Tag Archives: yellow

Review: Pen+Gear No.2 Wood Pencils 12-Pack

Year after year walmart does great things with their line of wooden pencils. Most of this has to do with contracting with Hindustan to make them. This year is no different. Look for the cardboard packages with Made in India for some pencil happiness.

I like that the P+G has a nice cardboard package with a window cut into it. The cardboard is recyclable anywhere, which the plastic packaging wasn’t usually recyclable. Inside the package the 12 pencils are kept safe. The lacquer is thickly applied over a white primer coat. The resulting finish is glossy, with some texture. It is quite imperfect. The ferrules are silver and fit the erasers better than in the past. Mine were all fixed to the pencil well. The erasers are soft and dust gathering, which I appreciate but seems a little weird to me. I don’t know why I don’t like dust gathering eraser on my pencils. Maybe I’ll warm up to them, maybe not.

The cores are classically, for this pencil and Hindustan, not perfectly centered. Maybe one is perfect. One was hilariously off center. This is par for the course for these pencils. I grabbed 3 randomly for sharpening. As usual they all sharpened well in all my sharpeners, including the Pollux. These pencils are made out of jelutong. 

The core is dark, smooth, and holds a point well. If you are looking for a cheap workhorse pencil, this is a great choice. They just write so very well. Even on slick pencil these leave a mark. You can get pencils that are twice as expensive, heh, or 5 times as expensive, that don’t work as well as these. At 4 cents a pencil these are a killer deal. Sure they are from Walmart, but if you are on a budget and you want to write with something that feels good and won’t break the bank, spending 47 cents (back to school sale) or 97 cents at regular price, this is a great deal.