Mechanical Pencil - 0.5mm - Kuru Toga Pipe Slide
A 0.5 mm mechanical pencil with Mitsubishi Pencil's Kuru Toga engine and a sliding tip pipe, in pink.
In an ordinary mechanical pencil the lead wears at an angle as you write, so the line thickens and the slanted point breaks easily. The Kuru Toga engine turns the lead a little with every stroke, so it wears evenly and keeps a sharp point.
The pipe at the tip slides back with the lead as it wears, so you can keep writing without clicking lead out beyond the pipe, and the point stays sharp and unbroken. One click lasts longer than in a conventional pencil.
Specifications:
- Lead: 0.5 mm
- Mechanism: Kuru Toga engine with pipe slide, push-button feed
- Colour: pink
- Body: polycarbonate
- Size: approx. 143 mm long, 9.4 g
- Model: M5-452 1P, pink (M54521P.13)
- Origin: Made in Japan
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MITSUBISHI PENCIL CO., LTD. is a Tokyo-based writing instruments company with no connection to the Mitsubishi industrial conglomerate. Mitsubishi Pencil registered its three-diamond trademark in 1903, ten years before the Mitsubishi industrial group registered theirs. The three diamonds is a family crest.
The company was founded in 1887 by Niroku Masaki, inspired by Western pencils he first encountered at the 1878 Paris World Fair. It began as the Masaki Pencil Manufacturing Company in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and was renamed Mitsubishi Pencil Co., Ltd. in 1952. In 1958 it launched the uni pencil - named for "unique" and the French word for "smooth," with a logotype designed to be "a house that warmly wraps people up."
The uni brand became the company's corporate identity and today appears on the full range of its products. Mitsubishi Pencil launched Japan's first ballpoint pen in 1959, and has continued to set ballpoint benchmarks ever since - among them the Jetstream ink system, which became one of the world's best-selling ballpoint formulations, and the Jetstream Edge, which pushed the technology to its present limit. In 2024 the company acquired the German writing instrument brand Lamy, extending a global presence that now spans over 100 countries.