I think we can all agree that vintage Pentel is much better documented than Pilot? At one time I’d thought that the P1135 万年Cil / ‘Fountain-cil’ was the predecessor of the Kerry, famously wearing the legend ’Since 1971’ on its cap. Kind of like an in-between model after the more primitive Pel and after the refinement of the Kerry.
Well, eventually catalog scans revealed the truth: the Pel hailed from 1970, and despite its more austere appearance, the P1135 hails from 1979. At the top of this line was the Gucci-fied P2135 in black and gold.
And as for Pilot? I think no one knew what to call their version of the Kerry. Maybe ‘Pilot Capped Style’ / パイロット キャップ式. Turns out we weren’t too far off!
Based on scans of the 1982 catalog, Pilot’s thicker bodied ‘clone’ of the P1135 is called the ‘Young Cap’ / ヤング・キャップ HCP-100S, while their Gucci equivalent was the ‘Cap Tomo’ / キャップ・トモ HCP-200R-B. Now, ‘Tomo’ is written in Katakana, so the exact meaning is not clear. If you try typing ‘to-mo’ in Hiragana to see which Kanji corresponds, two possibilities emerge: 友 / ‘friend’ or 共 / ‘company’.
Since ‘black and gold’ doesn’t really look like ‘friendly outfit’, I’d venture to say ‘Cap Tomo’ means ‘Business’ or ‘Executive Cap’.
Lastly, I feel a kind of whimsical need for there to exist a white and a green version of the Pilot Young Cap, if not a brown as well… just to have a more perfect mirror of Pentel’s lineup. But of course, it was not to be.
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Lovely post! I have almost never seen the golden black cil on mercari. Must be rare. Eventually I wanted to make a post with variety of capped ones from many brands. Generally I am still thinking if to add the cils to the collection or not mainly because when you put the cap on the clicker, the small xtended click-helper pops out, which I thought was kind of an odd design choice. At the same time the cil has some banging color variations like brown, dark green and correct me if I am wrong there is even a white body cil isn’t there?
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Yes, the P1135 series includes a brown, green and white version. So far all of the ones I’ve acquired are the standard length, not the shorter P1135N.
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I believe the short P1135N only come in the pen & pencil set so they are the same size when capped.
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I have one of the PILOT capped pencils like the one you showed here and the cap is such a beautiful piece of work. I was disappointed in how PILOT decided to do the metal body version. It’s a very different, cheaper and smaller cap. I wish they’d used this one. I like Pentel’s approach with a body-matched color strip insert on the clip. Do you find the build quality of the cap equal to the PILOT version?
One thing that disappointed me with Pentel here is their choice for a plastic plunger cap, instead of a steel covered one.
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Is there any wobble on the cap for the Pilot when posted? My point of reference is the zoom 505, which has a fair bit of wobble when posted.
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I know the metal capped Pilot – it’s on the left page of the catalog scan, below the black/gold Cap Tomo. That one actually won a Good Design Award in 1979!
Design-wise, I think it was less of a Kerry and more of a competitor to the Pel Stainless. Regardless, Pilot seemed to prefer a less complicated approach to integrating the cap, forgoing the Kerry’s ‘pass-through’ button, which undoubtedly added to production cost. Surprisingly, it would be Mitsubishi that would best imitate the Kerry through its low cost P-Jack and high-end Pure Malt models.
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No obvious wobble. The cap’s inner section grips the pretty big knock button very securely, although without any perceptible ‘click’. Just plenty of friction. I agree with you on the Zoom 505sh: the cap is my least favorite part of the design. It has a sharp rim that irritates the web between my thumb and forefinger, and so I mostly use it unposted, and prefer the 0.9mm model with 2B lead.
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Executive cap 
And you have the nicest P2135 specimen I’ve seen
Great post!
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Interesting, I’ll definitely be on the look out for both of these! These are probably some of the nicest functional capped pencils I’ve seen. I’m curious why pentel didn’t stick with this design.
This definitely would’ve been a great time to be a pencil collector in Japan, Pilot has many great hits in this one year alone. The HH-80R drafter, volex, H-58x family, and 2020 are all either very classy, practical, or innovative. If only we could go back…
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Just for reference, here is a P1135, RK10 and P1135N (all Pentels).
The RK10 & P1135N came together in a PRSK10 set. They are the same size when capped, but very different sizes when posted.
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Thanks for these! That pen is probably rarer than any of the loose pencils!
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That’s a handsome group of pencils.
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