As I was discovering Japanese stationery in the early days of this blog, I remember being fascinated by the Midori Brass Bullet Pencil Holder. It would show up in the hands of friends, and in all types of stationery marketing. I knew Patrick Ng was a huge fan, and still is, after all of these years. And so am I.
While the brand naming convention has changed, dropping both Midori and Bullet (for different reasons, I’m sure,) the Traveler’s Company Brass Pencil is still alive and thriving, so much so that the brand has decided to include various limited editions over the year, including this beautiful Factory Green model.
Let’s get the main talking point of this pencil out of the way up front: This is a clear style over substance product. Despite how amazing it looks, and how much I will fawn over it for the rest of this review, things like an average eraser, huge clip that gets in the way, and some fidgeting to fit in your favorite pencil refills, make it hard to recommend from a pure functionality perspective.
And I’m completely fine with that. There are some products for some people where the style and the story rate higher than performance. The Traveler’s Co. Brass Pencil is one such product for me. Also, it is easier to feel this way about a $30 product than a $300 product.
The out of the box writing experience with the included Traveler’s HB pencil is a good one. The core is dark and soft for an HB, and feels exactly like the quality I would expect from parent company Midori. If this were the pencil I kept in the Factory Green holder, I’d be sure to keep a pencil sharpener at the ready. But swapping out pencils to make them even more perfect for you? That’s where the fun of this product comes in.
I’m surprised at how many pencils fit naturally into the bullet tip of this pencil. I didn’t perform exhaustive testing, but in grabbing some of my favorite Uni Mitsubishi, Tombow, Blackwing, General’s, and Midori pencils, I was surprised at how many fit in without modification. In fact, a few of the Mitsubishi pencils fit so well it’s almost as they were tailor-made for it. Others were slightly looser, but usable. And the ones that didn’t would work fine if you shaved down the end of the pencil to fit better.
I chose the eraser-less Mitsubishi 9800 for my first swap out, measuring two lengths of pencil to match the existing Traveler’s pencil length. I scored around the barrel of the pencil, carefully, with a pocket knife, and then snapped the pencil to the appropriate length. Boom - perfect inserts!
The Traveler’s Company Brass Pencil is one of those products that I hope never goes away. Is it a best in class product for price or performance? No. But it doesn’t need to be to be an absolute joy to own and use.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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