This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
Was that just me?
Yeah, you. You fell off the call.
What the just happened?
I'm just.
Wait, that's not being recorded, is it?
I'm sorry, we're recording right now. No, it's fine. Whoops. No, that. This isn't. This is not the first. Hey, folks. This is episode 60 of the erasable podcast. It's going to be a pretty short episode today. We're going to be talking about a topic we've teased for a while, the iconic yellow pencil. I think most Americans, when they think about pencils, this is what they see. Like a yellow barrel and a pink eraser. Maybe a yellow, like a gold or a silver ferrule. But we're going to talk about the landscape of yellow pencils. The best, the worst, and all the in between. So the Ticonderoga goes to my crucible company. Johnny and Tim are with me. Hey, guys.
Hey. How's it going?
I have a. Speaking of yellow pencils, I have a really special surprise for you today. So I am in New York City and I am recording live from the crypt of the CW pencil shop with our friend Caitlin. Hey.
Hey, Caitlin. Yay.
Hey.
You're in the pencil catacombs.
I am.
I do like to say that I'm going to the graphite mines when I come here.
Hi ho.
Hi ho. Tony, which of the dwarves are you?
Doc, of course.
Of course.
Obviously.
Let's go, Mickey.
Obviously. Tim, you just woke up, so you're sleeping, I think.
Sleepy.
Yeah, I don't even know.
I'm in the middle of my second evening of the night.
Okay, cool. So, yeah, we are. We're joined by Caitlin. We're going to talk all about yellow pencils. So we're probably going to skip fresh points, but I still think we should talk about what media and beverages and whatever we're consuming. So, Johnny, how about you?
Well, my pencil. I have a yellow pencil. A Ticonderoga. I just finished a good book by Sebastian Junger called Tribe, which was super, super short. Like, you know, you can read it in two quick sittings about our tribal roots and how us moving away from them is making it difficult for troops to come home from war. And at jury duty yesterday, I read most of the Girl on the Train, which is very good. Oh, yeah, and it's gonna be a film next month, I think. And I'm enjoying some Four Roses small batch bourbon, which is way too good for a Tuesday night Pride.
Out of Henry's hands, I assume.
He's a rye person. He won't drink bourbon Okay. A thing. He's kind of a.
How about you, chief?
Let's see. Well, as far as what I'm consuming enjoying lately, there are a few really good albums on npr First Listen right now. One of which I actually just pre ordered, but it's the. Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead has a new album coming out at the end of the week called Blue Mountain, and it's all on first listen right now. It's his first new album of original material that he's put out in a while. And he's been kind of teasing it for a long time and saying that he's gonna do an album of what he calls. He's been calling them cowboy songs, but it's basically just. I don't even know how to describe it. Sort of like old school country a little bit. But the thing is that he's recording the album or he recorded the album with two of the guys. Was it the Dresner brothers from the National. And Josh Ritter was involved too. And it's just a really beautiful album and even surprising me as a. I mean, I'm a Dead fan, but it's surprising me that he's that good of a songwriter. So, yeah, there's some songs that he's actually like writing original songs, but blending them together with traditional songs like Shenandoah, stuff like that. So that's. I've been listening to that a lot and I've been totally obsessed with another song. This is the only other thing I'll mention. But I think last time we recorded, I mentioned that I was watching Newsroom.
Yeah.
And I finished the series in the season finale or the series finale is unbelievable. But there's a scene where Jeff Daniels sings the song that's How I Got to Memphis. Are you familiar with the song?
I don't know. I feel like I've heard it before. But I could be thinking of the last train, the midnight train to Georgia.
It's sort of like that. It's. But it's this. Yeah, it's like old classic country song. But he and like two of the other cast members sing it. And in context in the show, it actually makes sense. But it's this great little song and I have been singing it in my head for seriously, like three days straight, non stop. I woke up with it and like stuck in my head this morning. So I've been kind of on a kick listening to stuff like that, like old Roger Miller and classic country stuff, which I've never really gone down that road.
Yeah.
Before. And there's Just some really awesome songs that are in that little genre. Yeah. Yeah. So enjoying that. I'm rereading 10th of December by George Saunders short story collection for like the fourth time. I can't recommend that one enough.
Yeah.
And as I was last episode, I am using one of my wonderful your life is in our hands pencils. Thank you. It's a general's badger that I've got right here for the yellow pencil episode.
That's awesome.
That's me.
Cool.
How about you, Caitlin?
Well, I am proudly finishing a yellow Viking. I never. I cannot say this. I'm not even going to try. It's a yellow Viking school pencil. Its name is actually Danish for school pencil. I'm not. Got a lot of consonants in it.
It's Spanish for then.
But it's only like, since I've been working with cw, it's only the second pencil I've actually finished to completion. Normally I'm on to the next one before I finished one. So I feel like this yellow pencil episode is serendipitous for the end of my yellow pencil. Oh, I'm drinking a Hella's lager that Andy stole from the Standard.
The hotel I'm staying at. I just raided the mini bar and brought this with me.
I think it's. Oh, it's made by Six Point. I like Six Point.
Yeah, it's.
It's good beer.
Yeah.
And in my free time, I'm currently consuming a really kind of odd group of things. I'm rereading the His Dark Materials trilogy because I've been talking about it a lot with a friend of mine and I really can't remember it. So kind of rereading that for something.
I read that a lot, reading as you do.
I also been binge listening to a podcast called Myths and Legends. That's all what it sounds like. Myths and Legends. Folklore.
