Helix Oxford Clash Pencils (5 pack) – Blue

The eraser to end all erasers!I never remembered being so entranced with school materials until I got these erasers and a pencil sharpener for my kids… Then I Remembered *that* feeling of standing in W.H. Smiths with my mum the weekend before the new school year starter. We’d pick a pencil case (although I tended to go back to my wooden one with a slidey top), and some mathsy things. Our school always wanted us to have a fountain pen, a soft and hard pencil, and an eraser. Back then most kids had “The Big Pink One”, this giant slab of rubber that was massively unweildy and had its name in giant black letters across the front. It was so large it would barely fit in pencil cases. Some of us just relied on the little rubber on the tip of the pencil, but I remember that my mum would tend to get a 2H pencil, a 2B pencil and a pair of erasers just like these.A 2H pencil, if you don’t know, is semi-hard. It’s good for maths and graphs, but not as good as the 2B for doing drawings and shading. But, just using the 2B/2H meant that they could be rubbed out neatly so long as you had a WHITE rubber. The Big Pink One always failed to clean up after itself. It’d leave a faint pinkness to the page, and it was so unwieldy that you couldn’t easily get to /just/ the bit you needed to erase. Similarly, the ones on the tops of the pencils were good, but got dirty, chewed, worn down, and soon you were scratching the page with the iron collar around the rubber tip.These white square erasers, however, were downright perfect. They have a nice clean corner (8 to choose from, I suppose), so you could pinpoint the bit to erase. Because they’re white, they leave no marks or residue, and because they have the card around them they’re not prone to being chewed, snapped or have grubby fingerprints on them.The short and long edges between the corners at the ends are great for slightly larger erasings, say a line graph or some ven-diagram filling-in that went wrong. And finally the nice flat rectangular end is perfect for really big jobs, like erasing whole pictures.Essentially, these are not just erasers, they’re a whole erasing toolkit, specifically designed to sit comfortably in the hand, remain functional, do their job and create the minimum of fuss.Let’s face it, when you make a mistake, you want to forget about it and move on, right? What’s the point of an eraser that forces you to go back and re-work the erasure over and over again? If you’re in an exam, neatness counts for marks, and having the ability to quickly rub out your errors, and get on with the right answer translates directly into better grades.As a parent thinking about your children’s grades, you need to ask yourself: “Is it better for my kids to have a classical, quality, stylishly designed eraser that gets them better grades, or should I get that sparkly pink unicorn that smears glitter all over their geography homework?”.I think we both know that we want our kids to do better at school. Just say “no” to the sparkly unicorn, and say “hello” to the ultimate in pencil-erasing technology. It’s not spangly, or futuristic, it’s timelessly classic, and when you use it you feel like a GOD. They say that we learn from our mistakes. Well, now you can learn from more mistakes in less time! Make as many mistakes as you like! Get your Ph.D in mistakes, trying all kinds of things while your stylish friend is still trying to get the black smears off a picture they drew of the atom because they stupidly put three electrons in an S-shell (come on, we’ve all done it, and we know better now!), or gracefully lower those cumulus clouds from their too-lofty location in the final Geography GCSE because we mis-read “strato-cumulus” as “stratus”!!Oh, what mistakes we’ve made in our lifetimes, and what things we’ve learned. If you don’t buy this eraser it’ll just be the first mistake you’ll make of many for the rest of your life. Buy this, and every mistake you make from now on will lead you inexorably towards higher-learning, enlightenment and joy.Seriously. These are excellent. They’re just right in every way. Get them.

Stationery must-havesI swear by these erasers. I have found that most cheap erasers such as the ones found on pencil ends will only smudge pencil marks or damage the paper. These Oxford plastic erasers, however, have been very reliable in removing pencil marks effectively without using much force.Most often, I use these erasers for changing appointments in my diary which I write in using fine tipped mechanical pencils. I have found them just as effective for removing mistakes on sketches (though perhaps a little TOO effective for smudging work). Their size, shape and texture also make them suitable to be cut to a point if needed.Overall, I would strongly recommend Oxford plastic erasers because they do the job and offer great value for money.

Compact but not great for exams!The Helix Oxford Clash 30cm Folding Ruler is an excellent product with many satisfactory qualities, however many unsatisfactory qualities. I bought this for my oldest son who at the time was entering year 9. He said that it was very good and compact. It was easy to use and would fit in any pencil case since it is foldable. It was also very fragile. Approximately three weeks after we purchased this product, it snapped in two. It wasn’t a case of my sons pulling it or damaging it in a way. It was just extremely fragile. My son needed a 30cm ruler which was properly working and this product didn’t supply us with that. An extra thing that hindered this product was the bump in between the two attached rulers. Every time you would try and draw a straight line that acquires the need of both rulers, there would always be a bump somewhere in the middle since as you can see, it’s not adjoining. If your children are seriously studying. At higher levels (GCSE, A-LEVEL) I wouldn’t recommend this product.