That was a great writeup!! And you're so right that we all go through that process of trying to find something decent.
As soon as I saw your description of Dipstick I read it out loud to my boyfriend and his eyes lit up. He's 43 and STILL loves Dipsticks (just the sticks, not the powder). My daughter gets the Valentines that come with a bunch of Dipsticks and gives him the extra every year. He was like "I'm finding that and ordering it RIGHT NOW."
Baseballmom, I haven't really had to polish the King yet - I'm one of those freaky people who seem to polish metal with their hands, it's stayed polished just from handling it. The copper contacts I just drop in some citric acid and water for a couple of minutes (I keep it around in the kitchen anyway). I did get some Cape Cod polishing cloths but haven't really needed to use them.
Cranky99 - I will probably put my old avatar back at some point. It's a drawing I did of my dog Barley.

The Penny mod is awesome and I use it more than anything right now... but it has some dings now from a misadventure on Mother's Day when we went out to eat with family. My mom put her bag on top of my bag without me realizing it. I hadn't locked the Penny (usually not a problem) and it was firing from the pressure. The smell was what clued us in. I had to run outside with it (good thing we were sitting by an open door to the patio) and drop it on the ground as soon as I had it open because it was so hot it was burning my hands. Both of my hands were blistered from the heat. It could have been a LOT worse and I felt like an idiot for not locking it. It's usually not a problem in my bag (it's in a raised pocket where nothing presses on the bottom) but the pressure from above from my mom's bag was enough to press it down onto something else in my bag and fire it. I was able to polish out most of the damage but it has some small battle scars. So do my hands though

I have a burn imprint from the Brass Monkey on my palm! I still don't think I want a Kick, I'll just try to not be an idiot and make sure I lock it. It was scary though.
catmomma - yeah, they created a monster here too, I have a Tree of Life on the way.