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