Pilot Mogulair mechanical pencil
I think I lost my way a bit when I challenged myself to update this blog once a week. I intended to be sharing thoughts I was already having about my stationery, not churning out samey posts for every item in my collection. In order to hold to that principle, the blog will be going back to a relaxed schedule.
With that said, one item I have been wanting to chat about is the Pilot Mogulair mechanical pencil, which I have now been using for a year. Although I like mechanical pencils in theory, I have a history of vague dissatisfaction with them; in hindsight, I couldn’t stop associating them with those moments where I got over-excited, pressed too hard, and my train of thought got interrupted by a crunch of graphite and a black mark. But the Mogulair broke that trend.
Its big selling point is the ‘Active Suspension’ mechanism, which promises to prevent lead breakage. The lead holder is mounted on a spring (which is visible through the grip section, so you can see it moving when you press down). If you press too hard on the lead, it’ll retract into the pen, and when you lift off it’ll return to its original position. Does it work? Personally, I’m as rough with this pencil as I would be with a ballpoint and the lead has never snapped on me. Another pleasant side effect of being mounted on a spring is the cushioning: no matter how hard you press on the lead, beyond a certain point its pressure on the paper will be roughly constant. I suspect it puts down a more consistent line on the page as a result.
Can you see the difference in the spring?
This is a pencil marketed to reduce one of life’s little anxieties, and boy has it worked on me. It’s always on my desk, ready for me to jot things down without worrying about uncapping it, holding it correctly, or avoiding ink stains. Recently, I drafted 20 pages of fiction with it (I’m convinced graphite makes me more creative), took notes during nerve-wracking interviews, and wrestled vague feelings of busyness into actionable bullet points. It yields to my excitements and frustrations in just the same way.
Ah yes, the quirky Instagram-filtered first draft… mirrored so you won’t be distracted by unedited prose.
It all sounds very emotional and personifying, doesn’t it? But that’s half the fun for me, building up emotional attachments and narratives around everyday tools. When I bought this pencil a year ago, it was a mistake - I mixed it up with the trendy Uni Kuru Toga I had been wanting to try. Then, it became the pencil I used when studying from my first Chinese textbook, because I wanted to be able to erase my wonky writing. A year later, it’s become my desk jotter and destress tool. I wonder what will have been added to its story in another year?
Anyway, the other half of the fun is the pencil itself, so let’s get into details. Aside from the anti-breakage mechanism it’s not too different from a standard mechanical pencil. Mine has 0.5 lead, but there’s a 0.3 option. It has a click mechanism for advancing the lead, and the button has a small and decent eraser visible inside. The lead can also be advanced by shaking the pencil (I would suggest this as another way the pencil can contribute to stress relief, but two or three shakes is all you ever need). The weight for the shaker mechanism clicks and clacks when you tip the pencil back, which I find annoying. It is quite heavy at 16g, and front-weighted.
Those dots on the window seem like they should be measuring something inside, but they’re purely aesthetic.
The body is plastic with a slightly pearlescent design printed on it. The design includes a window which allows you to see the shaker weight move (not very interesting). The clear grip section with the spring looks great, but it’s also slippery and completely straight, so it’s not super comfortable. A small detail I like is that the spring visual is repeated in two other places: in the clear threads between the section and body, and at the back end, where a second spring - the one for the click advance mechanism - is just about visible. I saw quite a variety of designs when I looked online, from pixellated camo to Rilakkuma, but I like my one’s futuristic aesthetic and blue-green colour scheme.
Would I buy this particular mechanical pencil again? No, I’d look for a lighter one with a more comfortable grip. But will I ever buy a mechanical pencil without an anti-lead-breaking mechanism again? No way!