About 2 years ago, our local big Wal-Mart had a display and 2 pallets full of these for sale.  Even had demo machines on a table for folks to try.

Sheer China-made junk was my impression after only typing a couple of sentences. None of the characters lined up with each other on the paper and the upper and lower case alignment was awful too.  Type-slugs were either some cheap alloy or maybe plastic or aluminium.

At that time, they were asking $ 179 for a machine.

Greetings All

I bought one of those Michael's typewriters off eBay listed for parts or repair ($8.50 + $19.50 shipping) just out of interest. The internal mechanism is virtually identical to the Olympia B12 which was made by Nakajima, but the fit and finish is pitiful and the type action is dismal. The type slugs are plastic and just press onto the type bars with almost zero clearance between the slugs, so jam easily. A very poor excuse for a typewriter.

The one I bought wouldn't lift the ribbon far enough to print properly, so I went through the full Olympia B12 tune-up and adjustment sequence detailed in Howard Hutchison's typewriter repair manual. The slot in the ribbon lift adjuster was not properly formed, so wouldn't adjust. Ended up having to take the part right out of the machine, set it in my shop vice and file the slot to the correct shape. The ribbon now lifts as it should, but it's still a very disappointing excuse of a typewriter.

It is said that every cloud has a silver lining. The silver lining to this cloud was the nice soft platen in this unit is dimensionally identical to the rock hard platen in my Olympia B12. Simple swap out and my B12 has a nice soft platen for less than $30.00 US. Now I have a perfectly working Olympia B12 with an almost new platen, just typed a 6 page letter to another member of Type-Pals (pen-pals with typewriters) and the machine never skipped a beat. All the best,

Sky

Kind of sad to see the Royal name resurrected and attached to these purported pieces of garbage!