Yikes! Pencils
Pencils that didn't look like wood. Created by Ken Cooper at Empire Berol, Yikes! Pencils hit back-to-school 1993 in neon colors, wild patterns, and clashing dyes that made your standard wooden No. 2 look boring by comparison. They were a lunchbox status symbol and the kind of thing you'd trade or lose and actually care about.
Ken Cooper, head of new product development at Empire Berol USA, envisioned pencils that broke the wood-and-graphite mold. Yikes! Pencils rolled out in the early '90s — all over back-to-school displays by 1993 — with neon hues, clashing patterns, and bright, oddball erasers, the barrels made from a compressed material that let the colors run straight through instead of pretending to be wood. The line extended to sharpeners, folders, and other supplies—Yikes! gear that signaled your taste and your cool-factor to peers. Unlike standard yellow pencils, these were *visible*, *different*, and *collectible*.
For a few glorious years, a Yikes! pencil in your hand during class meant something. Kids traded them, bought them at school book fairs, and displayed them in their pencil boxes like trophies. The end came from a boardroom, not the playground: after Berol was absorbed by Newell, the oddball line didn't fit the new parent's direction and was discontinued before the decade was out. But the mid-90s belonged to anyone with a neon pencil and the confidence to use it.
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