Sounds fantastic.
Yeah, it's really, really great because the guy that does it, like, he'll go through for a specific story, like, you know, like Beauty and the Beast, and he'll find all the original tellings and he'll give the original account and say, here's where this account varies from this one. And it's kind of interesting how, how many are rooted in. In actual history, particularly like, Greek mythology, just because, like, there will be, like, conflicting timelines of like, the same characters but characters that actually kind of existed. And, like, it's really, really fascinating. And he's pretty funny. And I'm also consuming a lot of show tunes because I joined a Show choir.
Nice.
So, yeah, every Sunday evening I'm rehearsing. It's pretty.
What kind of. What kind of show tunes?
Broadway.
Okay.
Like, really, like, classic Broadway standards. Yeah. Like, we're doing. We're doing one from Hairspray. I guess it's not super classic, but, like, South Pacific. Yeah, there's some. Some Sondheim and Rogers and Hammerstein in there. It's.
Can we write. Rewrite some Hamilton lyrics for pencils? Maybe.
I don't know if I'm that clever.
I'm not. I'm definitely not.
Yeah.
Leave me some. Some Self Pacific.
Mm.
There is nothing like a dame. Okay. I am drinking the same thing, a Hell's Lager from Six Points, and using, actually something I just bought at this little pencil shop in New York. Today I'm using a camel HB right now, which. This is the first time I should be using a yellow pencil. But I am the worst.
I have yellow ones.
Do you have pencils?
No, yellow pencils.
Oh, yellow camel pencils.
I feel like they're softer, though.
The yellow one.
Yeah. There's something that's just like, barely different about the two. Like, I actually think the eraser is better on the natural colored one than on the.
Or.
No, the eraser is better on the craft design technology branded ones than the camel branded ones. But I might just be in my head.
Yeah.
Okay.
There's also.
I'm fairly. Apologize. My chair is very squeaky.
So I have been lately reading.
Ooh.
Oh, that one's like. Oh, sorry. Caitlin just put one in front of me. This one is like a true yellow. The other one I had was a neon yellow. I gotta sharpen this up. Sorry. I've been reading kind of in that same kick as I was last time I recorded that book about the San Francisco maps and atlases. I've been into San Francisco history. So there's a book called Cool Gray City of Love by Gary Kamiya, and it's 49 little chapters of little vignettes of history of San Francisco from the earliest settler days to, like, the 80s and 90s. And turns out a lot of the streets in San Francisco named after terrible people, like conquistadors and, like, the reaper collectors in general. Yes, basically. So there's, you know, there's a lot of streets around where I live, like, De Anza and Sanchez and all these things. The only one that's named after, like, someone good is Cesar Chavez, who's named after, like, somebody from a worker. The Workers party.
Yeah. California history.
It's pretty Terrible.
Especially in areas where they had, like, a lot of missions, like in San Francisco is really brutal.
Yeah.
Is there, like, a Goebbels street or something? Well, Stalin Way or something?
There's an exit. I think it goes to Daly City on the highway called Junipero Serra, like, drive. And that's named after a monk that was part of the original foundation of the Mission Dolores, which is, like, the mission of San Francisco. And. And he. Apparently the women traveling with them, he thought were too, like, bawdy and, like, lavicious or something, so he would beat them.
Yeah.
So that's nice. California's great, guys.
So.
Yeah, we should launch into our main topic. I. I think that we are all kind of familiar with. With yellow pencils. And I feel like when people come up with kind of, like, an iconic branding of pencils, it's always, like, bright yellow. Like, you. You guys have wrapping paper and envelopes that are bright yellow. That chair inside is bright yellow, which is really fantastic.
Yeah.
And then when people, like, think about. They think about, like, the Ticonderoga, et cetera, et cetera. But we talked a little bit about it before. But I'm really interested to know, Caitlin, like, how did. How did yellow become the pencil color in the first place?
So there are a few sort of varying stories on this, and I'm gonna give all credit to Caroline here for actually giving me an education on this earlier today, and, you know, throughout our time working together. But she just wrapped up writing a book about the history of pencils, so keeping an eye out on the horizon for that. But she basically knows everything now. So. Yellow pencils were actually introduced by the LNC Hardwood Company, which we now know as Koh I Noor. In the Czech Republic, the first yellow pencil was the koh I Noor 1500. They introduced it at the World's Fair in Paris in 1889. And at the time, pencils were naked, because the thing people really wanted to show off was the quality of the wood grain. And the koh I Noor 1500 was really the first pencil that had a finish on it, and they really wanted to set themselves apart, and they really wanted to show off, like, this first really, really premium pencil. I think this is also the first pencil that was graded with an hb, but I might have made that one up. But, like, the. The thing that kind of differs between who you talk to is why they painted it yellow. Some accounts say that it was just, like, you know, kind of a design choice. Like, they just like the color yellow. Most accounts There agree that it was because of China. They were getting, like, the best graphite from China at the time. The koh I Noor 1500 had Chinese graphite in it. And yellow in Chinese culture had to do with wealth and prosperity. So they really wanted to have this connotation with the pencil, with it being kind of a luxury thing. And when they introduced it a few years later at the World's Fair in Chicago, that was when the American pencil industry was really still a fledgling thing, and it was really influential on American pencil manufacturers. And they started making yellow pencils to kind of. Kind of sort of piggyback off of the koh I noor 1500. And that's also when names like Mongol and Mikado started coming out, because they're. They're Asian themes.
Yeah.
