I had an unusual little visit to a nearby Wal-Mart this weekend and browsed through the back-to-school aisles. Much of the merchandise was standard back-to-school fare including massive packs of cheap wooden pencils, huge reams of 3-ring notebook paper and packs of multi-colored pens.
There were a couple little gems though including the Pen + Gear Gaming Journal ($7.50) that looks like a vintage gameboy. The cover is made from translucent yellow plastic with die cuts that highlight the silver foil on the soft cover.
Inside are three colored paper sections with 40 sheets each in aqua blue, lemon yellow and fluorescent orange. Each section features a different phrase in the lower corner: Keep Calm, Game On and Level Up.
Each page is also perforated for easy removal.
I did my initial writing sample with a Platinum Carbon Pen and to my great surprise, the paper seemed to take the ink well.
In further writing samples, I tried a variety of pens that I might use with a notebook like this: gel, pencils, markers and felt tips as well as fountain pens all with similar results.
To my surprise, when I flipped the page over, their was very little showthrough or bleed through. There was a bit of bleed through with the Pentel Dual Metallic gel pens but they are quite a specialty pen.
I did a close-up image to see the few little dots from fountain pen tests.
Overall, this notebook is actually pretty good and ridiculously fun. I hope that I can find another notebook that will fit into the yellow cover so that I can re-use it after the colored paper journal is filled.
I was delighted to find a little treasure in the back-to-school section.
Bonus Review: Mead Five Star College Ruled Composition Notebook
I also picked up a Mead Five Star Composition Notebook ($2.50). It’s college-ruled with a plastic flexible cover. I have always loved the size and form-factor of a composition notebook but, unfortunately, since these notebooks are exclusively targeted to school age kids, the driving factor is often price over quality.
When I saw the pretty marble-look cover in pastel colors with metallic gold paint flecks, I had high hopes that the quality of the notebook would be above average.
The notebook includes 100 pages and QR-style codes in each corner that will allow pages to be scanned with the Five Star App. Notes can then be synced to Google Drive to access them anywhere from any device.
With standard writing tests, none of the pens bled or feathered but the show-through and bleed-through was ridiculous.
From the reverse, the paper looks so see-through as to be tissue rather than actual paper stock.
I’m very disappointed in the paper quality. Why do we do this to children? Why do we give them sub-par materials and expect to succeed?
Sadly, I find this notebook is seriously unacceptable. Mead, “High quality paper”? My ass. Give this composition notebook a hard pass.
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