Boy, I had the weirdest thought out of the blue yesterday, and it was about my grade school pencil case.
Do kids still use pencil cases? What grade do you stop using pencil cases? I think maybe for me we weren’t allowed to carry backpacks in school until 6th grade, and that’s when we started using the pockets on our backpacks to carry pencils.
The one I was thinking about was sort of small but its sides were filled with blue “water” and had some flat plastic fish inside that were “floating” in the water. No doubt I spent a lot of time moving those fish around instead of paying attention! I think I got it during the summer at a flea market and used it for a few years until the plastic zipper broke.
I think I also had a metal pencil box at one time, but I don’t recall what was on it.
Along the same lines, I remember Trapper Keepers, too. Another must-have for those without backpacks. I don’t remember any special designs on mine but I do remember coveting other kids’ cool Trappers. Mine were quite bland. But they were soooo cool to have!
So, tell me about your cool pencil cases and Trapper Keepers!
I don’t remember having a pencil case, but I do remember my mother used to buy me a whole box full of Ticonderoga #2 pencils at the beginning of the school year and that was SO COOL.
I had lots of Trapper Keepers. Blue, mostly. I don’t remember any special design on them. Back in those days, we were lucky to get blue! We didn’t have any stinkin’ designs on our Trapper Keepers. And I walked uphill to school both ways with no shoes.
I do remember designs on lunch boxes. I had a Jonathan Livingston Seagull lunch box. Yes, I was a nerd.
Ooh, Ticonderoga pencils! They were special because only the teacher had them. Or you could buy them at the school store (which my friend and I ran at lunchtime). But my mom supplied me with plenty of no-name pencils, so I rarely got my hands on a Big T.
I remember one pencil box in particular. It had a sliding top with a multiplication table on it (with a slide-rule-type slider-thing on it to find the answer) and a pencil sharpener on one end. I was the “smart kid” in the class (eventually skipped a grade) and I remember being accused of cheating by using that pencil box during math tests. :rolleyes: Yeah, because I also had X-ray eyes that could see through my desktop to the inside, where my magic pencil box was stashed.
My Trapper Keeper had dolphins all over it. I think I had one of those clear pastic thingies that used to go inside to keep my pens. I had a few pencils for algebra, but I loved me a good pen - I still do. It was a revelation when the Pilot pens came out. They were oh, so much better than standard bic crystals.
I had a green Trapper Keeper with the white vinyl interior. It kept the new car look for about a week I remember, then started falling apart. I had a TK knockoff I liked with a cool photo of lightning striking a city.
I also had tons of STAR WARS folders that I bought around '79 or so- it was between the movies so they were being sold for about a nickel each on clearance. Of course at the time we had no idea to keep everything STAR WARS mint so they were long gone within days.
I also had some HOGAN’S HEROES spiral bound notebooks. This was years and years after the show (which I don’t even remember from first run) had been cancelled and they were for sale in what was basically a junk shop still in new condition for a few cents each. I remember that I used the ones of Hogan, Robert (Clary) and Carter (Larry Hovis) to take notes but kept the ones of Klink and Schulz free for a long time since they were my favorite characters. God knows whatever happened to them.
I had a mate who had these cool Japanese pencil cases. They had a padded exterior and magnetic clasps and looked cool as shit. Us proles had those cheap blue fuckers. I think I had a Peanuts label on mine, though.
I used to love Husky pencils. And Sta-Sharp pencils… we used to have a school store and I would beg my mom for 15 cents for a Sta-Sharp that would ultimately fail to sta sharp, and end up in the garbage.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a box of 120 crayons. This box doesn’t open the standard way, instead, it’s mostly like a cigar box, except that it has a cardboard flap that slides in and out at the end, to sort of make a lock on the box. That doesn’t describe it very well, but it’s a nice sturdy box. It’s full of awesome.
OOoh, I can’t WAIT to start buying coloring stuff for my niece. When do kids start coloring? She’ll be born in September. Is Christmas too early?
Check out this Trapper Keeper Gallery on eBaum’s World. I remember a lot of those “Designer Series” ones - the ones that look totally early 90’s. I think I had that stupid black and red one (picture 20).
Bwahaha I was better than you. I had a nice engineering mechanical pencil My dad’s friend had given me when he found out I was into science. I kept track of that thing like it was the holy Grail from 1st to 5th grade.
I had the Trapper Keeper with the photo of the fluffy white kitten sitting in a field. This would have been the mid-80s, I think it was one of the first Trapper Keepers to have a picture (rather than just plain red or blue).
I remember two favorite spiral notebooks – the cover of one was the Muppet band (Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem) and the other was the cast of MAS*H.
From about 8th grade on, it was much more cool to have the kind of 3-ring binder that was covered in blue … canvas(?) that had kind of a denim look. When it was properly broken in, it would get frayed at the edges. You would draw the logos of bands on the cover with ballpoint pen.
Trapper Keepers were for the kids of rich parents. We had to make do with the significantly cheaper binders. Ma also bought about a case worth of spiral notebooks for all of us kids and you had better make them last or you were in trouble. Then you went to school and the teacher would tell you to have a specific color or something they didn’t specify and we would be pressed to get it, not that any stores had anything left by the first day of school. The folders with the color in covers were neat and done in the style of psychedelic art.
When Trapper Keepers first came out, we were not allowed to have them at school because the teachers thought they were too distracting. So, my mom bought me one to keep at home. It was light blue and had a tiger on it.
Then, when I was in 5th grade, we were allowed to have them, and all the super awesome Designer Series ones came out. EVERYONE had one, but I already had my tiger one, and it was still in good shape, so I had to use it. It was a hard life.
