By now, the new school year has started in most countries, and this year, I saw something I hadn’t seen before: Here in Northern Germany, in the states of Bremen and Lower Saxony, I have noticed houses decorated with large pencils. This is not very common, I only spotted a handful of houses like this, and seems to indicate that a child living in the house is starting primary school.
One of the houses with pencil decorations also had a Danish flag, so I wonder if this is a Danish tradition that has spread to Northern Germany.I have never observed this in England or Southern Germany.
After being able to observe the shift from the traditional, wood-cased Noris to the new upcycled wood Noris in the UK last year (see The new, upcycled Noris) I was able to experience the same transition in Germany now.
What I saw is, of course, only a small snapshot of the two countries as I observed the transition in a city in North West England last year and now in a city in North West Germany. Other parts of the two countries might have experienced the change at different times.
In March 2024, about a year after the switch in the UK, supermarkets here still had the wood-cased version. Here is an example from Kaufland in Ritterhude.
The wood-cased Noris
By now, only the upcycled Noris is available. I assume the old ones sold out and stock just got replaced with the new version. I am not able to find the wood-cased Noris in any other supermarket in and around Bremen anymore, but some pockets with old stock might still be available, especially in shops with low turnover.
After reading the previous Staedtler x Star Wars blog post, Bleistift reader Matthew asked for pictures of the licensed pencils made in Staedtler’s Welsh factory, so I dug some out:
Mask pencilsBravestarr pencilsCapers pencilsDavid The Gnome pencilsDogtanian and Spot’s pencils Mickey Mouse pencils
Merchandise from TV series and movies is all around us and is also pretty common in the stationery world, but a lot of the licensed stationery doesn’t actually show the manufacturer and quality is sometimes dubious.
In the Eighties and Nineties Staedtler used to produce quite a lot of licensed pencils with designs linked to TV series and movies. Most of these were unbranded, i.e. as a consumer you weren’t able to see these were actually made by Staedtler. It seems that this is down to the fact that in most cases Staedtler didn’t purchase the licence but produced the pencils according the customer specifications. This seems to be still common: the manufacturer is not the licence holder which might also explain the poor quality of a lot of licensed stationery as the company holding the licence might just get the cheapest factory to produce the pencils as the products get bought because of the licensed characters, not because of the quality.
I had a big collection of licensed pencils made in Staedtler’s Pontyclun factory in Wales but decided to let them find a new home as I just have too many pencils.
The printing on the pencils included some globally well known trademarks, like Lion King and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but also a lot of UK specific brands that are not well known outside the UK and Ireland, e.g. Beano and David the Gnome. To my surprise one type of pencil was particularly popular, the MASK pencil, based on an animation from the mid-Eighties. Even though I watched a lot of children animations in the mid-Eighties I was not familiar with this series and rather surprised by the popularity. The same is true for another series I wasn’t familiar with and that seemed to be very popular: Bravestarr.
The collector who took these pencils made me aware of Star Wars stationery that Staedtler used to produce and that I want to share with you today.
What percentage of kids are right and what percentage are left handed?
Based on the distribution of pens in their class pack, Stabilo seems to work with the assumption that about eight out of 48 children (~17%) are left handed.
Statistics seem to indicate that the actual number of left handed people is lower, but exact numbers depend on which statistic you look at – and which country that statistic covers.
I wonder if the discrepancy in this class pack means that teachers using this pack usually have a few spare left handed pencils at the end of the year…
