I think I first came across the eraser holder first, around 2018? while searching for a similar one made by LION, right after I’d tried and liked the UCHIDA Pro Eraser series. I liked the reverse taper on the body and the axially aligned pinstriped grooves on the grip, which fan out to the milling on the metal cone.
This style of grip would become a sub-genre in my own collection, filled by innumerable Faber-Castell variants. It was much later when I found an auction listing that included the box for these eraser holders and thus learned its name: “EH-KN” or "ノック消ゴム” (Knock Keshigomu / Knock Eraser).
Then I chanced on the mechanical pencil that wore the same style of grip and clip. It was also nameless for a long time, until coming across an X post with the following:
Thereafter, I managed to track down a turquoise and a maroon version over the course of several years of patient searching. After all, unless a box was included, most sellers wouldn’t know what to call it except ‘vintage Tombow sharp pencil’.
A bit of sleuthing turned up a mention of the H300KS on page 92 of the PDF edition of Tombow’s ‘Flight to 100’ commemorative book, stating that this ‘reverse tapered sharp pencil’ was produced in 1967.
Tombow’s erasers really are one of the core pillars of the brand. They may not have quite the same brand recognition as 3M, but when I think of Tombow, their erasers are still one of the first things that come to mind.
No matter how many beautifully designed mechanical pencil models they produce, they still can’t really escape the business they originally built their brand around.
The strange thing is that the lettering on the clips are different on the turquoise and maroon pencils, even though they both have the same golden ‘5’. There’s a part of me that thinks this is simply due to less stringent brand standards back then. It could be as simple as having the clips made by more than one supplier working to spec, and then someone at Tombow say, “Close enough” and sign off on thousands of those clips.
Without anything definitive, I think that’s a fair theory to make. Or there were transitional periods where they had leftover stock with or without the golden ‘5,’ whichever came first, and changed suppliers for the clips half-way through.
Mmm… I see that the box — or rather the listing — came with some spare erasers; @drifand could you please take some measurements and report about the exact diameter of the eraser refill? I already tried with many candidates, with no success. The original eraser refill I got with my specimen seems next to impossible to replace with modern alternatives (all the available inventory contains either too slim, or too girth-y models to fit the yaws of the Tombow), but also proved perfect to fill the pipe in an equally vintage Faber-Castell TR-7095 — another piece of history in the eraser world — so if I get the correct size, I will be able to “"kill two birds with a stone” (metaphorically, of course).
Thank you in advance!
Also, I have not commented on the MP’s themselves because many have already stated how cool they are. I am not so picky about the colour: even the imprint-free black version is extra-amazing, and I am afraid it will be very hard to get one without actual access to the Asian market.
