#PenSwag

I have very bad memories of erasable pens.  In third grade when we learned to write cursive I was not allowed to use a real pen because my handwriting was so bad.  Instead of a beautiful liquid ink or regular gel pen I was forced to use erasable gel pens.  I believe the brand I used back then were Papermate's but I'm not positive, all I know is that they were awful.  The pens clumped, didn't erase properly, and were all around displeasing to use. Now I see these Pilot FriXon's and all of my bad childhood memories come flooding back.


Erasable gel pens are, to my knowledge, mostly used for beginning writers learning their letters and what not.  Right off the bat you can tell that the Pilot FriXon is designed for young boys, and 25 year old guys wearing ED HARDY tee shirts.  The barrell is covered in what looks like a tribal tattoo from the aforementioned 25 year old's bicep.  Also, don't forget that the x in FriXon is capitalized, for XTREME COOL FACTOR!!!!.  I find both of these design elements cheesy and unnecessary.  I'm not going to lie I felt like an idiot in Walgreen's when I was buying these.  I was embarrassed to be associated with these poorly designed pens.  I told the cashier they were for my younger brother.  She didn't care, and I don't have a younger brother. 


The writing is not as bad as I remembered.  There is no clumping of the ink around the point of the pen. However, slightly better than awful is still bad.  The ink is barely dark enough to be called black, and is more like a watery grey color.  There is a ton of white space in the lines.  The pen does erase pretty well.  I was quite happy to erase the horrible grey ink off my paper.  The eraser is a bit of a conundrum to me.  It is placed on the back of the pen, not the cap.  So if you want to erase something you can't have the cap posted on the back of the pen.  Although before I knew this I tried using the cap and it worked surprisingly well at erasing.


 Obviously I am pretty biased towards erasable pens, but they really are crappy. Overall this pen is an improvement on the erasable pens I remember from my grade school days.  However, I can't say that I will ever use these pens again.  I would rather use a pencil if I need to erase something.

3 out of 10 mummies