This is the last Target round up, I’ll be tackling the Walmart offerings in my next few posts. These are the two new options available from Target. One is good, one is trash.

Let’s start with the positive review. I’ve read a lot about Top Flight composition notebooks being great. I’ve had a variety of experiences, most of them of the bleeding fountain pen variety. When I saw this Fashion Card covered Top Flight I had to buy it. It boasts 80  pages and a fun ecological message about bees on the cover. It cost $2.50. I could only find wide ruled at my local Target. (Why Target WHYYYYYYY!)

The cover is made of nice thick and stiff card. It is not floppy. The design work looks a lot like someone drew some lines and then slapped some stickers onto the page and then snapped a photo of it. It’s not bad but not good either. The spine tape feels a bit narrow and is mostly smooth. I don’t know why I prefer a nice textured tape on the spine but when the tapes are smooth, I don’t like it. The stitching is wide and pretty tight, though I did have to melt the thread because it was frayed and loose at the bottom edge.

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The paper is great. Smooth but toothy. It felt great with all my pens. Fountain pens felt really nice and didn’t bleed. There is some show through but that is expected IMO for paper this thin. I really liked it with pencil too. Despite it being smooth it has excellent tooth, so pencils glide on the surface but also deposit plenty of graphite for a clean dark line. 

At $2.50 this is not a cheap book. It’s not expensive either. But when there are cheaper options that work very well, why bother with this, unless you like the fashion covers?

Finally, at the end of the Target offerings, we have the shoddy Jalapeno Paper Company composition notebook. These are made by Michael Roger, Inc; the same company behind Decomposition notebooks, but at a lower price. A little googling show that these are made specifically for Target. These are priced at $2.99 for 80 pages. It boasts being recycled and being 100% post consumer waste and being printed with soy inks. All of this sounds good.

The cover design is what drew me in. There were a few really cute designs- and I struggled to decide between avocados and octopi. I ended up with octopi. The design has that Michael Roger feel. I posted a pic of these on insta and Johnny of Pencil Revolution and Erasable, immediately noticed the design feel of Decomposition notebooks. It’s not a rip off, it’s the same designer.

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And frankly even with that, you shouldn’t buy this notebook. 

The wide ruled paper is utter trash. It’s got this slick glossy newsprint feel. It’s pulpy and soft while also being too crisp. It feels awful. I touched it in store and almost put it back. It just feels weird under hand. Then I put a variety of writing tools to it and even more yuck. Fountain pens immediately feathered and bled through. Writing on TP would be more enjoyable. Pencils slide across the surface there is an utter lack of toothiness. Even normally dark pencils look light and feel hard on this surface. Gel ink is the only thing that feel okay here. 

I cannot tell you enough to not buy this book. Get the Top Flight, hell get the We Mean Green for a buck more, it’ll serve you more.

Overall if we’re looking at value for the dollar, the best bet is the Up+Up card covered notebook. The various Five Star offerings are also quite nice but not the best value.

I’m not sure if Pencils.com has historically had custom pencils available, but for a long time they had Blackwings available with their Pearl (balanced) core available in black or white with a custom imprint. Not long ago they announced a full range of custom pencils in a range of prices. They range from round screen printed to foil stamped on a range of pencils to stamped on natural raw cedar. The standard custom hex is $80 for 200 or $100 for 400 pencils, which is quite a decent bulk discount. Discounts show up at check out. I’m told there is another bulk discount at 1000.

This is a good time for me to be reviewing pencils. I’m working on a few different novels and recording the ideas in composition notebooks but also writing my first drafts with pencils and pens in them as well. I’ve churned through some of my pencil nubbins and put a work out on the samples Pencils.com sent me for review. I’ve worn each one down an inch or so in the weeks since delivery. Suffice it to say, that’s a lot of writing.

The least expensive is the round screen printed pencil. You get 432 pencils for just over $95. That’s 22 cents per pencil. This option has the largest amount of colors and fonts and lines of text, including a mascot option*. You can really customize your message. The sample version of this pencil was not cedar but linden/basswood and sharpened up well with a smooth HB core. 

The custom hex heading has 3 options. I’ll write about each.

