THAT SHIT CRAY

More marker goodness courtesy of DIET HTK - a bunch of Crayola and Crayola looking markers.

WHITEBOARD MARKER - DAISO

I picked this up as a 3-pack from Daiso. Man, that place fell off. The one on Market Street and the one in Japantown had pretty much no markers. Last time I went to the one in Redwood, they had heaps and heaps of different ones. This is a good quality, well built marker. Nice solid plastic construction. Attractive GREY/BLACK text on gloss white background, with ORANGE pop accents. Bullet tip nib. Medium ink darkness. Makes nice smooth lines. Average marker, good price.

EBERHARD FABER 4000 WATERBASE

Nice simple silhouette. Minimal markings. DOA.  These are common low-cost markers that are generally of good-to-average quality. Peep more of their products here.

DIXON PERMANENT MARKER 

Cheap plastic construction, barrel bends in when pressed. Simple markings on label. Made in Mexico. Chisel tip, similar to Crayola. Really good ink quality though, makes solid nice dark lines. Surprisingly bad product from a quality company like Dixon.

EBERHARD FABER 4000 WATERBASE - SILVER 

Same specs as the one reviewed above, all markings appear in silver. Originally a chisel tip, nib has gone soft and bushy. DOA. Makes ghost lines at this point, will be good for drawing fill-ins.

COLOR GEAR ROSEART MARKER

I have a couple other markers from Roseart in a similar silhouette. This one introduces the ColorGear wordmark first. Lesser quality plastic construction. Conical nib. Makes slightly indigo-tinged dark ink lines. Roseart pretty much makes Crayola bootlegs. The quality isn’t that bad, and the price is a lot cheaper.

CRAYOLA WASHABLE

Classic Crayola silhouette. White barrel, wavy band markings on both ends. Features the curved Crayola wordmark. Washable. Conical nib, nice dark blue/black ink. 

CRAYOLA CHANGEABLES

Classic Crayola silhouette, but a bunch of gimmickry thrown in. This marker is supposed to make black lines, which I guess when written over with some other marker blender, turns the ink orange. Pretty cool design elements on the barrel. Star motif. Crayola wordmark still in the non-serif block format. Conical nib, ink is a bit on the brown side. It’s nice to have a bunch of different markers with different ink tones for drawing, and Crayola seems to have a range of product that has not-quite-black-black ink tones.

CRAYOLA OVERWRITERS

Classic Crayola silhouette, and still more gimmickry thrown in. I don’t even know what this marker is supposed to do. I tried to read the product description, but still don’t understand. Label has un-inspired OVERWRITERS wordmark, and other design elements that looked like they were made on MSPaint. Plastic construction. Seems a bit thin. Barrel bends in a bit when pressed. Conical nib. Makes nice smooth, dark black ink lines.

PRECIOUS METALS

The SF marker pick-ups keep coming. DIET - HTK really dug around to come up with these oldies.

CUDAHY PACKING CO

This marker was produced for the Cudahy Packing Co. by manufacturer unknown. Super solid metal construction. Screw cap. Triangle wedge felt nib. 

TEX RITE PRODUCTS - DETROIT

I’m not 100% sure, but I suspect this marker originated from this company. The clip alone on this marker is a streamlined work of art. Screw cap. Rounded felt nib. 

Both these markers are simple, well constructed items. I really appreciate this style of marker. Nice weight to them. Make a distinct sound when you unscrew the lid. Smells like old metal.  Not a lot of words to write about them. You kind of have to hold them in your hand and play with them a bit to get a feel for things yourself.

BIG, BAD AND HEAVY - DIET HTK

HUGE thanks to the homey DIET - HTK for scouring the Bay Area streets hi-and-low for the past year and stashing away a grip of black markers, comics, and related oddities for me. A digger of the first quality, super generous and always down to help a brother out. 

The next whole slew of marker updates in the weeks ahead are mostly from SF trip,filled with all the dope marker stuffs DIET found for me.

Peep bits o’ DIET…

FREIGHT VID

HTK

PIECE BY PIECE movie

JUNK DON’T STUNK

Got all these markers at a place in SF called Junk. Ferris tipped me off to the place at DIET’S art opening. Junk is pretty awesome. It’s a warehouse of recycled/donated surplus odds and ends. Marker digging at its finest. There were 5 marker bins of all sorts and I just went through all of them. I wish I found more markers that day, but still, a pretty good score. I think I got all these for like $2.

UNIVERSAL MARKER – Utilitarian marking pen for warehouse and packaging. Pretty simple construction. Nice thick nib, produces clean wide lines of nice thick ink.

CRAYOLA IQ – Chisel Tip. Leaves blue undertone that is typical with Crayola black markers. Nice gold finish lettering on black plastic exterior. Pretty classy.

ROSE ART – One says WASHABLE, the other says CLASSIC. The WASHABLE one is shorter, has a black end bit, and the ink has a bluish undertone. They both have the same conical nib which I am usually not a fan of, but these markers produce really nice lines.

EL MARKO – Although I am happy to have found this one in the marker bin, I would still love to own the older El Marko, as made by Flair. That one features the silhouette of the masked man that is known as El Marko on the label. It’s my Holy Grail at the moment and I would really appreciate it if anyone that had one would drop me a line so I can trade/buy it. VIVO EL MARKO !

MAGIC MARKER – Hmm. So this is the modern day version of a Magic Marker. It was dried out when I got it. Design wise it’s kind of plain and boring, which is kind of a shame since the original Magic Markermarkers had really good fonts and layout.

SKILCRAFT – Octagonal base. Don’t know the purpose of this design feature on markers. Maybe it just makes them stand up better. Pretty nice marker for something that looks so plain. Nice soft chisel tip nib makes really nice smooth lines and fades.

ENCORE – Another simple designed marker featuring limited labeling and branding. Nice soft chisel tip, medium weight ink with a brownish undertone. Smells strong of alcohol.

SPARCO – Simple construction and branding. Really solid everyday use marker. Chisel tip, makes clean sharp lines in a nice deep black tone.

UNIVERSAL – This one is pretty reliable. Simple markings. Bullet point nib makes smooth lines in a nice thick black.