New NFL Team Staplers

A new football season is upon us and we now have more ways than ever to show your love for your favorite team with the items on your desk. Our newest series will not only show off your colors, but even offer a rebate that will let you get even more of your favorite NFL merchandise!

3M NFL Post-It Holder and Tape Dispenser

NFL Scotch Tape dispensers and Post-It Note dispensers are still around this season. The Scotch Tape dispenser takes the form of your team's football helmet while the Post-It dispenser puts the logo on a teed football. Get these products while they're still available!

Swingline NFL Stapler

Our newest NFL product is a Swingline stapler featuring team colors, logo and name. These are the popular metal Swingline 747 model, decorated in NFL glory. Only about half of the teams are available at this time, but more popular teams like the Steelers, Cowboys and Packers are in stock.

Even better, the NFL staplers are part of a larger rebate with Acco Brands! These, along with other great items like Quartet dry-erase boards, At-A-Glance planners and GBC presentation materials, are eligible for a rebate that will get you a gift card for NFLShop.com. You could earn up to a $100 gift card, so check out all the details here. The rebate runs through the end of the year.

Great Black Friday Deals (That You Can Get Before Black Friday)

We're a week away from Black Friday and the task of holiday shopping. For many, this means gearing up for the chaos of early morning sales (and for them, we have a fine selection of safety gear to wear to the occasion). For an increasing number of people (up to 47% in latest surveys, higher than any type of retail store), online shopping is the primary way to buy gifts. If you're doing your holiday shopping online, why wait until next week? The sales have already begun and there's no reason not to get started.

Our holiday doorbusters are in full swing, with 30 items to make people of all ages happy, at a price to make your wallet even happier. All of them are worth a look, but there are a few that should be big hits, including an NFL Post-ItDispenser for just $6.99.

You Don't Have To Pick Dallas

Other popular stocking stuffers will include a 4 GB flash drive for $4.99 and an LED flashlight for $5.99. Heck, order this cross stitch kit and you can make the stocking yourself! It's one of many crafting supplies now available, as is this jewelry tool kit. It won't fit in a stocking, but this mesh chair is both comfortable and functional, and priced at under $100. Movie fans around the office will also appreciate a red Swingline stapler.

Have You Seen This?

Finally, a present for the whole office will be an OfficePRO Keurig coffee machine and a set of K-Cups. The deals run through December, but are available now, so get your shopping started!

Keeping Up With Office Trends

It used to be pretty hard to be stylish at the office. Much of the furniture is uniform throughout the room, there's only so much desk space available for adding a personal touch and a lot of basic office supplies don't lend themselves well to fashion. That's why it's important to seize on the items that can offer a bit of liveliness. When you spend so much time at your desk, it always helps to add flair wherever possible.

Here's The Answer

This section will host a growing collection of stylish office supplies and furniture. Products range from office chairs, desks and accents to letter trays and essentials like staplers and tape dispensers. Kantek's clear acrylic numbers are smooth.

 

The Red Swingline May Have Competition

Look around and see what appeals to you, whether it's bamboo pencil cups and desk organizers or laptop cases and mice. Keep checking back for more trendy office products!

Staplers: Commonplace or Uncommonly Cool?

When you ask people about office supplies they'll usually talk about pens, post-its, and staplers. Everybody has their own take on pens and what qualities they value most. Conversations on post-its, or adhesive notes if you prefer, usually center about the color, regular vs. accordion fold, and brand name vs. generic. Ask somebody about their stapler and you'll usually get a blank stare.

...or a blank stare from your stapler.

With the exception of people who have gone out of their way to find a red Swingline stapler or have an electric stapler most people just have whatever is in their desk. Not everybody has a need for a Commercial Grade Stapler all the time, but maybe it is time to appreciate staplers and give them their just deserts (not desserts, sorry).

I'm not too proud to say that the stapler I keep at work is nothing more than the lowly Swingline 545 Economy Model (technically it's a 545xx, but that's a story for another day). When it is time to buy staplers I'm still of the mind that you should go for an all metal stapler. It is priced competitively to similar plastic model, although it is less ergonomic.

Brand Spirit

Recently, a Tumblr blog was setup as Brand Spirit where 100 objects were spray painted white and photographed so that people could compare how easily certain objects were identified when they lack all form of identification.  They do have a stapler that they label as a prime form of the Swingline brand.  I'm not sold though. Swingline has been building their 747 model, the classic stapler so classic they actually call it the Swingline 747 Classic Stapler.

A True Classic

Look at the silhouette of the Brand Spirit Swingline and the 747 Swingline and tell me which is the most "classic." I'm no expert, but the actual, unpainted, Swingline feels like the prime example of 50s function over form.  The Brand Spirit Swingline has the sloping back-end that might as well be painted avocado green to me. This could be a case of reinventing a product so it appears older and more classic than it actually it, so feel free to leave a comment and prove me wrong.

Notice: Local Stapler News is Confusing

As a current Wisconsinite, I do have a keen interest in local news because we have some gems living in this state. I don't think we'll beat the kind of local news you can dig up by reading a Police Beat from Alaska (shame on you David Chiklak), but we have our own breed of amusements down here. Like this great news blurb from Sheboygan, where some guy was getting hit in the head with a stapler for some reason. I've read it a couple times and I'm still not sure exactly what happened (poor understaffed Sheboygan Press) so I'll take you, my loyal reader by the hand and relive the excitement.

