In June 2021, Pentel France announced these pencils on their Instagram page. They called them coloris pastel or “color pastel”. I first encountered them on the CultPens.com website, where they called them by flower names. Another Swiss website also called them by their pastel colors.
These are the second set of Pastels released this year with the first by Loft Japan (Loft Pastel Limited Edition Pencils). Whatever name you apply to them, they are a beautiful addition to the collection.
As opposed to the Loft Pastels, which were molded in the colors, these pencils were molded in white plastic, then painted with a matt color. There are issues with the printing on these pencils, as I note below.
P205-97C Pastel Blue / Forget Me Not
This is a very nice color, with the text almost fading into the color.
You can see the issues on this closeup of the printed text.
Barcode: 3474372180016
P205-97D Pastel Green / Green Bud
This pencil has probably the worst issues on the text. If you look you can see it on the shot above.
Barcode: 3474372180023
P205-97F Pastel Orange / Nasturtium
This pencil (or the violet) has probably the cleanest text, but there are still some very minor issues with it.
Barcode: 3474372180030
P205-97G Pastel Yellow / Mimosa
Barcode: 3474372180047
P205-97P Pastel Pink / Magnolia
Barcode: 3474372180054
P205-97V Pastel Violet / Crocus
Barcode: 3474372180061
As you can see, all of these pencils have some issues with the printing. I purchased around 10 sets of these, and these are the cleanest examples of each that I kept for my collection. I have never seen anything like this on any P200 pencils before, other than on older ones that have been scuffed up.
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As I said at the top of this post, another set of Pastel pencils were released in Japan this year. The P205 Loft Pastels were the subject of a previous post, but here is a side-by-side comparison of the two sets.
As you may notice, the Loft pencils are shinier than the European pastels at the top, since they were molded in the colors, rather than painted.
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Bonus Time – Misprints
If you look at 99.9% of Pentel P200 pencils, the text is always printed in the same spot on the pencil. Looking at the tip, with the word “Pentel” in the cutout at the 12:00 position, the printing is 2-3:00 position, where the sides are smoothed together.
As far as I can remember, I have only ever had 2 pencils with misprints. This does not count pencils that have had all or part of the text rubbed off.
This P205-97V is printed in the correct position, but in an arc. This is one of the pencils I purchased in the sets I posted about above.
The P305S pencils had a larger print zone than normal, but still, this one rotated to print in the 3-4:00 position.
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Yes, this should have been posted earlier, but newer pencils kept pushing this back, so it was delayed from following the other Pastel set.
Photo from collection of Valter dos Santos Junior of Brazil
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