The standard custom hex costs $80 for 200 pencils or 40 cents per pencil. It is available in 10 colors, with 7 color options for the imprint; this includes gold and silver. You get one line for text.The ferrule is cold with a pink eraser. The wood is cedar. The pencil is made in Thailand, finished in the US.

This is a solid pencil choice. The cedar smells great and sharpens well. The core is dark, mostly smooth with some grip on the page. It holds a point well on even the toothiest of pages and sharpens nicely without crumbling- in all of my sharpeners from the finicky Pollux to the Apsara long point to the brass bullet to my Dahle 133 to my Classroom Friendly. The lacquer while not thick is applied very well and nicely glossy. The imprints look good too. While I suspect I was sent rejects that were slightly off or not perfectly imprinted they still looked great. I particularly like the white on black imprint. I was sent a white pencil with a gold “Chaos Coordinator” imprint and it is great.

The raw cedar custom hex costs $110 for 200 pencils or 55 cents per pencil.The pencil is made in Thailand, finished in the US. This pencil is almost identical to the standard custom hex pencil, but with the added benefit of being raw cedar and with a black ferrule and eraser. The imprint is available in the same 7 colors as the above. I have one with a gold imprint and another with a green imprint and I have to say that I really like the color green on raw cedar. The wood is smooth and feels great in my hand. I suspect the core of this pencil and the standard are exactly the same.

The premium custom hex costs $250 for 200 pencils or $1.25 per pencil. It is available in black and white with 7 imprint options. The ferrules are slightly different than the standard- a smooth band instead of ridges, but still gold with a pink eraser. The lacquer is noticeably thicker and glossy when compared to the standard hex options. The cedar and core sharpen with all the above mentioned sharpeners perfectly. The pencil is made in Japan. 

This pencil is amazing. The core feels like a Palomino HB or Camel HB. That smooth graphite that glides over a page is evident here. There is a marked difference in the graphite between this pencil and the standard in core alone. Combined with the difference in paint and just wow. The camera doesn’t pick up the difference in ferrule colors but the premium is slightly warmer in it’s gold shade.

Some good with the bad here. The round pencils, while the best priced and well, round, were made with the worst core and the finish is less than stellar. The eraser is great and it holds a point well, but it’s very hard and light. It’s just not a great pencil. But the options of more text and little icons is awesome.

I’m not gonna lie, you all know how I love a raw cedar pencil and of these options, the raw cedar found its way into my hand more often than any other in this package. The blue black ferrule and black eraser are great and that smooth raw wood is fragrant and looks great. It’s grippy in a way that a matte finish can’t match. The core is good too, it’s not as great as the premium pencil but it’s darn good. It has just enough grip  on the page that you know it’s there, it doesn’t glide or skate over a page but it feels good on all of the various composition notebooks I’ve tested it on. That is across 5 brands with a variety of smoothness and tooth.

Obviously the premium is the best of the bunch. It’s a great pencil that feels like I’m using a Palomino HB, which is a favorite of mine. 

From the standard to the raw to the premium, you can’t go wrong with any of these options. Even the round isn’t bad, it’s just not the same quality as the other options. Head over to Pencils.com to get your own custom pencils.

Ed Kemp writes the pencil review zine Pencil of the Week (PotW) with a wry and often laugh out loud sense of humor. The premise of the zine is easy, he picks a pencil at the start of the week and uses it while at work and seemingly also outside of work. He then writes up a blurb about the pencil and his week in a composition notebook. (I could be wrong on this aspect but composition notebooks are mentioned here and there.)

If you aren’t familiar with zines, well they are self published little magaZINES. They are usually photocopied onto regular photocopy paper. Occasionally the covers will be made of colored paper or even cardstock. Sometimes the covers have additional color hand applied.

PotW is no exception, the interior is black and white photocopied as are the covers. Though Kemp often adds spots of colored pencil on the cover and more rarely inside. The covers often reflect the interior of the reviews- a composition book cover, tickets and receipts, bubble answer sheets, and drawings of pencils. The little pop of color indicating the issue number works great on the black and white background.

Inside are photocopies of handwritten pages. Each review is written in a blocky all caps sort of printing, done initially in the pencil being reviewed. The exterior and interior of the pencil is examined. He generally writes about the imprint, the lacquer, the wood, the ferrule the effectiveness of the eraser, and the graphite. He will also examine how well it sharpens.

