The "Beaver-Girl Diva-Princess Mud-Pie-Maker" Gives These Two Thumbs Up...Even If They Aren't Pink or Purple!

Beaver Girl: Precocious girl that manages to chew through pencils at a lightening fast pace
Diva Princess: Same precocious girl that wears a certain Princess dress when making mud pies in the back yard

95% of the time when I am using pencils I grab and automatic or mechanical one; I can’t be bothered with regular wooden pencils that need to be sharpened or ones that won’t hold a point for more than a few minutes. If that isn’t the height of laziness, I don’t know what is. That means that everyone else in the house has the say on which pencils I buy. When Annabelle started showing a lot of interest in writing I got her the Dixon “My First Ticonderoga” Pencil; they are larger than regular pencils and were easy for her to grip. Now, I have to set this up correctly or you won’t get the full scope of how hysterical this scene unfolded. Clad in her pink princess dress, complete with the clonky plastic shoes that I was strongarmed into buying, she clomped her way into the kitchen with a handful of the aforementioned pencils and put them on the table. With a serious look on her face and a notebook in hand, she said, “We need to talk about these pencils.” But wait, it gets better. When I asked her what was wrong with them she laid a verbose diatribe on me that would have made Bill Clinton jealous. “These” pointing to the pencils, “are for kids, I am a princess. I need pink pencils” [dramatic pause] “... or purple”. I have no one but myself to blame for this ...

Dixon Ticonderoga Pencils #2 Medium Soft Lead

With “pink pencils” and “purple pencils” on the list of things to pick up at the office supply store I knew I was going to have to work some kind of a deal with her. Most of the time those ‘cute’ pencils that you see in stationary stores look awesome but write like crap. The last thing I want to do is get her pencils that write poorly; that might turn her off of creative writing and practicing her cursive writing. We finally settled on the Dixon Ticonderoga # 2 Soft Lead pencils but she made me promise to paint a few of them pink and purple for her. I avoided using them for as long as I could; I don’t have a fear of pencils but I absolutely hate it when the lead smears all over the paper or I end up with it on my hand. Necessity being the mother of invention, I was forced to use one when we were at Mc Donald’s for something called “Family Night”. Imagine 20 - 30 children, unsupervised, hopped up on sugar, ice cream and soda, running through the play area, screaming their heads off and stepping in [what I hope was] chocolate ice cream. Yeah, sounds like fun right?

I needed to write down some names, phone numbers and email addresses that I’d had with me and accidentally spilled water on. If I didn’t copy them down that minute, they’d be unintelligible by time we got home. I rooted through her backpack and found one of these - the only pencil that was sharpened I might add. The first few names and addresses went well but I had a lurking feeling that the point would break or the tip would wear down but that didn’t happen. Could it be that this pencil was really all that Dixon claimed it to be? The lead did smear a little but you couldn’t really tell unless you were under a bright light, the eraser didn’t wobble when you used it and no matter how hard I pressed on the tip, it didn’t break. No pencil is going to be completely 100% comfortable to write will unless it has some type of padding, pillow pad or a patented comfort grip to it but this one wasn’t half bad. I didn’t end up with those dents in my fingers when I was done writing with it.

These sharpen evenly regardless of whether you are using an electric or hand held sharpener and they retain the point for a lot longer than most other pencils in the soft # 2 group. Erasers are always something that irk me about wooden pencils; some wobble or break when you use them and some leave behind a lot of grit [also known as eraser poop]. These have the pink erasers on them and they are bound with the green and yellow metal bandings; so far none of them have cracked or broken and Annabelle’s managed to use up the pencil before she goes through the eraser; something that is pretty rare where she is concerned. I picked these up at Office Depot for less than two dollars for a box of them; I didn’t bother to try and find them sold in a smaller pack because I knew that if no one used them at home I could take them to the shop and use them there.

On a side note, this is approved by the PMA [Pencil Makers Association] to be non toxic and safe for everyone to use. You might not think that this is a big deal but it is. There are a lot of different things that can in and on a pencil that could hard kids; from the lacquer used on the outside to the things that may be used to treat the wood. Checking to make sure that wood pencils [in this case cedar] have the PMA approval seal on them only take a few seconds but can save you a lot of trouble down the road. Since Annabelle is a vicarious ‘pencil chewer’, looking for that little square on the back of the package comes naturally to me when shopping for pencils for her. 99% of the pencils that are sold in the United States are approved by the PMA but you never know when you are going to come across some oddball company that’s putting out something that could be harmful to you or your child. If your child takes standardized tests you may want to check and see if these are suitable; some schools have specific requirements for the type of lead pencils to be used so that the computers can read them accurately.

The Bottom Line

I’m pretty impressed with the way that this writes, retains a point and sharpens. There is a little bit of smear to the lead but that is to be expected from wood pencils. I doubt that I will be using these for drawing or sketching but I’m not the one that will be using these, Annabelle is. The boys scoff at wood pencils these days; when I asked them if they tried them out they let out a hearty laugh and walked out of the room [pencil snobs they are indeed]. Since she likes writing with these they are something that I will continue to buy for her. We had some rather poor results when trying to pain them and as much as I want to appease her, there is no way I am going to sit there and sand down the finish on these so the paint will stick to them. These aren’t the most luxurious or expensive pencils on the market and I am sure that there are ones that write better but for her needs at this point in time, they are more than suitable.


As always, thanks for the read!

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2006 Freak369



Automatic & Mechanical Pencils...
Sanford Clickster Grip
Pentel Forte
PaperMate Sharpwriter
Pentel Champ
PaperMate Sidetrac
Pentel Razzle Dazzle Icy

Standard Pencils
Dixon “My First Ticonderoga” Pencil
PaperMate Mirado Pencils # 2
PaperMate Mirado Pencils # 3
PaperMate Pencils # 2
Sanford Recycled Earth
Write Pencils #2

Accessories
Sanford Arrowhead Eraser Caps
Pentel Clic Eraser • PaperMate EraserStik