I mean, Eberhard Faber accounts vary on the origin of the name Mongol, but it's really. It's really kind of hard to dispute that it wasn't, like, an Asian connotation when the first Mongol box had a little Asian person on it. Some accounts do say that he. That it was named after his favorite soup, which was a type of soup in, like, the 19.
Mongol soup.
Yeah. It's, like, split. It sounds terrible.
That's what people do.
The other thing that's kind of funny about yellow pencil history is that in the, like, late 40s, early 50s, when there were the big four pencil companies. Quick, guess what? They were in the U.S.
everhart, Faber, Eagle, American, and Musgrave General.
Wrong. Wrong. Literally. Thank you. I'm like. It's literally the biggest one. So the big four being Eberhard Faber Dixon, the American Pencil Company, Slash, which later became Venus and Eagle. They were really kind of, like, controlling a monopoly on the pencil industry. And there was this thing that the government started called the Bureau of Standards. I think that might not actually be its name, but we're gonna say it is. That came up with a regulation for yellow pencils that said that they had to cost a specific amount, like around 5 cents. They had to be within a certain range of yellows. They had to have. I think they actually did have to have pink erasers. And at one point, they did dictate what color the ferals had to be.
Wow.
So that's when yellow pencils that were brand, like, marketed as school pencils. Because, like, marketing was a big part of this as well.
Yeah.
That's when cheap yellow pencils really started to, like, take off as being school pencils.
Blame the damn government.
Yes. I have another. I have another really Cool. Fun fact, if you guys are not tired of listening to me yet. So ferals, right? I think you guys mostly know that In World War II, the pencil industry used plastic or paper for ferals.
I didn't know about paper.
Yeah, like cardboard. Yeah, those are harder to find because those definitely have deteriorated over time. But yeah, they used paper or plastic. And up until that point, Dickson Ticonderogas had gold ferrules. And when they had to start using plastic, they had to kind of rethink what their pencils looked like because they couldn't make gold plastic. So they came up with the decision to do a green ferrule with gold bands and that carry it on with them forever after that. So I'll post World War II Ticonderogas have that really iconic green with yellow.
I had no idea that was where that came from.
That's awesome. And that's my story and I'm sticking to this.
That's the news the way it is. So what, what kind of pencils do you carry in the shop? Like, I. I would wager that it's safe to say that you have the most. The biggest yellow pencil selection in the
US at least I would like that to be true. If we're talking like classic yellow pencils with that, you know, Bureau of Standards pink eraser and feral, we do have quite a few. Most of them come from generals in Jersey City. We've got with erasers, semi hex specific, supreme goddess badger. I think that's it. And then calendar doesn't have a Calendar doesn't have a feral or an eraser. And then we've got one from Karen Dash that has an eraser and harvest from. And saris from Musgrave that have erasers. So we do have a pretty wide selection of yellow pencils. But then also, like, we have the Viking school pencil, which is still yellow from Denmark, and We've got the Koh I R 1500, still yellow still from the Czech Republic and different things like that. Like, we definitely do have a lot of yellow number twos.
Cool.
So you work in a pencil store. Do you ever even use yellow pencils?
Actually, I do all the time. Like I said, my current workhorse has been the Viking school pencil. But all the time when I want to give something like the college try, like I need to try some paper, particularly with sharpeners, like, I've been doing a lot of work with vintage sharpeners, like my personal collection. And also for our blog, I always go for a semi hex because they, they hold up really well. The wood is always really, really nice. The erasers are decent. And in Jersey City. In Jersey City, where I live. Yeah. They. I mean, they just really, like, if I. If I want to show somebody, like, a true, like, middle of the road, like, good, like, better than a drugstore quality pencil, this is the one I'm going for.
I feel like I've. I've often used, like, since Ticonderoga's claim is, like, that the world's best pencil, I always sort of use them as the benchmark.
Mm.
But I should be using. Yeah. Something like a semi hex, because I feel like that's a true, like, good, solid, middle of the line.
Yeah.
Pencil.
Yeah. And they're still made in America. They're still really cheap.
Yeah.
I think maybe a little bit more expensive than a Ticonderoga, but not that much more.
Yeah. I met somebody at the conference I was just at in Seattle, whose sister in law is Katie Weizenborn from General Pencil, like, one of the co owners of it. Interesting. Yeah. Just random fact, huh? Yeah.
I have a pen pal whose husband is friends with one of the Weisborns too. And I'm like, where do they.
What.
Everything goes back to this really, really fast.
It's like the Kevin Bacon connection. It's like, what's your wizen born?
So I was curious if people come into the store specifically looking for a certain yellow pencil or that come in looking with a mindset that, like, yellow pencils are the only option. Like, if they have a mental block and that's the only kind of pencil that works.
Not necessarily. What happens most often is, I mean, really often with an older generation, they come in and they know Ticonderoga, and they only know Ticonderoga, and they're like, why don't you carry Ticonderogas?
It's because they used to be so good. We're actually looking at a vintage Ticonderoga box right here, which I have a few at home.
Yeah.
And they're just so good.
This is actually a box of World War II era.
Oh, wow.
Which they weirdly stuck one that's from like the 50s in it too. Like cheating.
Yeah.
However. Yeah. What will happen a lot is, honestly, people don't want the yellow pencils as much like they'll come in, and they're expecting that we're gonna wow them with something. So they come in and they're expecting to see a black wing. There's a lot of people who come in are not like, regular pencil users. Or if they are, they're using, you know, like your. Your target pencils or whatever. So they. They don't know that things like that actually exist.
