It’s always cool to read about a standard, age-old object undergoing new transformations. Fun read from Nikkei Asian Review.

Inside Tokyo stationery stores, scissors are undergoing a quiet evolution. The familiar tool has become smaller, easier to cut with and multi-functional. Here is a rundown of the latest products.

Scissors go back millennia. An ancient mural in Egypt depicts a pair and, in Greece, some have been excavated from ruins dating back to around 1000 B.C. 

The first stationery-use scissors are believed to have been created around 1880 by Finnish manufacturer Fiskars. But these Scandinavian scissors would not take the form we know today until 1967. It was the same company that then came up with the iconic orange plastic-handled scissors that are light in weight and easy to use. They went on to become one of the company’s best-known products.

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