Would you belive (a la Maxwell Smart) that Wacom is celebrating its 25th anniversary? And it is offering up three special pen tablets in 6- x 8-, 6- x 11-, and 9- x 12-inch sizes. Prices will be $369, $409 and $489 from respectively.

Reason to Celebrate! Affordable input tablets from Wacom are almost within our reach.

The Bamboo tablets will be shipping and the prices are too good to be true (but they are). The $79 Bamboo is for the casual photo retoucher and the Bamboo Fun comes in two sizes: small for $99 and $199 for the medium version.

Both models feature four ExpressKeys, the "touch ring" zoom / scroll controller, and a textured surface designed to emulate the feel of a real pen on paper. Both models should work well with both OS X’s InkWell and Vista’s Tablet features.

Wacom impressed us at NAB with a preview of its new Bamboo mini-graphics pad, and that Bamboo will ship later this month at only $140. For those who might not be familiar with the concept, Wacom’s pads plug into your PC or Mac’s USB port and act as a graphical input device: You draw with a special stylus, and the pad-aware software on your computer (Illustrator, for example) responds. The stylus has other features like built-in tools and a pressure sensor, so you really get a pen-and-paper-like experience. Handy for designers.

The Bamboo takes the concept to a new place with the edition of an iPod-like scroll wheel at the top. this supposedly makes it simple to scroll through tools, settings, and menus that the pads haven’t really addressed well in the past. Anything to make digital art easier for us non-artsy schmoes is welcome.