The story of Rabbit pencils
In the south there are SKB’s fountain pens. Up north in Yilan there are Rabbit pencils, which are deeply embedded in people’s memories of childhood.
The company’s traditional Japanese-style building has become the Rabbit Pencil School, half production facility and half tourist center. Entering the space, which has the atmosphere of a traditional factory, one is immediately confronted with an oversized version of its classic pencil design: the yellow 88 Rabbit pencil.
“The number 88 [pronounced ba-ba in Mandarin] was chosen for the auspicious associations with its near homonym: ‘get rich’ [fa-fa],” explains the school’s director and the company’s third-generation CEO Tang Zhitian, as he points to the classic pencil design.
In Rabbit’s boom years of the 1970s, it was producing at least 20‡30 types of pencil every year. What with all the additional types produced by Rabbit’s domestic and foreign competitors, there was a veritable ocean of pencils, but the simple Rabbit 88 with its yellow barrel left the deepest impression on people.
Having accompanied the Taiwan public for several decades, everyone has their own life stories connected to Rabbit pencils.
Once Tang participated in a seminar about entrepreneurialism and startups, and the host asked participants to introduce their companies. Confronted with silence, Tang raised his hand to volunteer. The words “I’m from Rabbit Pencils” had barely slipped from his mouth when the host interrupted him, excitedly relating his own stories about Rabbit pens from back in his student days. Many of his classmates were overseas Chinese from Hong Kong and Macao, and Rabbit ballpoint pens were their favorite souvenirs. Whenever those classmates prepared to go back home, they always brought a bag or two full of Rabbit pens to give to friends.
Rabbit ballpoint pens are richly represented in the memories of people born in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. You’d take off the blue cap, pull out the pen cartridge, and use the barrel to cut out rounds of tangerine skin, which you’d then stuff into the barrel, before shooting them out with the pressure from a quick chopstick jab. It was an awesome makeshift air gun.
With its streamlined style and elegant design, the SKB 22 immediately caused a stir upon its launch. The brightly colored ballpoint pens the company produced also feature prominently in the memories of Taiwanese of a certain age.