50 Years of the Bambi Staplers

Considering the great antiquity of paper, the world had to wait a very long time for someone to invent a simple and quick way to join sheets together. Glueing and hand stitching were always available, but not very convenient, but in the pre-industrial world this probably didn’t matter too much. This is not the place for the history of staplers in general, but suffice to say Wikipedia is a good place to start. It appears that there was a royal one-shot stapler, with crested staples, around in 1295, but the device began in earnest in the America of the 1860’s.

The need for an elegant solution is clear to anyone who has dropped an unbound report on a windy day. The paperclip, for all its naïve charm just isn’t reliable enough under stress, so the stapler was a necessity waiting to be invented. It has largely been taken for granted in a world not given to appreciating the beauty of humble things. The stapler’s moment of fame have been a film, “Office Space” (1999) and the American version of the British TV series “The Office”, in which a stapler is set in jelly (Jell-O in the US) as a practical joke. Also, Rexel’s “Staplers of the Stars” charity auction saw staplers signed by celebrities sold for thousands of dollars. There are numerous websites devoted to collecting vintage staplers (no, really…) and a Bambi Stapler Appreciation Society on the social networking utility Facebook.

This is a personal history arising from a long-term appreciation of a small and neglected design classic which will soon have its 50th anniversary. Other classics like the Zippo lighter, Swiss Army knife and US Army can opener have attracted a lot of comment over the years and have featured in style magazines and design manuals. This article attempts to record some aspects of the Bambi in a similar spirit.

I have owned one or more Bambis all my working like. I had one at College and throughout my teaching career, and now use one every day in my freelance work promoting the game of Go in the UK.

The original appeal of the Bambi was threefold. It is small, pleasant to look at, and well-made. You can buy a small stapler much cheaper, but these are usually badly made, jam easily, and are fond of dispensing two staples at once. They lack visual appeal, and are inclined to use odd sizes of staple. The small size, as well as making the Bambi extremely handy, also results in a small, almost invisible staple. I have always found the desk size staples a bit too big on an A4 page for my liking. (The most extensive commercial use for this size of staple seems to be joining teabag to string and string to label in most brands of quality tea)

The Bambi has very high build and design quality. The chrome-plated mild steel is comparatively heavy-gauge for its small size and the light loads needed to operate it, resulting in a very rigid chassis which will not deflect or bend, which is the main cause of jamming. The compression spring feed is very reliable and has been the standard except for a short lapse a few years ago when a top-loading tension spring feed, which tended to stretch, was experimented with.

The first Bambi patent seems to have been taken out in 1959 (I have not yet had any access to company archives, but the patent info is on the BSAS facebook group page. The earliest one in my collection is white, with a narrow, shouldered body and is marked with British patent number 756534 and “Foreign Patents Pending. This stamping on the underside is the bambi equivalent to the hallmark, and is sadly absent on modern models. Though the metal parts are similar to one you can buy today, the plastic body is much more petite, a bit like the difference between a classic Mini car and the modern one, which looks as if it has had too many steroids. The white one appears to date from the late 1960″s, (TBC later)

I have two other models with the narrow profile, both with anodized aluminum bodies. One is a strong gold colour, the other a light gold or bronze finish. It could be that these metal-bodied models were intended for the corporate market, as one came in a very stylish transparent Bambi-shaped case, and the other, lighter toned one bears a Norwegian company logo as a separate strip clipped onto the top. These were I think the flagship models. I used to have a black plastic Bambi with engraved initials “BFNS” or something like that, so they obviously had a time of being used as promotional items.

The 1970s saw a new, more angular body design, while retaining the metal parts. There was a range of colours- black, a duck shell green and turquoise and others. There was at least one commemorative Bambi, produced for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. This was presented in a transparent pouch with a silver stamped logo on the top of the body. By this time the underside is marked “British Patent” and “Foreign Patents”. The pouch also contained a gold colored box of staples.

Some time in the 1990s there was a brief retrograde step when the compression spring feed was replaced by a torsion spring, to allow for a top-loading design. This is in line with the system used on many desk staplers. Whilst these may be fitted with torsion springs strong enough to stretch as the top is opened, and not distort, the same could not be said of the Bambi, where the tiny spring quickly stretched making the staple feed unreliable. These unfortunate models can be identified by the words “Auto top feed” on the reverse of the pack, and a dead straight bottom edge of the staple magazine, visible without opening the bubble pack. This model did not appear to last long, so presumably the company listened to feedback.

The most modern Bambis are sleek and ergonomic, with soft-touch areas, and a staple-remover built into the back. With plastic encasing the metal top and bottom the classic underside stamping has had to go, which is a shame. The soft touch material on the top takes up half the length available for a corporate logo, so this is something future designers might like to consider changing. The body is also available in transparent plastic, (’Tranz’) blue or purple, which does look quite funky.

The design seems to have been subject to surprisingly few rip-offs over the years. The only one I have seen which tries to copy the Bambi shape is stamped “MADE IN JAPAN” and carries what might be a company logo “Sanho 10m” on the top. It does not use the No 25 staple, and is made of thinner gauge steel.

How many Bambis have been produced so far? My guess is a few million, each of which came with a pack of 1500 staples, so there must have been at least one staple produced for everyone on earth.

I don’t have any details yet on worldwide distribution. I hear from correspondents in the USA that the Bambi is not much seen there as they don’t use the No. 25 staple, but this has not been confirmed. The Bambi doesn’t seem to have made its way to Finland either. A Google search shows that it is alive and well in Australia however.

If the 50th anniversary of the Bambi falls in 2009, it would be nice if Rexel/Acco could produce a Special Edition, maybe in a box, or a book about the history with a free modern Bambi included. The design is robust enough for at least another 50 years of loyal service!