The Dixon Ticonderoga
I used the World's BEST PENCIL™ to write some stuff down
| Maker | Dixon |
| Model | Ticonderoga |
| Hardness | 2 |
| Features | |
| Price I paid | $?.?? |
I don't know how it is in the rest of the world, but in my neck of the woods if you go to (almost) any store looking for a pencil, you're going to find two options, Dixon Ticonderoga (sometimes in lots of shapes and colors) and a house-branded pencil.
I think I can see why. Ticonderoga is a fun word to say and its yellow and green colorscheme is a good trigger for parents to remember that they used Ticonderogas when they were in school. They also come in packaging that lets you know that the Ticonderoga is The World's BEST PENCIL™. And that's true, in the same sense as I can go to the store and buy a coffee mug that says "World's Best Boss" even though I don't drink coffee and don't have any subordinates.
The most remarkable thing about the standard Ticonderoga is just how average it is. Everything about it is perfectly adequate and not a bit more. I took some notes on standard spiral notebook paper and in a fancy Black N' Red notebook and it did what it was supposed to do, make marks on paper. The eraser lifted most of the graphite when asked (and I asked it to a lot).
When I sharpened it, I used a handheld sharpener and it was surprisingly smooth. The shavings almost don't feel like wood, they feel like a firm crayon or something. This batch of pencils is over 20 years old (I picked them out of my college backpack), so who knows what it's made of (someone probably knows, but I'm not going to go check right now).
I admit that I fell for the marketing of printing The World's BEST PENCIL™ right on the box.I thought there might be some independent pencil ranking organization that decided these things, but after reading 500 Great Doctor Jokes, I realized you can just print pretty much whatever you want on these things.
The Ticonderoga is a perfectly fine pencil for writing. I don't think I'd ever tell anyone not to get one, and I wouldn't turn one down if it was handed to me1. But I also wouldn't go out of my way to get one, either. I suppose if I was in a position to distribute pencils (say, if I was a school teacher), I might keep a box handy, and there will probably always be a few in my pencil box. But their ubiquity means that no matter where I am I can get my hands on one pretty quickly if I somehow find myself needing to use a pencil right now, and there's something to be said for that.
Footnotes:
I'm no pencil snob, I'll use pretty much anything I can get my hands on