I guess that makes sense because most people would associate yellow pencils with, like, the crappy pencils they've always had to use, and now they want to find something run at the mill.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's the. The yellow pencil is a bit of a hard sell, which is a little sad to me. We do a lot of semi hacks around back to school season, but even then, like, if we were kind of like, giving them away to schools and things like that, sometimes you, like, arrive with all these semi hacks and they're like, oh, there's still really good pencils. I swear. I swear.
There's so many. There's still so many, like, back to school lists that have, like, yellow number two pencils written on it. And sometimes it's straight up.
We see a lot of Ticonderogas. I mean, and that's all just, like, marketing power because that's. They.
It's the world's best pencil.
Yeah, exactly. They establish themselves, like, super, super early in the game, and that just has stuck around. So it's. I don't like this. This back to school season, we did a sampler pack that was yellow number twos from all around the world, and that actually did really well. It's like, once you kind of introduce the idea that there's this kind of unifying theme, people kind of buy into it a little bit more. So it's like, once you actually get them interested in pencils and start thinking about things, then they're like, oh, oh, there are good yellow pencils. Yeah.
I think it doesn't help that, like, Office Depot and Staples and everybody has a yellow pencil that are really unbranded.
Yeah. The ones that just say number two.
So bad.
Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. It's weird because I generally, when I'm, like, working and I have, like, a pencil that I bring into work that is interesting, I generally don't go for yellow pencils because it. I don't know, they just feel. They just feel basic. Like, I don't want to. I don't want to be a basic. No, that sounds bad. But, yeah, I always just get a lot of, like, joy out of, like, unusual colors for pencils and people. Blue pencils are really my. My favorite thing because, in fact, I am basic.
Yeah. But, yeah, I actually, I collect. I had to, like, limit myself on pencil buying at some point.
You have to buy pencils, too.
Well, yeah, I have, like, a personal collection, and I mean, now I'm kind of getting into sharpeners, but my, like, go to. My collection is Eberhard Faber Mongols. And I have. I have almost every era of them. I've got the original, like, solid gold ferrule from the 1910s that has the Asian person on it, and I've got the plastic feral from World War II, and I've got, you know, kind of the different brandings that they've had in between. And I. That's like my iconic pencil.
I love that black and copper ferrule like that.
Yeah.
Yeah. Just looks so good. Yeah. So we should probably talk a little bit about kind of our favorite top yellow pencils, our least favorite yellow pencils, and Johnny's category, which I really love. House brand pencils you'd buy if you were forced to. So, Caitlin, why don't you start us off?
Oh, okay. So my. My top yellow pencil overall is definitely semi hex. Like I said. That's just one that I find myself reaching for again and again, especially for the sharpening. But I also. I use vintage Mongols a lot. They just write so nicely. And the cedar back in the day was, like, so much more fragrant. Yeah, sorry. Cal cedar. No, but like, like I said, like, the semi hexel sharpens, really, really beautiful. But they. Eastern cedar, they used to use, like. God, there was something. There's something special about that. So those are definitely my favorite.
It smells like deforestation.
Smells like clear cutting. Should I keep going?
Yeah.
Oh, my worst yellow pencil, and I know we talked about this on the Erasable Group was definitely the Sanford Eagle. I like to believe that those are all, like, rotting somewhere, but I do. I actually have a few that I found. I found a full box of Sanford Eagles and my art supplies, and I had to sharpen one just to remind myself, like, how just everything about it is so awful.
Sanford is so weird because now it's like, less of a brand and more of like a conglomerate. Right. Because, yeah, Sanford bought like, I want to say about, like, rotring, and it bought a whole bunch of other companies
that it just sort of not certain. But there's like a big umbrella now.
Yeah, sure.
They.
They own. I think they even might own Mongol too, at this point. Yeah, they do. Or no. Rubbermaid.
Paper Mate.
Paper Mate. You're right. You're right.
Paper Mate does Mongol.
And then Newell Rubbermaid owns Paper owns Paper Mate.
Mongol is kind of weird.
They own Stanford, too.
Paper Mate on Sanford.
Sanford Owns Papermate and Rubbermaid owns Sanford
and Disney owns all of that.
Like a big, depressing Russian nesting doll.
What's really weird about Mongol is Papermate makes them for the US and for like, I think like Mexico. Yeah, Like North America.
Yeah.
Caroline traveled to Colombia recently and bought Mongols in Colombia that are still Eberhard Faber branded Mongols.
Wow.
So there's like, definitely, like Faber Castell has some weird, weird, weird licensing.
Yeah.
Because then.
And they let. They let Blackwing expire.
Yeah, yeah. And they like, like the Everhard Faber pencils they sell in Germany are like, like rose art quality, like bottom of the line, like grocery store quality. But they still make Eberhard Fabian Mongols in Colombia for some reason. So there is that.
Yeah. What about a house brand pencil that if gunned to your head, you'd buy if you were forced to.
I had a hard time with this one. I'm gonna go with. I'm not gonna go with the Strickland propane and propane accessories.
I tell you what. Boy.
Right?
No, no, actually what I was gonna say was the extremely rare and elusive 711 pencil that I used to get across the street from this grade school I went to.
I have never heard of the 711 brand pencil.
That's because I made it up.
Yeah, yeah.
If I had to buy, I would probably buy, right, dudes? But I don't feel. Does that count as a house brand pencil?
I mean, I guess technically it's not, but I feel like it's so closely related to like Walmart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And those are made by Moon products.
