Maker	Unknown
Model	Unknown
Hardness	Unknown, probably 2
Features	Color-changing paint
Price I paid	$0

When I was a kid, you could hardly go anywhere or do anything without getting some free pencils as part of the deal. Go to a book show at school? Here are some pencils. Accompany someone to the bank? "Here, kid, have a pencil!" go trick-or-treating on Halloween? You're coming home with a few pencils in your bag¹. When I visited my grandparents' house, they had a huge jar with nubs of pencils from companies that went out business before I was born, pencils with electoral candidates on them, and so on. It was an almost endless variety of artifacts that captured a slice of life in a time and place.

Sure the pencils didn't last forever, especially if they're well-used, and my grandparents used pencils practically every single day until they couldn't any more. Once they got worn down too far to see them below the lip of the jar they got rotated out and replaced with something else. I don't remember my grandparents ever buying pencils (even though they probably did on days I wasn't visiting). They accumulated so many as a consequence of everyday life that the very thought of buying a pencil to me seems like a pointless exercise.

But that was a long time ago and pencils are kind of out of fashion now as a promitional tool, as far as I can tell. Kids still need them for school as far as my limited research of my local school system goes, but I seldom see anyone else use them in any other context², and the change was so gradual that I didn't realize that I hadn't gotten a pencil as a promtional thing in well over two decades.

Until I went to a community friends and family celebration.

One of the local businesses in the town where I live had an event for 'friends and family' of their employees. It was a pretty big deal with food trucks, live entertainment, a petting zoo, and lots of propaganda about how amazing the employer is³. Off in the distance was the local fire department, who had a booth just about as far away from the rest of the proceedings as they could get.

I visited them and chatted them up for a little bit. They were there to promote fire safety (obviously) and gave me some goodies to stuff into my swag bag. I thanked them and then went on my way, enjoying the rest of the attractions (i.e. eating too many fried things) and completely forgetting about the encounter.

A few weeks later, I sorted through the swag. Most of the stuff was unremarkable: pens that didn't actually write, hand sanitizer that smelled funny, bubble wands without enough solution to actually use, that kind of thing. The fire prevention stuff was okay. I remember it having things like a coloring book and some supplies you could use to make a fire escape plan. I ended up donating all that to a thrift store in the hopes that some kid might get some use out of it, but I did keep the pencil.

At first, I didn't notice anything unusual about it. It's just a red, round pencil with some fire prevention information on it. I figured I could put it in my own pencil jar if I ever decide to start one. But it wasn't until a year or so later that I noticed something different about it.

I picked up the pencil to do something with it and I noticed that the pencil wasn't actually red. It was more of a yellowy orange instead. In fact, every place where my fingers touched it, the paint would get just a little more yellow (up to a point). What I didn't realize is that this pencil had some kind of heat-activated color-changing paint on it, and once it had warmed up in my hands a little bit, the more it looked like flames or the embers of a fire.

It's such a small thing and it's so simple of a concept that I was impressed. I played with it for several minutes until the whole thing had changed color and I had to let it cool off.

But I can't tell you how it writes, and I can't tell you how it erases. I haven't been able to bring myself to sharpen and use it. It's not for sentimentality or anything. Pencils are made to be used, after all. It's because it's the only thermochromic pencil that I've got, and I didn't want to shave off the paint and throw it in the trash just to scribble a few lines with this thing. It's too fun to play with as-is.

And I have a lot more pencils to use before I need to sharpen this one anyway.

This article was posted on 7 Sep 2026 and I haven't looked at it since.

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