in the writing samples, if you use a pen that facilitates shading, then this ink will accommodate that - and then some. Depending on how wet your pen is and on the paper you use, it will either sheen like crazy or there will be a thin red outline around the letters. As for the colour, it is what it is, and I happen to like it.

[JulieParadise]

For the #50shadesofbluechallenge (link to the hashtag on Instagram), a challenge over at the German PenExchange forum for July & August 2020, I inked up all my pens with all the 50+ blue inks I have. The snapshots I still keep finding in my files (waiting to be posted, ahem) might also be of interest to some here.

 

 

[Intensity]

I love the color of this ink! But it has negative water resistance even after a couple years of drying in a closed notebook, so I don't have a bottle. Although I've gone through two sample vials over time.