Really?
Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah.
Good to know. Yeah, man.
Shadowy world of pencil sourcing.
Moon products is owned by Rose Moon
Corporation, which is owned by Rubbermaid, which is owned by Monsanto.
This episode brought to you by Rubbermaid. Johnny, how about you? What is your top yellow pencil?
So I'm going to qualify this and say it has to be a curated Ticonderoga.
This is the most hipster phrase I've ever heard.
Yeah. So if you go buy a Ticonderoga at Target, you might get some pre sharpened pos. Made in Mexico or we saw some point of substance.
Please continue.
We had a box we got from back to school season that weren't cedar. They just did like American wood. So if you're careful and you go to like staples and get the wooden boxes and open them and pick them very carefully from the new Chinese stock, you can get a nice box of Ticonderogas and kicked out of the store. Yeah, that's My favorite Ticonderoga. You just like grab it and run like hell.
Like throw a 500 and be like, see ya, B.
So that is probably my favorite yellow pencil right now. But I feel like it shouldn't be so much damn trouble to get a good box of Ticonderogas.
Yeah.
You know, but if you're, if you're willing to. It's a nice box of pencils.
Yeah.
I walked by Staples the other night and they were throwing out their back to schools display and I tried to take a picture of the Ticonderoga out and the Tycon Deroga, like the neon ones, like the display on the street with the garbage. And I was going to be like, right where it belongs. That store employment play actually yelled at me and I ran away
and got a cease and desist. Oh, and it's that lady.
It's breaking all of our store brand pencil.
What's happening, Johnny? What is your house brand pencil that if you were forced to buy, you would.
Oh, I skipped my worst one.
Oh, you did. Continue.
So, so a quick plug for my website, I did a comparison of five, like, truly piece of crap yellow pencils, like store brand pencils. So the worst one is the one that's just called the Dixon pencil, which is like the worst complete piece of shit I've ever seen called a pencil. No more bad mouthing wopexes. If you've ever used one of these pieces of crap and like bragged about it. Thank you. They don't sharpen. The wood sucks. The core sucks, the eraser sucks, the finish sucks, the packaging sucks.
Don't hold back, Johnny. Tell us how you really feel.
If anybody uses them, unfollow me on Twitter.
Delete your account.
Like
off.
I'm gonna be going through this.
It's getting a little bit dark.
It is.
Jenny took it to a bad place.
Get you some counseling over the.
Somebody's gonna be like, why do you have this constant typewriter bell ringing?
They're just pencils. They're just pencils, buddy.
Johnny is a very against Dixon pencil person. Yeah.
So the house brand pencil I would buy if I was forced to is the Target up and up pencil because it's not bad and I go to Target like twice a week, sometimes more.
Yeah.
Which one are the up and up ones? Are they the ones you get in like the dollar bin or like, like the front area or are they actually like branded up and up?
They're like the Target branded pencils. Oh, they have ballpoint pens branded that are pretty good.
Do you know who makes them?
No idea.
It's a mystery.
Yeah.
If you like, if you spend a lot of time with the Staples and Office Depot and Target brand pencils, they're all like so freakishly different and like similarly crappy or not similarly crappy. They're similar in their level of crappiness. But what is crappy about each pencil is very different. It's like infuriating.
Yeah, they're very singular in their crappiness.
Well, the staples pencil has an alright eraser, but everything else about it makes me want to burn it and hold it in my hand while it's burning, but burn it to the ground. The Target 1 is a good balance, if not quite terrible.
Let's move on from this. Tim,
get your typewriter bell ready. This is gonna be a while.
Tim, what is your top yellow pencil?
My top yellow pencil is the Tombow 2558. Which I know it's not like a super common one, but that's just like my.
Sorry, go on.
Was I cutting out?
Oh, no, I talked over you. I said I feel like that's kind of cheating a little bit.
Somebody said.
Well, so we didn't go criteria for him, we just said yellow pencil. Right? Yeah, yellow pencil. It's got a pink eraser.
I do have to admit that I
can see why it's cheating right off the bat, but I do have to
admit that I don't think that the, the yellow on that, that Tombow is particularly attractive. It's kind of like this muddy yellow. Like puce yellow.
Yeah, it's sort of like the 1500 yellow though. The original yellow.
Okay, she. Or something. Yeah, okay, fine. So if I had to pick something more civilian with the common folk yellow
pencil,
I do actually have been having fun with the, the badger that I mentioned earlier. So I just. As far as like a general's. A general's pencil that I, I do enjoy to use. I only have like a couple of them, so I don't use them a lot, but I do like the badger. So that's one that I had never, I had never actually had one until Caitlin. Until you made those custom printed ones. I just hadn't. Hadn't ordered any. So I hadn't tried those. And that's one that gets, you know, like no attention and.
Yeah, yeah.
At the price point they come out. That's a fantastic pencil. And I also. One thing I like about it that's so, you know, a little different than the semi hex is I really dig a yellow pencil with just A plain ferrule that doesn't have a stripe or anything. It's just a nice gold.
Yeah.
Gold Ferrell and big.
That Tombow Feral is really interesting. It's like purple. Yeah.
Oh yeah, that one. Yeah. It's got the like strange purpley looking color on it. Yeah.
Caitlin just pulled out a bunch because we're sitting right here by the like
over sitting amongst all the yellow.