All of the above is done in Kemp’s easy going humor. His writing includes curse words, which as you know I adore, but if you have had issues with my use of the word shit on this blog, maybe skip this zine. He does use asterisks to avoid actually writing the words themselves, which I find funny.

There are now 8 issues of this zine and it has been around for 2 years. I find Kemp’s zine relaxing and humorous to read. You can find it at the link below. https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheWordDistribution

Since I’ve switched over to a “use the good stuff” mindset I’ve been burning through my pencils and pen refills. I’ve also stopped buying stuff. When Baronfig approached me about reviewing another limited edition squire, I wasn’t going to, then I saw the pics.

And if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I love teal. That blue green color of the 90s and my youth is my favorite. So I said yes.

And oh man, I love this pen.

It is a squire, so if you like a basic squire you will love this design. It is balanced and has a nice weight in hand. The nock is twisty and smooth. As far as Squire pens go, it’s well made, as usual. The packaging is awesome and has a fun little game to get a little treat.* I particularly love the glossy varnish on the package to make the bottle design shiny on the matte background. Perfect.

The design wraps around the pen, so when I roll the pen in my hand it captures the motion of underwater grass. The rolling patterns are great. The little fish, octopus, and turtle are lovely. I’m quite taken by the octopus.

I don’t think I can say anything bad about this pen. The color is just right for me. the wrap around pattern is great and I love looking at each of the little critters.

You can get one here.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of this review, Dade and I sat down and recorded an episode of RSVP about the use of stationery in support of our other hobbies and activities. This has always been a core component of how I review but is especially important in this particular review.

I’ll start with the basics that you all know about BF. I love their cream-colored toothy paper that works just as well for pencils as it does for fountain pens and gel ink. It holds up to brush pens and colored pencils and feels great every step of the way. To boil that down- if you like dot grid and use almost any writing utensil it’s great. They use the same paper in the Vanguards as they do in the Confidants. Near paper perfection.

The vanguard is a 72 page stitched soft cover notebook. The cover stock is thick and textured. The stitching on this edition is black and sturdy. They do use back tacking to secure the ends, which is better and more secure than cutting the stitching but can leave an unsightly bundle of threads at the edges of the book. None of mine have this issue. Occasionally the stitching will be crooked or off-center, but all of mine were good.

The covers of this one have art created by Josh Cochran. The colors are subtle blends of CMYK to create a near monotone effect. I’m not sure if this is intentional but I enjoy the various shades created. The lines in the art are both thick and shaky at the same time, and folks, I am here for it. Inside the covers are printed with a softer shade of the exterior of the main color of the covers. The back cover features a little doodle in the same theme as the cover. They are cute and a fun little addition to the notebooks. There are 3 different designs for the covers one yellow, one blue-green, and one in pinks. They are all lovely.

After ripping this package open, shooting pics for this review, I immediately pressed what I term the “summer” or yellow notebook into use for my garden planning and seed starting log. I’ve made my way through about the middle of the book. It has been tossed around my bag, the truck of my car, and had copious plans scribbled into its pages. What I really love about the Vanguards is that they are just the right size for a small to medium-sized project. 72 page is just right. The size of the pages is just right, and the softcover format allows you to open the book up flat to spread your ideas out across 2 pages without an overwhelming lump in the middle.

What I have been really surprised about with this vanguard is that the cover has stood up to this kind of abuse and use. Normally most of my notebooks get tossed into my bag or onto a desk. They don’t get wet as I log hydroponic feedings or smudged with dirt as I fill seed starting pots. What is most impressive with this is that despite being a paper cover it cleans off nicely.

You can get these lovely little notebooks over at BaronFig.com

I write the bones of my review with the item in whatever journal I’m using at the time. It felt a little weird to write with this review in the Baron Fig Clear Plus journal. It’s a 5 cent pencil being reviewed in a nearly $30 journal. But this pencil performs more like a 50 cent pencil than a 5 cent pencil.

