Part of the pen's cult appeal comes from its writing capabilities. Among other things, the original General Services Administration requirements for items FSC 7520 (the ballpoint pen) and FSC 7510 (the refill) dictated that:

-- The ink cartridge shall be capable of producing under 125 grams of pressure a line not less than 5,000 feet long.

-- Blobs shall not average more than 15 per 1,000 feet of writing, with a maximum of 25 for any 1,000-foot increment.

-- Writing shall not be completely removed after two applications of chemical bleach.

The pens have also spawned their own folklore. The length of the pen is said to be equivalent to 150 nautical miles on Navy maps, helping pilots navigate in a pinch. The metal tip has reportedly been cited as the maximum length for a woman's fingernails in the military.

Chuck Lange, chief executive of Industries for the Blind in Milwaukee, said that the pens can write upside down and that they have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. A pair of pens purportedly used in the Vietnam War are on sale on eBay for $9.99.

Tony Bridges, a pen enthusiast in Florida who writes for the blog Tiger Pens, said he remembers his father, a machinist in the Navy, stashing the pens in the garage at home in Virginia Beach in the early 1980s. Bridges said many kids showed up at school with the pens, and they quickly figured out how to reconfigure them into pellet guns, pinging one another with ink cartridges.

"It's one of those things that you just sort of take for granted because there's so many of them," Bridges said. "You don't think about the history that's behind them."