So many pencils. You guys, the. It's funny because the 2558, like next to all of these other ones is just like positively orange. Like that one. And then the. Then the Koh I Noor 1500, the original. Yeah. Which is like a brownish orange. It's so. Yeah. I'd have to take a picture of this for the COVID art. This is fantastic. You know, can I just come to New York every two weeks and record from down here? Because this is amazing. It feels really weird sitting right next to a person who's like recording with you because I'm not used to that. But it's. Yeah. This is fantastic.
It's entertaining. Talking about pencils when you can like pull all the examples out too.
Oh yeah. My pencil collection is big but not readily accessible. So I. Yeah. This is like very neatly organized. Tim, what is your. What is your worst yellow pencil?
My least favorite is the Murado Classic.
Really?
Yeah. Yeah. I just so one. One like little thing that just has always just like bugged me with pencils. Like one that I don't think I've ever talked about. But it just I cannot handle when a pencil like the two different slats or different colors, you know, like. Or one is like you have a dark side and like a light side of the pencil. Yeah. And I bought a box of those and like all of them are just look like that and it just looks sloppy and drives me nuts. And it's also functionality wise with the Papermate Marauder Classic. There's, you know, they're slightly skinnier than a normal pencil and my sausage fingers just don't like it.
So they've redone them a lot. So since they sucked so much. Now if you buy a pack, they have centered cores and they don't look like crap.
Yeah.
And you can get them at Walmart
and Target now because the Murado Classic is the one that if you go to Sam's Club, they have like the huge box of them. Right?
Yeah, those are. They're bad.
Those are the bad ones. Yeah. And that's probably what I have. So I do. I mean it's not bad looking. Besides, I ditched that wood issue is just like one of those little pet peeve things that drives me nuts. But they're just like a little too light and a little too skinny for me. Yeah. And then if I had to buy a store brand and I don't know if this is cheating as well, but I guess cheating is kind of my style. I've always thought that. But you're saying like what are they called, right? Dudes associating mostly with Walmart. I mean get those other places, but I mean with Target. I'm ubuy isn't anywhere else. Right.
They're their website.
That's it. Right. So I associate that one so much with Target that I think just those store brand pencils where that's. I guess I just had in my head that a store brand pencil would be something that's only available from one store and that's what I would go with. And I'm sure there's a yellow pencil in there somewhere, but that would be the one to go to. Gosh, I don't even know how to think about the sort of store brand mass produced ones if I had to buy one. I don't even know how to answer that question because it's like don't.
That's the answer. Buy some.
You know what I have the answer for you guys? The CW pencils business pencil is yellow.
Look what I had in my show notes.
Did you really put that in your show notes?
I was gonna have stuck up.
Oh my God,
yes. Which is. Where did you say that was made?
Those are made by Moon Products in Tennessee.
Yeah. That's awesome. Tennessee pencils are the people. Tennessee in general is the worst. No, I'm just kidding.
Smells bad and it's ugly.
I don't know.
Horrible music.
Yeah. So, so bad. Worst people.
Okay, fine.
Stop.
Bad food, horrible whiskey.
Yeah, you've gone too far, sir.
Not too thorough.
So yeah, I feel like my, my answers are kind of boring. I feel like I don't have a large like a lot of experience with yellow pencils just because early on I tended more toward like non yellow pencils. I, I think I agree. I think the general semi hex is like one of my favorite in that it's just such a, such a good like, like standard quality one. Like a good semi cheap. A good. How much they cost a dozen?
Like I think they cost six bucks a dozen.
Yeah. So is that your qualification is semi cheap, Johnny?
I guess like under, under seven or eight.
Yeah, they're 50 cents a pencil.
Okay. Yeah, that works. I. I use them early on in my like pencil. I'm not gonna say career. My pencil interest. And yeah, they just stuck with me because they're super comfortable to hold. They're like this really beautiful bright yellow. I really like the. I do like stripes on my feral. Tim, fight me. Yeah,
like a John Green book or something. Stripes of my feral.
Like a bright purple.
That's cool, man. They'd bring that back.
I think they should.
Yeah. Yeah. And I just like generals has like such cool old timey, like branding on it. Like it's not just your usual.
And their boxes are really great too.
Yeah. Yeah. Their boxes are kind of like harken back to the old days of like Ticonderoga with like vaguely like pioneer themes on them. I guess Ticonderoga is more like war soldiers on that.
I don't know a lot of pencils that use the word Carbo Weld.
Carbo Weld. Carbo Weld. Stronger points.
That was my last name before my family changed it.
Carbo Johnny Carbo Weld. Yeah, that's funny.
It's Carbo Weld. Stronger points.
Caro held Stronger points. That is the showtable.
So, yeah, it's my hipster album. Probably one of my favorite ego.
That's our. That's our like mountain music, like hipster folk band. My mouth harp working our beards. I've ranted and ranted about the Office Depot pencils before, which are definitely my worst yellow pencils.
Oh my God.
They break their. Their wood is awful. It's like just kind of just a poopy yellow.
It's.
Use the F word.
It's fun.
I don't want to edit one more typewriter bell in there.
I love when you get them and they're kind of like warped.
Yeah, they're already warped because they've probably been sitting in the warehouse forever because nobody buys them because they're such a bad experience.
Wait, I have a question for you guys.
Yeah. They were shipped from hell four years ago and have been sitting in. Sitting in a warehouse ever since.
When you're out in the W and you see somebody using one of those. Because I feel like I see the staple ones a lot. Do you like, say. Do you hand them a pencil and say, here, you can do better?
If I had my druthers about me, I would always have pencils out in the world.
Yeah.
But oh yeah, I walk on the other side of the street.
