product review: sanford magic rub erasers.

have you ever gone to the store to routinely buy something & that something was not there? maybe you figure that the store is just out of stock so you decide you can just come back another time. but the next time you go back it's still not there... & you start to get suspicious. you go home & see what's going on on the internet (because you don't have an internet phone & never want one) ... and it turns out they have discontinued your product! this happens to me all the time! it is the worst feeling ever. it happened with polaroid film, postum, print gocco, and dilberitos, the dilbert brand vegan burrito. (to be honest, i don't miss the dilberito that much, i just wanted to mention something that didn't begin with a 'p.')


so imagine my fear when going out to a routine stationary run a few weeks ago i couldn't find yet another thing anywhere: magic rub latex erasers. i went home & it seems that magic rubs are not in danger, but i'm still pretty nervous. i have been using magic rubs for many years (since the june of 2003. i bought my first magic rub at a stationary store in berkeley, ca in june.) & they have become my primary 'big eraser.' i can't imagine life without them! (my middle eraser is a pentel clic eraser and my fine eraser is the papermate tuff stuff eraser stick which replaced the pentel z2-1 refill erasers around 2004 when they changed the formula and started being made in china.)

first off, let me mention that 90% of my drawing process is erasing. i am a bit of a perfectionist & if something isn't perfect, i erase it. this tends to leave paper quite ragged after repeatedly erasing it for a few days. prior to trying out magic rubs i used the pentel hi-polymer erasers, those erasers with a paper sleeve & that cool 80's graph paper design. i have basically been using these since childhood. they are an excellent eraser for doing clean erasing, my one problem with it is the effort you have to exude to do a good job erasing. if you don't hold your paper down well enough you end up with a big crumply mess. this is bad news if you've been working on something for a long time. i resisted the magic rubs for many years because i didn't think they could hold a candle to the rad look of the pentel hi-polymers. they were so plain and drab looking! however, i have since learned my lesson. the magic rub does just as good of a cleaning job if not better but with much less friction. i can recklessly erase anything and the soft latex will gently react. the erasers don't last as long as the hi polymers but it still takes me a really long time to go through a single eraser, especially if i have one at home & one at my studio. and they're made in the good old usa.

while things being discontinued can be a bummer, the worst is when they change things up on you & don't really bother to tell you! this happened with my small eraser, the pentel refills. one day i was drawing & routinely replaced an eraser & it didn't do a good job at all! i tried another one... same thing! it was horrible. it took me about a year to find the papermate tuff stuff eraser stick. i hope they never discontinue that or skimp on the quality! it's always sad when the quality of something unexpectedly goes down. it's happened to me with annie's mac & cheese (smaller net weight), national brand engineer pads (no cardboard back, poor grid alignment) & who knows what else. i would gladly pay a little more to get something of a better quality & it makes me sad when companies think they can get away with it. you will never buy something from my shop that'll make you feel like that! unless i end up selling it to like hallmark or american greetings. hey, a guy's gotta eat!