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Muji’s Low Centre of Gravity Mechanical Pencil 1

 in Muji / Pencils  tagged Manchester / mechanical pencil / Muji / Shanghai by

On a recent trip to Manchester I noticed that Muji’s low centre of gravity mechanical pencils finally made it to Europe.

Muji’s low centre of gravity pencil in Manchester

Last year they weren’t available in the UK or Germany, which prompted me to visit Muji’s “global flagship store” on Huaihai Road in Shanghai1.

The main purpose of the visit was to get my hands on this pencil for Gunther and myself.

They even had a cafe. I haven’t eaten Muji food before.

The food was quite good. It was slightly more expensive than expected, but the price was acceptable.

In the stationery corner there was a lot to choose from.

Pen and paper wise there wasn’t much more than what I am used to from Manchester, despite Manchester only having a small store now (the bigger one closed down about ten years ago)…

..there was however a lot more choice in terms of desk organisation (trays, boxes, ..).

The decoration was quite nice and it was easy to try products out before buying.

Can you spot the low centre of gravity pencil in the picture above?

As usual you can open pictures in a new tab to see them in high resolution.

I bought some other nice products, too.

I should show them in a separate blog post.

 

  1. It’s one of the stationery related stores I forgot to write about in my recent series of Shanghai related blog posts from my trip in August 2016. [↩]

Wonderful World of Wopex – The Neon Line 4

 in Pencils / Staedtler / Wonderful World of Wopex  tagged Made in Germany / Staedtler / Wopex by

Welcome to a new series of blog posts about Staedtler’s Wopex pencils.

The idea is to collect information about Wopex pencils while details are still available. By now several bloggers, including me, had to find out that stationery manufacturers don’t always store information about their products and in my opinion it would be a shame to lose the existing knowledge about these products.

Wopex -> 180

A quick introduction:
As explained in the past Staedtler has changed the way it’s using the term Wopex. Instead of calling the pencils Wopex the term is now only used to describe the material these pencils are made from. This started in 2015 and by now you won’t find any Wopex labelled pencils anymore on the German Staedtler web site. Instead these pencils are sold as the Noris eco or as the Staedtler 1801. In other markets, mainly South Africa, you can also get the Tradition eco, a Wopex based version of the Tradition, similar to the Noris eco.

Outside Germany you can however still find pencils with the Wopex label printed on them. In the UK there are quite a few of those sets left. I assume this means that for now they are still made – I can’t imagine all of them to be old stock from before 2015 – but who knows…

Neon Line

Staedtler’s Neon Line was introduced at Frankfurt’s Paperworld in January 2013. Neon refers to the fluoresent body of these pencils. The pencils themselves contain normal Wopex graphite leads.

Back then the pencils were still Wopex labelled, but the latest Neon Line pencils are sold without Wopex or even 180 printed on the front of the cover.

The different pencils

The Neon Line includes the following pencils

  • neon yellow – article number: 180 HB-F1
  • neon orange – article number: 180 HB-F4
  • neon pink – article number: 180 HB-F20
  • neon purple – article number: 180 HB-F61
  • neon green – article number: 180 HB-F50
  • neon blue – article number: 180 HB-F30

The different sets

There are different versions of this set, including sets with erasers and sharpeners. The current Staedtler UK web site lists different sets:

  • Article number: 180F BK3-1 a blistercard containing one HB pencil each in neon yellow, neon pink, neon purple
  • Article number: 180FSBK3-1 as above, but with a black eraser and a black sharpener
  • Article number: 180F BK3-2 a blistercard containing one HB pencil each in neon green, neon orange, neon blue
  • Article number: 180FSBK3-2 as above, but with a black eraser and a black sharpener
  • Article number: 180F BK6 a blistercard with all six colours
  • Article number: 180F BK12 a blistercard with twelve pencils (all six colours)

 

This information has also been added to the Stationery Wiki.

I would like to thank Benedikt Schindler for the historic information found in this blog post

  1. From the beginning ‘180’ were the first digits of the Wopex article numbers. [↩]

30 kg of Pencils 1

 in Dixon / Fila / Pencils / Seen in the wild  tagged Amazon UK / Dirk Gently / Dixon / Douglas Adams / Ticonderoga by

I’d like an eraser, two notepads and 30 kg of pencils, please.

Also: notice the price difference between the first item, a dozen Ticonderogas for £2.69, and the third item, the same product for £19.99.

Startlingly expensive. Yes, I think if I were to tell you how much more expensive it was it would be fair to say that you would be startled.1

(By the way, that’s 643.123% more expensive2.)

PS: Find out more..

  1. Freely adapted from Chapter 27 of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams, 1987. [↩]
  2. Said Wolfram. [↩]

American Vietnamese Monos 5

 in Pencils / Tombow by

Even more Vietnamese Monos – this time the Mono without the 100.

Please don’t misunderstand what this blog post is about. It is not a complaint that Tombow’s Monos are now made in Vietnam. It is more of a complaint that Tombow seems to be misleading their customers.

The pack of three Monos from Tombow USA is labelled ‘Made in Japan’, even though the pencils are made in Vietnam.

I assume this is just an oversight, i.e. they forgot to change the print on the back of the cardboard, rather than a planned deception of their customers – but that still doesn’t seem right.

uni star in F

 in Pencils / Uni  tagged F / Mitsubishi / pencil / Uni / uni star by

The uni☆star in F

My thanks go to Yumiko for sending me these.