Kickstarter Help Please!

Have you ever had a friend with a really great idea, run a Kickstarter and you just don't want to see it fail cause it is just that good? My friend Ryan has an awesome idea like that.
The game is called Sum Wars and I think it's a fun game, great for math skills and will make the earth a better place. It could even lead to a cure for cancer (indirectly of course, maybe some kid will grow up playing sum wars, will get smart, become a scientist and invent a cancer antidote).

What does Sum Wars have to do with pencils?
1. Pencils get used for lots of math.
2. Pencils were used in the design of this game.
3. I like pencils, I like this game.
4. You could wear a pencil above your ear while playing this game and it would keep you looking uber smart during game play.
5. You have trusted my perspective on pencils, you can trust me about cool new math games.
So here is the deal, Ryan has just 14 days to go to get this funded. If you have ever enjoyed a pencil... For the love of Mike (or Ryan) if you can't spare a little bit of money, share this post with your friends. Better yet post it on your blog!

 Sum Wars!

Thanks!
Pencil Reviewer
(aka Ryan's friend)

“The yellow pencil basically became a Chinese commodity,”

This is a quote by "Jim Weissenborn the CEO and owner of General Pencil company in an article posted on Bloomberg this week. I am sitting here with a box of made in the USA General's SEMI-HEX Pencils sitting in front of me on the desk and I am wondering if these gems will go the way of the Ticonderoga?

If that is the future of the SEMI-HEX pencil I may need to stock up on a rather large supply of them before this happens. After all, if nothing else I'd like my grandkids to know the pleasure of a quality Made in USA classic. What do you think? Should I buy a few gross of them and set them aside? You can still get Made in USA pencils from a couple of other companies out there.

Koh-I-Noor Mephisto Writing 465

I got a half gross of these on eBay for 99¢. hard to pass up a vintage deal like that. To my surprise the erasers are still quite soft and pliable.




All of the original packaging is in place and it includes a rather unique "pencil shaker" feature where you lift a small flap on the inner and outer boxes and get a sharpened pencil.



Instead of the typical box with two rows of six these boxes have three rows of four.



I like this box setup because it seems to me that the pencils are better protected from warping. I am not positive what year these were made but I am guessing circa 1970-80s simply due to the packaging style and the fact that this Czechoslovakian company no longer manufactures pencils in the USA.



The pencils are made of incense cedar and have a very strong (almost sexy) aromatic quality to them. For their age the cedar oils have definitely stuck around.



I really like the Kolor-Koded red tops on these. They stand out as being very different looking than the typical yellow #2. I have not been able to find any other hardness levels of this pencil to compare the top colors to but the idea of being able to readily assess the hardness without reading the pencil is pretty cool.



It is hard to see in the pictures but the presharpening follows the hexagon shaping of the pencil. You can see that in comparison to the Turquoise 4B (my favorite comparison pencil) this writing pencil is very dark. The led lasts very long keeping a sharp point longer than I expected.



I am so glad I stumbled upon these little gems and I am quite surprised there isn't a bunch of pencil lore for them the way the Blackwing and others have. I mentioned that the erasers on these are still soft and pliable. On a vintage pencil I normally would not plan to put the erasers through a test but these are fully capable of holding their own.



The paint is not as smooth as I like but it is somewhat glossy. Overall this little writing pencil is a treasure that unfortunately has been lost to the Made in USA fans.