lately there has been some criticism of the dymo label maker company because they introduced
a new label printer that implements a form of digital rights management
drm to prevent you from using inexpensive aftermarket labels
and not only that it is purposely incompatible with the previous labels that dymo themselves sold
you may have seen the videos that dave jones and louis rossman did about that but i thought i'd
cover a different kind of label maker that dymo has been manufacturing since 1958 which is still
available today and is still the number one best seller on amazon it's their embossing label maker
i have a brand new one here and this one which is probably from the 1970s but they both use
exactly the same kind of labels which you can buy inexpensive aftermarket ones like this pack of
seven i got for $9.99 and no, these can't print a shipping label at the touch of a button from your
computers like the new ones can but they are wireless they never need charging they don't
even use any batteries that's because they're powered by you they're completely mechanical
and they're the only kind of label maker you can get which can make woodgrain labels they don't
produce these anymore but you can still find new old stock ones on ebay
and that is a woodgrain label
so first let's look at this set i have that's probably from the
1970s judging by this pea soup green color we have the label maker itself
we have some extra print wheels with different styles of writing on them
and a bunch of labels for it including a nice green color red and two black labels
it's kind of funny i just noticed this inside the lid
it says caution dymo cannot guarantee proper function of this tape writer
if other than dymo tape is used demand dymo tapes look for the dymo on the back
so even 45 years ago they were still trying to prevent you from using cheaper aftermarket labels
and the way you put the labels in this is kind of like loading a 35 millimeter film
camera you take your labels you pull a little bit like that and then you stick it in the label maker
and you kind of feed it in like that and close the lid and now if you squeeze the trigger
there you can see the labels coming out so now we can actually start making our label and now
it's like entering your name into the high score of a video game you gotta do it one letter at
time and you scroll through the letters a through z you also get numbers and a couple symbols
and whatever letter or number is in this little notch here
is what it's going to make so if i squeeze the trigger with it showing
l we get an L in there we can't really see it right now but we'll see in a moment i'll do A
then B
E
L
and now i just printed the word label and if i want to cut off my label there's this other
trigger we squeeze and that cuts it and now we have a label that says label
it also makes this little slice in the label to make it possible to peel off the backing which
gives you the sticky label surface so now you can stick this label onto anything and it will adhere
and i don't know if the new one can do that but this vintage one you can actually
change the print wheel so i think if i pull on this
i can pull that out that's the normal style writing we also get a vertical character wheel
so instead of the labels going horizontal they would go vertical and we also get a script
style wheel which is quite interesting so i'll try to put that in so now we can do script writing
and there's actually different thicknesses which is another feature i don't think the
new ones support anymore this is the thicker style and then we have this
red label which is a little bit thinner and this one has a setting for that
if you pop it in that way it's for the thicker labels if you push this in like here
that makes it set for the thinner labels so pull out a little bit of this stick it in the machine
and feed it in enough for the wheel to catch on to it and now if i squeeze it a bunch of times
i had a little bit of trouble with this earlier
wasn't really wanting to catch on these thinner labels
there it goes got it this time now we're ready to make our script style labels so
i'll write the word script there's a lowercase S in script in case you don't know your cursive
and there is the word script in script look at that
now i'm going to open up this bag of cheap chinese aftermarket labels and i'll see if they'll
work just as good as the official dymo labels work
despite dimo's warning not to use them we've got red green blue
and three black labels and kind of a yellowish brown almost kind of a mustard color on that
there you can see the change of design this is the original probably 1970s dymo label and this is
the new aftermarket label and it's the same basic size but it uses a lot less plastic on the housing
i thought maybe that's just because this is just a cheap aftermarket label
but i have this official dymo label and you can see it's the same basic idea so at some point
they changed the design of the housing
interestingly these dymo labels are made in belgium
look for other colors blue green red and rainbow which is not as exciting as it
sounds because that is not a multi-colored label that's just a multi-pack of different colors
now i'm going to open up this brand new dymo label maker which cost me $11.59 on amazon
i noticed it has a copyright date of 2009 on it but they're still selling it brand new today so
they don't really change the design of this that often but it's still
the number one best-selling label maker on amazon it comes with three sets of labels there's one in
the label maker already and then you get two more here and the new one is sad onion rated
here's the new one and like i said it comes preloaded with labels
and i noticed whoever was putting this in the package at the factory used it to write
out dymo on the label and it doesn't come with any instructions i guess they figure if they've
been selling the same product for over 50 years you should know how to use it by now
OK that's where the labels go in and on this one instead of having a separate trigger to
cut off the label you move the wheel to the cut position and it's kind of hard
to see with the reflections but there's two vertical lines in this window here and the
letter between those lines is what it's going to make so if i squeeze the trigger i get a C
and i must say this feels really cheap and chintzy when you're using it the letters are more spaced
out on the label and the quality of the printing is not nearly as good as that vintage one but what
do you expect when they sell you an entire label maker with three sets of labels for eleven dollars
now i'm going to try this after aftermarket label and see if it works okay in this new
one so you got to kind of stick it in and feed it forward and now
we get our labels so there's the official dymo label on the top and the aftermarket
label underneath and aside from the difference in color i can't tell any difference between
them despite dymo telling you not to use aftermarket labels they seem to work fine
now i want to try out this vintage wood grainlabeling tape you can tell
how old it is because it shows a reel to reel tape
a 35 millimeter film camera actually two of them and it was originally sold at bi-mart
that's a funny name for 73 cents which was a discount over its list price of a dollar twenty
five they say dymo labeling takes make durable permanent plastic labels of easy to read white
embossed letters available in a quarter inch three-eighths and a half inch nowadays only
three eighths inch is available anymore in the following colors black red blue avocado green
woodgrain and gold new cloth marking tape for iron on sew on is available in 3/8 inch magazines
and there it is with the older style of housing so i don't know if it's gonna fit
in that new machine but we'll find out and there it is
a woodgrain label and yes that older style of housing still fits in the new machine and
there's our woodgrain label so let me use it to write out the word woodgrain
this very cheap feeling wheel very cheap and plasticky
not nearly as nice to use as the old one
so again very poor quality embossing but you can see it still basically works just as good
as the new labels do except you can't buy this woodgrain label anymore you can only get it
new old stock on ebay like i did i'll move it to the cut position
and there we go there's our woodgrain label we can peel it off
and stick it on i don't know the packaging it came on there we go woodgrain label
and back in the '80s and '90s when these were more popular you can not only get aftermarket
labels you can get an entire aftermarket label maker such as this one from rotex
it works with the same dymo compatible labels just like the real thing it works basically the
same way it's another cheap plasticky device but it actually feels a lot better than this new one
there's a direct comparison between the brand new dymo label maker and the vintage one
and ironically the brand new one looks like it's a 40 year old worn out piece of junk
while this one looks like it's brand new when it's exactly the opposite so i don't recommend
these cheap new dymo label makers people are going to look at this and say oh these labels
are crap why did people ever use these well no it's this that's crap if you use a good one
that's 40 years old you get good quality labels out of it
this time i tried using another one of those brand new cheap aftermarket
labels in this vintage machine and as you can see it worked perfectly fine
so there you go that's been my look at these embossing label makers
from dymo which have been around since 1958 and are still in production today although
i would not recommend buying this official new dymo label maker because it produces
noticeably inferior results compared to a vintage one