There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
He is being the knife equivalent of a seedy ambulance chasing attorney who tries to convince a mother to sue her own mother after a fender bender with Granny driving and the kid in the car.
To extend the blade, you have to push in the “button,” which actually makes it nearly flush with the slot and you’ve really gotta squish the meat of your finger down in there to get friction on the button to slide it forward. Once forward, the blade just kinda floats there, with the magnet too far back to exert a retraction force, which is good because of the button traction issue I mentioned. I can slide it across cardboard at an angle, but trying to pierce through anything tough by poking the blade tip perpendicular to the material is hard. The gimping along the sides is pointless, because you have to concentrate on focusing all your pressure and friction on the button and the back of the TUKK (which thankfully does have diagonal grooves milled in).
Something to get used to, and I suppose it limits the blade to light utility, which is fine. Absolutely nothing tactical about it, lol, but that’s why I wanted it. It did come in handy when I realized I had a box in my car (Massdrop, actually, from ordering a Peak Design strap, haha) that I needed to throw away, and the dumpster was much closer than the house and my TUKK was on the keychain. I cut some tape and slit the airbags using the TUKK, but I just folded the cardboard flat just by hand. When I went to cut an envelope later, the shape just really isn’t conducive to staying in the fold of the envelope flap, so the cut wandered in front of the fold and I cut awkwardly parallel to the surface I was cutting. It would’ve been easier to just cut a finger sized slit to get in and manually rip the envelope with my finger, or just not even use the TUKK at all.
The size is handy, and I could see it being great for slicing box tape and shrink wrap off packages, and I love the color and looks, but overall I have mixed feelings about the utility and feel a little underwhelmed for the price. Maybe it’ll get better when I get used to it or limit the scope of it’s utility.
Granted, these have almost always been made of plastic, and they were made mostly for hobbyists and graphic artists and not for EDC, but no one has been ripped off here. These (and the Tukk, and others) are variations on products that have been around for decades.