Sheboygan WI: The City of Cheese, Chairs & Children

First our victim's wife (we'll call her Wifey) is awoken by such a clatter that she ran to the kitchen to see what was the matter, and what to her wondering eyes should appear, but 24 year old Aaron A. Bell beating her husband (we'll call him Hubby) about the head with a "heavy-duty stapler". Wifey joined the fray and pulled Aaron off of Hubby and Hubby ran to the bedroom. Hubby tried to climb out the Bedroom window to get to the porch but he was too drunk (it makes me wonder what was so important on that porch). Hubby fell out of the window and was knocked unconscious. Aaron eventually escaped the grasp of Wifey and went outside to yell at the now unconscious Hubby. Aaron decided to try to run away, but the Boys in Blue used their top notch detective skills and tracked him down by visiting his house.

An Example of a Heavy Duty Stapler

Now I did a quick google search for Heavy Duty Staplers, and the most common type are similar to the image above. Something with a solid base and a big handle is what the industry likes to refer to as a "Heavy Duty Stapler", and while I don't in anyway encourage or endorse beating on other humans with staplers, I would theoretically encourage you to use a Long Reach Stapler as it would allow you to get a little more muscle behind each swing. Aaron was charged with "misdemeanor battery with a dangerous weapon" but if you attacked somebody with a Long Reach Stapler you would probably be saddled with a felony charge.

Girly Office Supplies

I've been married long enough to know that I don't know a whole lot about what kind of things the fairer sex are interested in.  Sex and the City?  Sex and the City The Movie?  Sex and the City The Movie Part 2?  I'll never understand the appeal.  I tried to watch part of an episode once, to try to keep up with the pop culture and see what the kids were watching.  After a couple minutes of them making baby noises at shoes and talking about something else boring I changed the channel to watch some robots kill people.  I accept that my tastes are not universal (see Lifetime Movie Network as evidence) and in the interest of fairness I present these Office Supplies for people like Sex and the City.

Tape Dispenser Shaped Like High Heeled Shoe

If you watch Sex and the City you might know enough about shoes to say that this was styled after such and such a shoe from such and such a season, but the only thing I know about high heeled shoes is they come with in varieties, expensive and uncomfortable (sometimes both).  This shoe shaped tape dispenser is made by 3M and since they are the Scotch tape people you know that they make a good dispenser.  It comes with one roll, and of course tape refills are easy to come by.

Post-it Dispenser Shaped Like Purse

Those marketing geniuses know that females are tempted by more than just shoes, some of them love purses too.  So they have created a Post-it dispenser that is shaped like a purse complete with pseudo-crocodile-skin-textured plastic.  It  comes with a special pad of Pop-Up Post-it Pads that are unavailable anywhere else (they alternate between hot-pink and bright-green).  You can buy plain-Jane pop-up refill pads, but if you want the special ones you can just buy another purse shaped dispenser.

Pink Stapler for Breast Cancer

Sadly, 3M stopped innovating on their Sex in the City themed office supplies and doesn't have a lipstick shaped pencil sharpener for us, but those guys over at PaperPro have created a great pink stapler that will look great on your desk next to your shoe and purse shaped dispensers.  This stapler does more than just proclaim to the world that you are a proud carrier of two X chromosomes, it helps raise some funds for Cancer research.

Commercial Grade Staplers

As I was doing my usual jaunt across the internet looking for the new, the exciting, and the hottest trends in office supplies I found a new blurb about how the great state of Washington has been over paying for office supplies for the last four and a half years with their contract with Office Depot.  The state's General Administration says that they haven't been over paying and blurb from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reads:

"What they're saying is a (commercial-grade) stapler ... should get the same discount as a (regular) stapler," said GA spokesman Steve Valandra.

Now, I know a thing or two about staplers and I have seen my fair share of them come through my office and the desks around me.  Now I have spent some time in government offices and sat in front of and behind a government desk or two and I know the paper work they see isn't that much different than the paper the rest of us in the business world see.  You get a stack of papers that are related and you want to attach them together, so you staple them, no big deal.  Now for the sake of argument, lets throw out the cheap kiddie staplers with iMac colors and the big poppa industrial electric staplers and focus on a narrow subset of staplers, hand operated professional-looking desk staplers.

Standard Plastic Economy Stapler

For around $3 you can get yourself a fairly standard looking economical stapler with no frills.  It is made with high-impact plastic, but it is still mostly plastic.  Add another buck and you can get yourself an all metal Swingline stapler if that's a little more your style.  There is a good collection of staplers in various shapes and sizes as you get even more expensive that go by names like "Executive Staplers" and "Contemporary Staplers." A good quality commercial desk stapler will cost you around $8, but if you buy in bulk you can get them for even cheaper, and I would hope that the whole state of Washington would buy staplers in quantity equal to or greater than 24. Office Depot sells that stapler for... well you can see what they sell it for, and if the reviews on Amazon are to believed, there isn't any reason anybody would want or need any other more expensive stapler.

The Only Stapler You'll Ever Need

So yes, while we, the general public, do understand that there is a difference between the cheap plastic stapler you buy for your kids to staple together their riveting 13 page dissertation on the Kittens Inspired By Kittens video for their 3rd grade teacher and a nice all metal commercial desk stapler, there is also a large difference between what you pay for that same stapler at a place like Office Depot or Staples and what you might pay for it at a Discount Office Supply website.