My closest comparison or my closest way to relate to that. It's not like in the wild, but at school, I do literally, like, if a kid walks up to me with one of those and says, like, can you help me sharpen this? Because they, like, can't get it sharpened. I just take. I don't say anything. I just take it out of their hand, I drop it in the trash can, and I hand them a different one.
You're like, is it American Break Echo where they have that thing about business cards?
Yes.
You're like, the pencil version of that. Smell that wood. That carbo weld Strong coin.
Sometimes, like, I want to have this. This series of business cards made. That, like, one is for that. That purpose. Like, we see somebody using a terrible pencil, and you can do better. Cwpencils.com you can do better.
Get yourself, like, a. Like a little quiver to wear on your belt.
Or I want the flip side of that. Where you see somebody in the wild using a really good pencil and you're like, you know what? Mad props.
Is it weird to hug people like that?
Come here.
That would be. You know, you could do it where, you know, like, is it. There was a comedian who. Maybe it was Steve Martin who had, like, cards that would hand out, and he would, like, write. He would check off, like, a series of multiple questions, and it was like, like, you met me and were, like, thoroughly charmed. Checked off. You should have one that you just check off a pencil. You fill in, like a scan charm.
You're using a pencil.
Yeah. Your pencil sucks. Yeah.
Oh, man. That would be. That'd be great. Yeah. So Office Depot brand is like my nemesis because I grew up with Office Depot, and I love Office Depot, just not their house pencils. They're so bad. And I would say, yeah, I would say a housebred pencil. If I was. I would buy. If I was forced to. I actually couldn't decide. I had originally put Ub because I really love some ub. And they're like, do they sell elsewhere than Target? But they're not like a house brand. But I've Only on their website.
Yeah, I think that's it.
Okay. Right, dudes? Is. Is great because it's. It's also not a house brand, but I don't know. I just would never buy a house brand pencil, I guess. Except, of course, for the CW pencil. House brand.
But you don't have to buy those.
You give those to people. I have so many of those. And there is a new CW pencils house brand.
There is.
Yeah.
Those are not.
Which is not yellow.
Those were those we worked on for a really, really long time with Caran d'. Ache. Like, it was one of the things that came out of our trip to Paper World really, really early in 2016. That was actually when we started talking about doing them. And production took a really long time. And it was incredibly well worth the wait. When we got them, we weren't sure if they're gonna be more like the graphite and the Blackwood jumbo or more like the graphite and the Swisswood. They're more like a Swisswood, which is just a little bit lighter than a blackwood.
Yeah.
But they have that, like, really great plant retention.
Yeah. It doesn't smell like soy sauce.
It does not smell like soy sauce,
which to me is dang.
Honestly, Like, I don't, like, I feel weird now. Like, when you. When we get an order and you get like the big box Swisswoods and you can, like, smell it, I'm just like, oh, they're in there. I don't know. I just don't, like. I don't.
Swiss woods with a stinky leg.
You can, like, can, like, smell the quantity. It's like, oh, I think they got it right.
Smells like four. Gross. But that is, like, that's one of the easiest pencils to sell in the store because so many people are like, what?
They're. I mean, they're so cool looking. And we all. We all know somebody who loves. Loves themselves as Swisswood.
Yeah.
And none of us know why. Because he's a freak. Just kidding. Just kidding. We'll see if he actually listens to us anymore.
He did really like the CW Blackwood.
That's good. Yeah. So before. Before we wrap up and we'll have plenty time to go or anything else. I. I don't want to sound too forward, Caitlyn, but I really want to talk about what you're wearing right now.
Oh.
None of you can see this, but it's pretty much the best.
Okay, well. Just kidding. So a few months ago, somebody posted on the erasable Group a T shirt that Alex and I. Alex who works at the store with me. Alex and I immediately lost our minds over and spent, I kid you not, hours trying to figure out how to get them. It's a Uniqlo shirt that was part of their line they did called the brands that celebrates, like, really, really classic brands. And my shirt has Tombow mono 1/ hundreds on it.
Do you guys remember seeing this? It's like, I don't remember that at all. It's like a green T shirt and it has, like, A few tombows sticking out the sides.
And then there's one sticking out of the pocket.
Yeah, there's one sticking out of the pocket. And I didn't realize this was just like a Japanese one.
Yeah.
So I went to my local Uniqlo in. In San Francisco and they did not have it. They had like American brands, like.
Yeah.
Campbell's soup or whatever.
Yeah. And they had like, I think they had like a Ford Motors rubber made and.
Yeah. Just a Rubbermaid bin on somebody's shirt.
My friend ended up going to Japan like very shortly thereafter, and I like begged her to visit a Uniqlo in Ginza when she was there. And she loves me enough that she brought me back too.
That's awesome.
I wonder like, I already wear like the highest size that you can get from Uniqlo because I do not have a Japanese body type. So I wonder if like a Uniqlo in Japan would be like even smaller.
I'm wearing a men's medium and I'm not, you know, I'm a medium sized human, so I don't know.
Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. I was so excited when I saw it today. Yeah, sure. That's. I've been wanting that shirt. Cool.
That was interesting for everybody.
Yeah. You're welcome, world. Anything else we should talk about before we wrap up? We're kind of holding off. I think that we're going to release episode 61 pretty soon after. We're waiting for the quarterly releases from like three different brands.
I'm losing sleep about this stuff.
I got my shipment notification from field notes today, so which means tomorrow or Thursday they'll actually announce it.
This is actually.
