The U.S.A. Gold pencil has changed ownership so much I’ve lost track of ownership, luckily for me RoseArt has their name discreetly slapped on the back of the packages. For awhile I couldn’t find them on shelves at my various big box stores. This year I found this pack of 20 pencils at Staples for $3.99. Pretty pricey if you ask me.

The packaging is as maximalist as they come. A plastic (UGH) bubble glued to a piece of card with some die cutting. The front of this hanger package features a red, white, blue, gold, AND green design. The package is hard to read and the U.S.A. Gold logo is lost in the mishmash of crap on the packaging. There’s a bit of a flag motif, except one stripe is red and the other is blue. Oh, yes, don’t forget the handful of stars.

Jeebus crisco, why not just add a crying eagle, RoseArt?

The flip side of the package? Moar flags and stars.

There are some changes to the 2021 version of this pencil, and frankly… Most kinda are crap.

The pencils look pretty similar to the older version- possibly cedar, gold ferrule with a blue band, jaunty little pink eraser and a slim feeling in the hand.

The changes are a glossier coating, gotta get in that no name microban antimicrobial nonsense to capitalize on covid fears. Never mind the antibacterial properties of wood are well documented, and cedar itself is rot and fungal resistant (though it absolutely will rot.) The claims emblazoned on the USA Gold packaging doesn’t say or even suggest that the pencils will kill covid viruses, but one must assume that harried parents rushing through Some Box Store with a passel of cranky kinds might just toss a package of these into the cart, without investigating the claims, or believing the product will help little Johnny in the fight against covid. Do you really want little Johnny sampling some of that sweet no name microban knockoff as he chews his pencil?
Enough on that.

The true crime here is that RoseArt dropped the stellar blue foil imprint, thus further ruining the look of the pencils. We now have a glossy pencil with a GOLD FOIL imprint. GAH.

Hideous.

The cores are dark and smoother than the original Write Dudes pencil. Still I cannot recommend this pencil to you. For so many reasons. The awful maximalist packaging, the glossy “antimicrobial” finish, the GOLD foil imprint, it’s all just so wrong. They ruined a really decent pencil.

In a hilarious twist, RoseArt forgot to update the website for this product… So the website mentioned on their own packaging leads to a dead page. LOL.

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