Even in it’s hey-day, the classic Dymo press-type label maker was endearingly low-tech. Definitely useful. But very narrow-purpose. Which is precisely what made it so much fun.
Nobody could pick one of those gadgets up without immediately trying to figure out another way to use it. And who could have resisted the urge to print out the word “FUCK” at least once, just for the kick of seeing it immortalized in sticky plastic? Obviously not me, for one.
Dymo needed to get back on people’s radar as a now even more useful gadget that still had a sense of fun. And when you think about it, the right balance of each has always been a condition of the brand's very exsistence.
The all new Dymo LabelWriter had been touched by the wand of technology. Now it printed out crisp looking type on clean, coated strips. Now it had options for fonts, point sizes, colors. A digital screen! And it was still really useful for labeling things. And still a lot of fun to mess with. And still we printed out the word “FUCK” (we did, though…right?).
Oh, yeah, and the production budget looked like the label with "Animatic" on it had fallen off.
(The third video extends the same principle to an even fancier kind of label printer for offices that makes address labels, hello-my-name-is stickers, that sort of thing).