Staedtler wopex I plastic pencil

The company

We’ve covered Staedtler before. Classic German pencil company formed in 1835. Very common in Europe and the UK. In the UK the most common pencils you will find (Noris and Tradition) are from Staedtler.

The pencil itself

Not a pencil you can miss in a hurry. This is bright yellow! And, this is one of the pencils from the ‘plastic wood’ range - that is, it is made from a plasticised mixture of wood product. I’ve just tried two other variants of these. Not normally my favourite pencils. But, each of them seems a little different. The previous black one for instance almost had a foamy body, whereas this one is definitely very solid. This is a pretty solid and heavy pencil.

The pencil is pretty much, well, yellow! It has the standard name and type items embossed on one side:

and on the reverse side we have the barcode etc.:

If we look at the tip, we can see that the main body is a pretty uniform dense plastic type material, and the wrapping (I’m hesitent to call it the paint), is quite thick and looks like it might be a couple of different colours:

Something I have no tried, but have seen on some websites, is that you can ‘peel’ the outer cover off, which leaves you with a cream pencil that looks somewhat more like a plain wooden pencil.

How does it write

Well, it’s not terrible, but like the rest of the plastic pencil family, it is a bit ‘plasticky’, and I find the lead a bit waxy and sticky when in use. It’s a bit light on the mark as well. As with the other plastic pencils, it also tends to draw itself into the rotary pencil sharpener and never ‘stops’ when it is sharp.

Sourcing

I was having trouble finding these in Yellow, whereas other Wopex were available, and then I found them in a pack with a sharpener and eraser on Amazon. About £7 for 5 pencils, so, not that cheap.

Wopex and related other plastic pencils are pretty commonly available, but if you are looking for a specific model or colour then you may face more of a challenge.