Where It Isn't Supposed To Be

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I hinted at something a while ago (Volume 6 page 138), when I was discussing the sixth color of Eversharp Pacemaker pencils – an example in plastic normally found on the company’s “Varsity” line:

Hold my beer, I said in response to the challenge of finding a blue version of Eversharp’s Varsity plastic, teasing out a couple of later Eagle pencils:

There’s more to that story.  I’ve had a couple other examples of Eagle-made pencils in Varsity plastics.

The brown one is marked Trupoint on the clip – that’s a Sears store brand previously made by other manufacturers over the years, including Eclipse and Autopoint. The other is marked “Cascade”:

Here are the Cascade and Trupoint pencils shown alongside their Eversharp Varsity twins:

A search for newspaper advertisements turned up one in the Stillwater (Oklahoma) Gazette on September 15, 1939.  “Cascade” was another Rexall drug store brand, and the advertisement specifically refers to the “striped Pyralin” barrels:

Another advertisement for the Cascade, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on September 8, 1942, shows the Cascade in a more swirly plastic:

I’ve turned up three examples of the Cascade - one in Eversharp’s Varsity plastic, and one in that swirly plastic illustrated in 1942:

That swirly plastic matches the plastic found on most of the pencils I refer to as “Deco Eagles,” dripping with art deco style:

Then there are the more exotic Deco Eagles, in colors and patterns you don’t see very often. 

There’s examples in the “stars and moons” pattern in various incarnations, and at bottom, note that red Eversharp Varsity plastic.  

But you might have noticed that third Cascade, the one in the middle of the picture . . . seen that one anywhere before?

These are “circuit board” WASP Clipper pencils, made by Sheaffer.  Boy, that Cascade plastic is close . . . I recently found a “Deco Eagle” in the brown version of that plastic and – maybe because it was so far out of its element – I just noticed another brown Eagle lounging in that drawer made from the same stuff:

This Deco Eagle is the only one I’ve seen marked “Epenco” rather than “Eagle” on the clip, although the clip is the same:

I was excited to find one of these in circuit-board like plastic and posted it online - Mike Crawford saw it, and mentioned he had some Epenco pens along these lines, so we came to terms in order to add to the story I knew I would be writing here:

Eagle’s version of the WASP “circuit board” plastic isn’t exactly identical - instead of sharply defined squares, the plastic background on my Eagle-made versions have a wavy plastic background.  The colors are slightly different, and of course - the WASP doesn’t come in red:

Still, I’m sure it was no coincidence.  What was a coincidence was finding another pen in a random online auction – a brown one to match my Deco Eagle pencil: