Esquire's 75th Anniversary "E-Ink" Cover: Recyclable, Unmentionably Expensive

Using electronics from Shanghai that were shipped to Dallas before traveling by refrigerated truck (preserves battery life!) to Mexico for assembly and then heading north to a Kentucky printing facility, Esquire‘s blinking 75th anniversary covers are hitting Borders, Barnes & Noble, and select newsstands this week. An “experimental limited-edition” of 100,000 copies of the magazine’s October 2008 issue feature an electronic ink (“E-Ink“) cover (pictured in below video) with a ten-square-inch digital display that blinks in moving letters “The 21st Century Begins Now” (hey, we have an eight-year-old t-shirt that says that!).