The Olivetti Valentine, from 1970

The Valentine was officially presented on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1969, and it is one of Olivetti's most iconic portable typewriters, designed by Ettore Sottsass, assisted by Albert Leclerc and Perry King.
It's a splendid example of industrial design, is part of the permanent collection of the MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

It doesn't have the traditional lines of Olivetti typewriters, the lines are strongly influenced by the pop culture of the time, with sharp, contrasting colors and a non conventional design.

It was therefore aimed at young people and those most sensitive to the lure of fashion and new trends.

In addition to Sottsass, the advertising campaign featured famous artists such as Roberto Pieracini and Milton Glaser, Adrianus Van Der Elst, and Valter Ballmer, and the poet Giovanni Giudici for the lyrics.

Mechanically, it's based on the Lettera 32; let's say it's its psychedelic version.
But the general idea behind this typewriter wasn't to make it a style icon. The Valentine was born out of Olivetti's management's concern over the advance of Japanese competitors in the European market with their low-cost portable typewriters. Olivetti was already on the market with the excellent Lettera 22 and Lettera 32, but felt it needed something more affordable.

So, the initial idea was to produce a typewriter that only wrote in uppercase letters.
Later, the idea of ​​removing the margin bell was put forward. Then, it was decided to replace the die-cast metal body with an inexpensive plastic covering, Moplen, which is used to make buckets. But Olivetti didn't want to stoop so low, so they decided to use a more noble type of plastic, ABS, and to keep both the lowercase and the bell.

In short, the idea was to make it a popular typewriter for ordinary people, that anyone could use. It was therefore born as a product intended for mass consumption and was advertised extensively as such. Photographers were sent all over the world to photograph the machine with children, pilots, football players, in markets, on the beach.
Thanks to this extensive and expensive advertising campaign, sales were initially good.

But then it failed to find the market niche as "a machine to be sold in suburban markets, in piles, on the ground," as Sottsass wanted, and it went out of production. Perhaps because it was too innovative, and in fact, rather than becoming a mass product, it became a niche product appreciated by intellectuals and classy people.
Another factor was probably the price, which was higher than other Olivetti portables of the same period. The manual is this one: very non-technical, short and concise, the pages are bound with string, it seems like someone is simply explaining the machine.
Useful for lining up numbers, for example.

The Valentine represents an example of how design can combine functionality, aesthetics, and innovation, creating an object that is not only useful, but also beautiful and iconic.