Greetings from Germany. When I arrived I here was immediately reminded of stationery: Google Now wanted to show me how to get to M&R and KUM, it still does now after a few days here. Funny algorithms…
Neon colours seem to be all the craze this summer. There is of course Lamy’s fluorescent yellow Safari fountain pen. Then there are the neon Wopeces from Lexikaliker’s blog post and there are also the neon Ticonderogas comrade John told us about.
Personally, I’m not always keen on neon pencils. I bought a yellow Caran d’Ache 844 pencil from Cult Pens, thinking the colour would look like it does on the web site where you can see a nice yellow. I didn’t realise that it’s actually a fluorescent yellow. I understand that the nature of fluorescent colours makes it difficult to reproduce them on photos, but the yellow on the web site it nothing like the real yellow at all. I really didn’t like the colour, but I also didn’t want to spend the money on the postage to send it back. My wife is now using it.
Faber-Castell is also part of this summer’s neon colour invasion: a modified version of their grip pencil is available in fluorescent colours: the Faber-Castell Sneakers: instead of raised dots you get raised trainers.
I bought the pencils for 99c (~$1.30; 85p) each in our local Müller store. I haven’t seen them anywhere else yet. The orange KUM eraser, not fluorescent, but a nice, bright orange, was €1.09 (~$1.45; 95p). It’s a painted Magnesium sharpener. When I bought these I didn’t realise yet that neon colours are so big this summer, as I hadn’t seen the blog posts from Lexikalier and Pencil Revolution yet.
I wonder whether there’ll be more fluorescent stationery to discover…
Prices and exchanges rates: July 2013
Faber-Castell did a great job with the contrasting caps though! 🙂
They do look nice.
Yesterday I saw that there is also a green and an orange grip set available, containing two pencils with the known grip dots, a sharpener and an eraser. The price for one set is just above €5 – similar to the normal grip sets, but you get one pencil less. I wasn’t able to compare the colours directly, but I think the pencils in the orange and green grip sets might be painted in the same fluorescent colours.
Hi memm, I wonder if the KUM magnesium sharpener is painted to disguise or minimise the visual impact of the pitting that these sharpeners tend to undergo.
I actually had the same thought when I saw the painted sharpeners and remembered how bad two of my magnesium sharpeners look now. I guess if, after long use, some of the paint chips off and the exposed magnesium changes over time you wouldn’t even notice the pitting because the exposed areas would be so small… Also, they look more valuable than plastic sharpeners, but the colour makes it more attractive for school kids (and some adults, too).