The Pen + Gear (P+G from here) pencil arrives in a hard plastic box, honestly, I’d prefer cardboard with a window, but this is a decent box. There is a bit of flex in the packaging which can contribute to cracked cores. I chose the package of black pencils, but there are now many colors and decorative features available. It is important to note where the pencils are made while making your selection. Those made in India are the pencils you want. The rest are not good. The made in India are made by Hindustan and are great pencils.

The paint on these pencils is glossy but thin. Some grain is evident through the paint. The wood it covers appears to be bass, linden, ash, or one of the many other pale-colored kinds of wood available for pencils. From the smell, it is likely to be bass/linden. It sharpens perfectly in every sharpener I’ve used, from the Classroom Friendly to the KUM Masterpiece to the M+R Pollux. The graphite takes a lovely point.

The graphite inside is smooth and dark. Much like most of the HB or dark pencils made by Hindustan. These are not super soft. In fact, their point retention is on par with many HB pencils. I used my several test pencils on several different types of paper- from the smooth paper in my work bullet journal, rough pulpy index cards, kraft paper, rosin paper, and in the Baron Fig Confidant Plus. It was silky smooth on all paper, but also the point survived longer than expected on all the papers. I filled an entire page in the Confidant Plus before feeling like I needed to touch up the point. 

The eraser… Generally speaking, erasers made by Hindustan are pink chicklets of disappointment. They rub the graphite around the page but not off, they melt into a sticky puddle atop the pencil. Not these. These black erasers are dust-gathering or sticky, and they actually work relatively well for erasers on pencils. I’m pleasantly surprised.

During the review period, which usually lasts about a week, I found myself reaching for this pencil over and over again. At the end of the week, I kept reaching for this pencil. It simply works and works well. I wasn’t sharpening it every 2 seconds, or pulling shattered cores from the wood. I didn’t fight with the sharpeners. Most importantly, I was able to use the same pencil throughout staff meeting at work without sharpening.

At $1.97 a 12-pack, these weren’t the cheapest Walmart pencils, but they are solidly good.

I’ve been struggling with how to review the special editions and pencils made for other companies by Blackwing aka Palomino. How does one review a pencil that has a topnotch core that is one of 4 different grades (extra firm, firms, balanced, and soft) wrapped in perfect cedar and then coated in a thick coat of lacquer? We’re already starting off with a wonderful product that may be a little higher priced, it is after all marketed as a premium pencil, that we know has quality going into it.

After all I acknowledge that the Blackwing is a premium well-made product at a slightly higher price than I like to pay. I’ve detailed in other posts that I will now only purchase singles or trade for the editions I REALLY like. Otherwise, I’ll live with one to use and one for my collection.

So how do I review the number 19? The story is great. For me the tribute means less to me than the rest of the pencils, even divorced from the story the pencil is great. I love a matte coated pencil, and the flat cool gray is wonderfully grippy. My hand doesn’t slide at all. The imprint smudges a bit which seems to be deliberate and in keeping with the newspaper theme. The charcoal eraser looks black to me but goes well with the pencil itself.

My one problem with this pencil is that the ferrule fit was not great. In Bob Slate, I noticed that all the ferrules were off. I don’t care much about the centering, that is dealt with by twisting the ferrule into place. Easy. Instead the ferrule just didn’t fit deep enough. Once I arrived home, I removed the ferrule and sliced off a mere millimeter and the ferrule fit perfectly. Gone were the janky looking bits of cedar hanging out around the sides and chips of paint. Once dealt with this pencil became amazing.

Now comes the argument that evolved as I used this pencil. Once dealt with the janky issues, the looks are perfect. But I had to deal with them. I had to do work on this pencil. A pencil that costs $3 (when bought as a single at Bob Slate, and even when not bought as a single it’s well over $2 per pencil) shouldn’t need to be worked on for it to be perfection. If I were spending 50 cents I don’t care about reattaching the ferrule in a pleasing manner, but when a pencil is sold at a premium price the quality control of said pencil should match that premium price. It shouldn’t be janky once it is boxed and sent out to buyers.

In short, this pencil is a perfectly sedate pencil that feels great in hand but it is hampered by janky production values that don’t belong on a $3 pencil. If I’d bought a 12-pack of these for $26 or $30 and they all looked this awful I’d have been very upset.