Gelly Rolls: The circle closes

After my last post about Gelly Rolls, the unforgettable glittery pens that brightened up my childhood before they were abruptly taken from me, I was surprised to see how many people were moved by the story of my odd obsession with this one little thing. I didn’t expect it, but it’s heartening to see that others can relate to the seemingly trivial bits of history that come to hold such personal significance in our lives. Even if they didn’t grow up during the era of Gelly Rolls, they understood what it was like to find something meaningful, lose it, and eventually rediscover it years later.

But it didn’t end there.

The day after I wrote about it, I was contacted by someone at Sakura, the makers of Gelly Roll pens. You won’t believe what happened next. As it turns out, Gelly Rolls are alive and well, and when they heard about my story, they did something I never would have imagined. They wanted to give me back what I had lost.

So they sent me a Gelly Roll care package.

A plethora of Gelly Roll pens

How many pens is that? All of them! And there they were, right in front of me, in my hands once more. The real thing, at last. Finally safe in their pencil case, I would never have to lose them again.

A case of 58 Gelly Roll pens

Naturally, I had to try out every single one of them immediately. They were just as I had remembered, and yet I had forgotten how many varieties there were. These aren’t just pens, they’re art supplies: colors that shine, sparkle, glow under blacklight, colors that grow their own gold and silver borders right before your eyes… It feels more like holding some kind of wand.

Heather got into it, too – if you’ll recall, her artful penmanship is miles ahead of me:

Heather's drawing

Laying them all out on the bed, scribbling glitter in page after page of our notebooks, we touched the past together. And we made it ours.

Thank you, Sakura

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Gelly Rolls: The circle closes
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22 thoughts on “Gelly Rolls: The circle closes

  1. 4

    I am wearing the biggest, cheesiest grin. I don’t think things get better than this…do things get better than this? So nice to see a situation where there aren’t any losers.

  2. 7

    Oh you young people…Sheesh. How can you not know that the Dynomite magazine that came into our classrooms once a month remains THE ULTIMATE CULTURAL ICON of gilded youth-iness-dom!

    1. 7.1

      it’s this kind of gentle yet subversive ‘fuck-you’ to “the man” that lets people (and companies) recognize that it is becoming safe to stand against assumed positions

  3. 12

    Seeing as I grew up in the dip your nib in the inkwell era, I don’t know anything about such indulgences. (I still crave the 96 coloured pencil set in the beautiful tin that I never had.)

    But I have the biggest smile on my face. Just for you and for a great gesture from a company.

  4. 17

    Awwwwwww! That’s so cool.
    When I was in 4th grade, it was cool to have Uni-ball pens. They were nice pens, but they didn’t glitter. I don’t know why they were so popular.

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