Month: October 2021

Posted in P200 Family, Pentel

Loft Pastel Limited Edition Pencils

Posted on by nimroddfw

I am not sure exactly when Loft Stores, in Japan, released the new Pastel pencils, but it was probably in the first quarter of 2021. What is interesting about this set of pencils is that 2 of the 5 are not new pencils, but carried over from their previous P200 for Boys & Girls set from 2019. The Baby Pink (P205BG-P2LF) and Serenity Blue (P205BG-SLF) join with 3 new colors to make up the Loft Pastel (as opposed to the Floral Pastels out of Europe, which will be the subject of a later post). The other three pencils in the Boys & Girls series have been discontinued by Loft.

Unlike the Brazilian P200 for Boys & Girls, which says “P200 Boys & Girls 0.5mm Pentel P205”, the text on the Loft Boys & Girls set is easy to adapt to a new series, as it does not say the series name on it.

These pencils are all molded with plastic in the appropriate color.

P205BG-P2LF Baby Pink

As indicated by the “BG” in the part number, this (and the next pencil) is one of the two pencils originally released in the Boys & Girls set. I am assuming that since it was a light color that is why it was chosen.
Barcode: 4902506367877

P205BG-SLF Serenity Blue

Again, this is the other pencil carried over from the Boys & Girls set.
Barcode: 4902506367884

P205-DLF Emerald Green

This is one of the three new colors for the pastel series. The only issue I have with this one, is the choice of the font color. The yellow text is hard to read.
Barcode: 4902506389541

P205-GLF Pale Yellow

Second of the new colors, this is a nice choice.
Barcode: 4902506389558

P205-VLF Violet

Last of the new colors, this is probably my favorite of the Pastel set.
Barcode: 4902506389565

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As I said at the top of this post, another set of Pastel pencils were released in Europe this year. This will be a subject of my next post, but here is a side-by-side comparison of the two sets.

European Floral/Pastels at top, Loft Pastels at bottom

As you may notice, the Loft pencils are shinier than the European pastels at the top. I will get into that in the next post.

Posted in P200, Pentel

Pentel P205 – Since 1970 (Take 2)

Posted on by nimroddfw

Back in March, I had received the silver pencil above from CultPens in the UK. At that time, I knew there was a gold version, but I could not find where I could order one from, so I went ahead and posted about that pencil. I have deleted that post and am replacing it with this one, that now has the P205-1X Gold.

As I said above, I received this pencil from Cultpens. On the site it was marked as being a 50th Anniversary of Pentel UK pencil, but I have not been able to find when Pentel UK opened.

I have also seen this type of text on pencils before. Before the recent trend to going back to the big number 5 on the cap, the Pentel Kerry, for several years, said “Since 1971”. So, seeing this does not surprise me.

But, upon receiving these in and entering them in my database, I see that these do not appear to be registered out of Europe, but actually, out of the United States (it has a standard 12-digit UPC barcode). In my original post about barcodes https://nimrodd.net/2018/01/01/barcodes/, at that time, this company prefix was not registered to Pentel, but it is now registered to Pentel in Japan. I am not sure why this pencil has that barcode, and we have not seen it here in the US yet, but I am going to try to see if I can find out any information from Pentel of America at some point.

P205-1Z Silver

This appears to be the same color as the currently available P205MZX (https://nimrodd.net/2017/06/19/p205-metallics/), but instead of the standard text “0.5mm Pentel P205”, it now reads “Pentel P205 since 1970”.
Barcode: 884851054876

P205-1X Gold

This pencil is the same color as the 2015 Gold pencil released for the 50th Anniversary of Pentel of America (see same post as above). That one did not say anything special referring to the Anniversary, just came in a special package.
Barcode: 884851054869

Pentel XP205 Since 1970 Retail Packages

XP205-1X XP205-1Z

When I first saw an official advertisement for these pencils, it was on Pentel Taiwan’s website, announcing these on 5/25/2021.

At the bottom, I saw a couple of barcodes that I expected to find on these pencils, but as I said above they came with US barcodes. Once I received the above retail packages, I realized that the barcodes were for these packages. I should have been clued in by the “X” in front of the part numbers (XP205-1X & XP205-1Z), as the Asian packaging has used this format before on the P209 Kirari pencils.
Barcodes:
XP205-1X 4711577064437
XP205-1Z 4711577064444