Dear twelve-year-old Andrea,
It’s me, your fifty-year-old self. Look what I found back in our hometown recently: our favourite colour pencils from Colleen Pencil Co. Ltd, Japan!
This was the last of the many sets you’d continuously asked dad to buy each time it ran out. I know I had this one back in Primary 6 because after, by secondary school, you no longer use colour pencils for art lessons.
You wrote our name and school name on its backing with a blue ballpoint pen. Your penmanship was still very round then. However, I don’t recall that odd comic panel sticker on the other side of the backing that spoke about avenging “mask comrades”. Where did you get it from again?
The box encasing the colour pencils were worn down because you always shoved it into your school bag without much care. Dented on all sides, with the centre window a little peeled off.
This set of twelve pencils are double-sided with twenty-four colours in total. It’s clear I used some colours more than the others. Like red, pale orange and black were sharpened down to its very edge where the other colour meets; while gold, magenta, reddish brown, carmine and blue green are still capable of a few more adventures on paper.
You sharpened them last with our green sharpener – the manual desktop one with the hand crank that was gifted by someone one Christmas. That bulky sharpener was long gone, given away, at some point. But its teeth marks – from the metal grip to hold the pencil in place while sharpening – are still visible and sunken on the surface of the wood-cased pencils like bite marks from an anxious child.
Meanwhile, these double-sided pencils remained super sharp till today.
It was 1988. You used to make your own paper dolls at that age because store-bought ones were in a style not to your liking. Paper dolls sets were popular in those days. They were mainly anime girls with over-the-top princess dresses. You, however, wanted a paper doll with paper versions of clothes you envisioned wearing as an adult in real life. So you designed plenty, but never kept a single paper cut-out figure and clothing to prove its existence today. I would have loved to see them again.
These pencils had coloured many paper fashions, aside from art homework from school. You had so much fun creating with every colour in this box. It was a box of joy and possibilities – a time when you were so naive about the world, and your school teachers had often remarked you as “quiet and mild-mannered” in your report card.
And oh yes, “need to participate more in class”. That too.
You had big dreams to be a fashion designer then. A few years later, you discovered and then whole-heartedly decided you hated sewing, and so ended that career aspiration.
At that age you also started writing. You were an avid reader, so it was a natural progression to lean towards an ambition as a writer. I’m happy to report that you did became a published author for a brief period in your forties.
Your world was still within a small bubble then. Just family, the neighbourhood, school, and whatever in your immediate environment. This was way before access to this thing called the internet, and long before that other thing called social media.
Life was simpler then, though not as simple as our parents’ generation and the ones before that. Still, it has its charm. Like this Colleen colour pencils, now looking like a relic. “Vintage”, I suppose, as twelve-year-olds today would call it.
You had set your colour pencils aside for a long time. Somehow felt too precious to simply throw them away. So they lived quietly, almost forgotten, among your piles of possessions that you accumulated for records, sentiment, or god-knows-why until I eventually put most of them in the trash.
Yeah, the family moved out of our childhood home ten years ago. 2016. I went through all our things then: what to throw, what to donate, what to keep. I found this colour pencil set in one of our old bags. I believe it was the Care Bears tote bag that no one in the family seemed to remember who had given to you in childhood.
I took a few pencils to colour on paper. Just to check if they still “work”, if the colours remained true. They did and still do.
I remembered how you cherished these colour pencils at twelve and the years before that. It was like the best treasure you discovered at the stationery shop. Admittedly what caught your eye was really the cartoon pirate cat and mouse on it, and that the pencils were double-sided. None of the technical details, or that it was made in Japan by one of the “big three Japanese pencil manufacturers”, that a twelve-year-old from a small quiet city on Borneo island would have taken note of in her consideration.
Because of you, I continue to keep this colour pencil set to this day. Because it was important to you – to me – in this lifetime. I had journeyed far in life, reaching to where I am today, starting a fresh venture into writing and drawing at fifty. This set of colour pencils held more significance now than I ever thought it would.
The pencils were barely ever used since the last time you used them, thirty-eight years ago. Once every few years, I’ll come across them again, while rummaging through my belongings in search of other things. Each encounter brought back memories and smiles. In a way, I returned to you, my twelve-year-old self, who continues to remind me to play and be free with my creativity.
This is why the colour pencils stay.
Late last year, I thought of buying a new set to use so the old set can stay as is. I went looking for it, wondering if the brand still exists as I didn’t recall seeing it in local stationery shops for a long while.
After some searches online, I was happy to see the brand exists, but to my surprise, it is no longer Japanese owned. It is now made in Thailand with “Japan technology”.
Colleen Pencil Co. Ltd was a major pencil manufacturer in Japan founded in 1916. They were known for high quality colour and graphite pencils. Based on my past experience, Colleen colour pencils were easy to colour on paper. Like they glide smoothly, and its colours tend to be vibrant and blendable.
I was saddened that the company was liquidated in 1997.
However, the brand lives on through its current manufacturer, Colleen Pencil (Thailand) Co. Ltd., established in 1989. From what I’ve read, the Thailand-made pencils continue its original legacy maintaining the same design and technology. Even the packaging looks identical.
I have yet to get my hands on a similar set, Thailand-made version, for comparison. There are mixed reviews online, mainly about the difference in quality, like it’s not what its used to be. But I would still like to give them a try. Maybe one day.
The 1988 colour pencil set in 2026. After the Lunar New Year, I brought them along to my home in Kuala Lumpur. Twelve-year-old you would approve, I believe.
It now sits among my stationery and art supplies. Every time I glance at the colourful and tattered box, I can feel both you and I smiled at once – just separated by time.
The pencils are still usable, but I don’t think I would use them much now. They are precious. So precious.
This old set continues to serve as a physical reminder to me for the journey ahead in this new phase of my life in my fifties and beyond.
I like to think that these pencils has its own magic. You believed in them at twelve. Perhaps that was the reason they continue to be in our possession over the years.
You didn’t know that I, your future self, would grow into someone who doesn’t hold much nostalgia in material things, and could easily let them go out of practicality, if I want to. But you trusted me to remember you when it comes to these set of colour pencils. I’m glad you did.
Life had evolved much. At twelve, you would not had fathomed our future: what I went through, experienced, seen, and overcame. Between twelve and fifty were many years of feeling lost, insecure, and inadequate. How that journey had changed me by the time I reached fifty.
You had imagined plenty of amazing wishes and goals for my future. They didn’t really come true. Some did, but not in the ways you expected.
Know that despite the diversion, the path still somehow led me back to you. Also know that regardless where life had taken us, you did well. You did your very best. You were not truly lost. You just took awhile to find your footing in life. You are worthy of all the good that came to you.
And these 1988 Colleen colour pencils… they remain the one consistent presence between you and me that still make me feel hopeful and excited to create for my future today.
We are going to be OK. Trust us.
With love,
Fifty-year-old Andrea
P/S: I may likely use these colour pencils a little in some upcoming drawings. Like putting some magic here and there. You like that idea, right? I thought so.
Share Andrealism: Open Notes & Long Conversations
Andrealism holds essays on lived experiences, and making things. It also features my art and photography.
Thank you for reading and for your company.
~ Andrea
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