Yeah. Mine is saying it's going to ship Friday.
Yeah. Or mine says it's supposed to arrive on Friday.
This is the thing we're really heavily debating right now without really saying too much because, you know, we have pencil of the month.
Yeah.
And we're trying to. We want to bring the program back, but we want it to be different. And it's the quarterly thing. It's already super capitalized on by stationary people.
But it's such a good.
It is like. Yeah, yeah. You feel like if you pay for something a quarter, you get like a specific value out of it rather than if you pay for it monthly, you're getting smaller, cheaper things.
What about like bi monthly? That way you could get more in and you could be off the usual cycle of like, big announcements.
I don't know. Yeah, I really. It would be really difficult, I think, to compete with with the ones that are already so big. Yeah, but it's a thought process. Stay tuned.
So I do think that we should put it on record just in case it turns out to be true. I'm pretty sure we sussed out the Blackwing quarterly release. Blackwing had a post on Instagram that said it was, like, scissors and paper and a pencil and everything. And they said they were working on their arts and crafts. So I said, I think it's the Frank Lloyd Wright pencil, because the arts and crafts movement.
Okay.
And that kind of like, you know, he was. He was kind of, like, Blackwing adjacent. I don't know if he ever actually, like, went on record as saying that he uses black wings, but a lot of people think of him when they think of, like, the. The people who define a creative culture, which is kind of their. Like, their thing they try to do. So I'm. That.
That's.
That's what I want to go on is guessing. So we'll see. We'll see if that's right or not. What do you do? Do you guys have any other ideas for the Blackwing? Yeah, no.
I can't imagine what else it would be.
Yeah.
Unless it's, like, dedicated to some super famous, like, crochet artist or something. Or, like, a scrapbooker.
All those scrapbooking superstars out there. Matisse. Sorry.
I'm sorry. To art right now.
I think we just lost Johnny. Johnny, you still there?
Is.
Yeah.
Oh, there. He's gone.
And he's gone.
Was that just me?
Yeah, you. You fell off the call.
What the Just happened?
I'm just.
Wait, that's not being recorded, is it?
I'm sorry.
We're recording right now. No, it's fine.
Whoops.
No, that. This isn't. This is not the first of the. Of the episode, so I. I'm probably going to be spending some time with this episode.
Man, I owe you some beer.
No, it's all right.
I have.
You know what? I have a really long plane ride home on fire on Thursday, so. Or Friday morning, so this will give me something to do.
Learn how to recognize it on the little. Like, the audio, the waveform. Yeah, there's one. Yeah.
I suck.
I thought it was gonna be me, to be honest.
It's all right. Okay. Anything else before we wrap up? We will be back soon with episode 61, talking about quarterly releases and some other cool special things, so. Yeah. Caroline, Where. You're not Caroline. You're Caitlin. Do you get that a lot?
I do it to myself sometimes.
Caroline's like your inner monologue. Yeah.
Or yeah, I'll be like, be correcting myself out loud and be like, caitlin, don't do that. But I say, caroline, don't do that. But I also get Alex and Meredith mixed up and they're not even remotely. Yeah, it's bad.
So where can not only people find your employer, but also yourself on the Internet in case they wanted to.
They can find CW Pencils online at cwpencils.com on Instagram @c cwpencil enterprise and on Twitter wpencils. If they want to find me, they can find me. I always. I can never remember and I really need to fix this. I think the names weren't actually available to me. It's Kate. It's at Kate Algin on Twitter. And I think it's Aitlyn Elgin on Instagram.
Yeah. Cool.
And I haven't even been drinking those times. But really embarrassing. It's Kate Alja on Instagram, everyone.
Tim, what about you?
You can find me on Twitter at real Donald Trump. I apologize in advance.
On the cyber.
Yeah, I'm on the cyber at real Donald Trump. I do the cyber posts.
400 pounds sitting on his bed, you know.
Yeah. While lounging on my bed.
Term coming from an analog podcast. The podcast about pencils.
The cyber is really hard to do. Title we've got. You can find me on Twitter imwassum and I'm on Instagram timothywasom and you can find me trolling ealdonaldtrump.
Sniff. Did you guys see that?
I didn't see that.
Donald Trump's sniff during the debate got its.
Oh, yeah.
Johnny, how about you? I hesitate to ask.
Well, you could find my opinions about yellow pencils minus the f word on pencilrevolution.com I think I didn't use the F word. I took it. And I'm on Instagram yname and on Twitter ensolution.
Cool. And I am Andy Welfle. I am on a blog that I need to Update More often, woodclinched.com and I am on Twitter Wellfley and on Instagram at the same. All right, this is episode 60 of the Raceable podcast. You can find this episode and show notes at erasable us60. You can find our Facebook group, which we have almost 1300 strong. We have really amazing discussion happening there. Facebook.com groups erasable. If you would want just an official voice of the page of the erasable podcast, find our facebook page@facebook.com erasablepodcast Twitter and Instagram at the same raceablepodcast. Yeah. And we will be back soon with episode 61. So thanks again, Caitlin, for being with us. Actually, thank you for letting me be down here with you being here with us. And the graphite today, in the graphite mines, the tails, the crypt, you can
get the graphite lung.
Yeah, silver lungs.
Silver lung.
All right, we'll see you next time. Boom. That was like a delightful trash fire, you guys. Delightful trash fire.
The intro music for the Erasable podcast is graciously provided by this Mountain, a collaborative folk rock band from Johnson City, Tennessee. You can check out their music@www.thismountainband.com.