I recently found out that the World’s first Piston pencils (SP-5, SP-10, SP-15, SP-20 and SP-30) were released in 1981. Then, in the early 2000s, Mitsubishi Pencil released the “Returns” with the same type of lead retraction mechanism.
Last week, @First_Sail Domingo brought it to my attention that the Autopoint “Feedback” has the same type of mechanism.
Two questions:
Does anyone know when the “Feedback” was sold?
Are you aware of other pencils with this feature? @drifand mentioned in a post about a Korean model but I can’t seem to find the name, etc.
This is a bit off-topic, but your mention of the Mitsubishi Returns helped illuminate something I’ve been thinking about for the past 3 years.
I don’t really consider pencils that look like the Returns to be part of the real history of MPs.
Obviously, they’re MPs, so that take is a bit absurd. However, everything about the craftsmanship and final product is different once you hit the all-plastic-everything era.
I feel the same way about vintage Transformers. The stuff they released in 1988 had almost zero resemblance to the stuff they put out in 1985.
The OG Transformers were heavy and included metal parts and really tough resin that would surely break under certain types of stress.
The Transformers from 1988 were made entirely of a softer resin that was far less prone to breakage. These “newer” pieces don’t move as intricately as the OG ones, and their articulation seems cheap by comparison.
This more or less mirrors how I feel about MPs—the vintage stuff up through about 1995 is “real,” and most of what came after is “fake” (with the exception of a few models that remained in production through the 2000s and even the 2010s).
I grant that it’s somewhat of an arbitrary take, but for me, the lines are quite clear.
No idea about production periods. I got them roughly within 6 months of those posts. It was from browsing a Korean e-shop. I think it was called nippen.kr
Hey, I get it completely. I did end up with a Uni Return and it’s everything you would expect in a budget pencil from the early 2000s. So far, the grip is fine and seems to have held up well over the years. TBH what drew me to collecting mechanical pencils in the first place were the engineering features and oddities such as this. Well, that and the fact that I have Super OCD (like Pokémon, have to collect them all). lol
That’s ME, and I know it.
That is why I have limited myself to collecting only Pentel pencils. I know if I went after other brands such as Newman or Uchida, I would be spending a lot more money than I am now. As it is, I am now at the point of getting the high dollar pencils, as (almost) all of the low hanging fruit has been picked.
