40, The Red Band, The Mikado, & The Mirado,

[rhr]

From quite early on, the various wooden pencil companies used colorful names for their wooden pencils. Schwanhauser used the name "Swan" since trademark no. 3,167. Hardtmuth used the names "Mephisto" since trademark no. 32,221, and "Faust" since 42,354. Johann Faber used "Alligator" since 42,747, and the afore-mentioned image of two crossed hammers since 67,088. Eberhard Faber used "Mongol" since 44,927. Dixon used "Ticonderoga" since 59,029, and "Eldorado" since 107,493. And Koh-I-Noor used "Mona Lisa" since 89,183. As well as colorful names, they also used colored bands on the brass ferrules of their wooden pencils as visual trademarks. Eberhard Faber used a yellow or gold band since trademark no. 43,074, and also a black band since 342,467. The American Lead Pencil Co. used the names "Velvet" since 5,655, and "Venus" since 40,090, and they used a blue band on these pencils since 60,469, but also used a green band since 66,976. All these names and colors have multiple trademark numbers, 38 in all. ;~)

 

But my favorites when I was a grade-school student were the Eagle Pencil Company's "Mikado", used since trademark no. 51,020, and "Mirado", used since 434,039, both with a red band on a gold-colored brass ferrule, used since 52,807, all of which were re-trademarked many times. I've already mentioned Eagle's red band on the handle of an automatic gravity-drop penknife, used since 84,220, but they also used the red band on the bodies of certain steel nibs since 84,365. Eagle also used a silver-colored ferrule on a wooden pencil with a red body since 69,625, and a pink band on a pencil ferrule since 232,824. Hardtmuth and Koh-I-Noor also used the name "Red Band" along with an actual red band on their fountain pens and stylos since at least the 1930's.

 

George Kovalenko.

 

 

If you want to perform the trademark searches, simply cut and paste, or type the trademark numbers into the search window in the Trademark Document Retrieval Portlet.

[welch]

Henry Petroski's classic, "The Pencil", explains that yellow-color was a selling device among pencil-makers, implying something about the origins (I forget what) of the "graphite". The "Mikado" was named to reinforce this, just as Eberhard Faber named their best regular pencil the "Mongol". With WW2, "Mikado" had to be changed to something close...hence, "Mirado". They never changed back, even when the owners became Berol, and then when Newell/Sanford bought Faber-Castell, which had bought both "Venus" and the cousin's company, Eberhard-Faber, and bought Berol. And Papermate and Gillete Parker and Waterman...and almost everything else.

 

Which is how the great Esterbrook name came to be slapped on a variety of Sanford's magic-markers. They probably own Sharpie", too...but who knows why marketers name their brands?

[rhr]

With WW2, "Mikado" had to be changed to something close...hence, "Mirado". They never changed back...

Well, that jives with the trademark data. Even though the trademark for "Mirado" wasn't issued until Nov 4, 1947, it was said to have been "continuously used and applied to said goods in applicant's business" since Dec 10, 1941, just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

George Kovalenko.