Review: Sharpie Liquid Pencil

You guys might have remember some rumblings about how excited I was to find a liquid pencil.  I was pretty stoked about this because I've tried some pretty cool pencils in the past, and I am a little bit of a stationary snob, I will completely admit that.  I've tried pencils that automagically eject lead as you write.  This was actually really sweet because it kept it at the same height while it went along which was cool.  I have one that allows you to shake the pencil and it'll eject the lead.  This is essentially the same as clicking and if anything it's probably worse for the lead and will cause it to break more often.  Enter the Sharpie Liquid Pencil

So I actually didn't use this pencil for very long for two very big reasons.  First off is that it doesn't actually write like a pen, it's kinda hit and miss and doesn't always roll your liquid onto the head and onto the paper.  The problem with this is that you'll be writing and then mid word it'll be like hey, JK not going to write.  So that's problems number one.  With a pen it's almost something that is kinda expected when it happens and it's not a huge deal, just go back and redo it.  But with lead on the other hand in plain old mechanical pencils, it's just going to keep on writing and there you go.  So that's big problem number one.

Problem number two goes more to what sharpie is all about.  When somebody says Sharpie you undoubtedly think about permanent markers and I do/did too.  I've come to realize this isn't quite true as Ethanol does a great job of stripping Sharpie's right off (But that's what ethanol resistant markers are for).  So when you write in pencil, for the most part it's pretty permanent, I mean sure it smudges but I mean it's relatively permanent till you take an eraser to it.  So I was writing along that night and was already thinking hey it's not writing great, but hey it's a new thing maybe it'll get better as time goes.  It's about this time that my brother shouts from downstairs that this pencil is erasable just like they claimed, only problem is that it's erasable.....without and eraser.  And you're sitting there thinking well how is that possible.  Well when you rub normal pencil it smudges, rub this liquid pencil and it......disappeared.  Now I know they say that it's permanent after 3 days but I mean you're inevitably going to be shuffling papers a little bit and having pencil that disappears is not good, at all. 

The last thing which is a deal, but not a deal breaker is that these pencils although amazingly cool and awesome are not cheap at all, they run something like 3 bucks each.  So I mean they're not cheap, but if they wrote as good as normal pens, and were actually permanent it wouldn't be that bad.  So until they figure those thing, it's back to gold old plain pens and pencils for me.... well plain ish.

~Cheers