Well, who wouldn't want a retractable marker anyway? 

First of all, I would like to, yet again, thank my best friend Sheena for getting me this set. 🥹

I saw this first one night of checking in new stationeries out in the market. When you say colored markers, I honestly really think of the primary colors with the traditional capped-on design to be only be available, but here comes a new player in the street. 

Let's begin. ♥︎

LAYOUT 

The ClickArt Retractable Marker Pens are manufactured by Japanese stationery company Zebra Pen. (Click here for other Zebra items featured here.) It's their retractable marker set with new ink technology that allows it to never drying out⏤yep, that means even when you forget to click it to retract. 

These markers are dressed in simple white plastic body with a colored tip and thrust device that matches the ink it carries. It has a special little hole just around the logo placement that turns red when the pen is retracted out and black when it's retracted in. 

Here are other features you might want to take note of: 

• water-based ink
• 0.6mm fine point (tip size) 
• retractable so missing caps are now problems of the past 

In total, this set comes in 36 beautiful colors, but a good starting point, just to see if this will match your art style, is getting a set of 6 like mine. Here are the colors: black, red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. 

SWATCH

PEN-TO-PAPER TEST 

Sometimes it's easy to judge a pen just by how it is. But in this little corner of the internet, we want to play things fair, and we understand that sometimes, your paper can play a significant role in how you view each pen so there's two paper types here: thin and thick. 

THIN PAPER. My basic steno notebook graces us again with its thin sheets so we see how these markers fare against 70GSM or thicker. This will also show us how the colors are on white paper. 

Findings

1. Ghosting is glaring, especially with dark colored inks. It is okay for coloring if the coloring only requires on stroke or one layer. More than that would definitely cause this to bleed to the other side of the page. 
2. Sporadic bleeding is observed from the test. Again, this is usually from inks with darker colors, not so with the lighter ones. To be safe, I would suggest using only thick paper to minimize ghosting and bleeding. 
3. The colors are vivid against white paper, which is expected in most cases. The yellow though, as bright as it is, looks warmer on white paper than on cream paper. 

THICK PAPER. As per usual, we are graced by my oldie but goody Papernotes Classic in grid paper. This consists of 100GSM sheets so we can see how the pens are for 100GSM and/or higher. These will also represent how the colors are on cream paper. 

Findings

1. Ghosting is still very visible, but there's definitely less bleeding. Though I would suggest only using it for one-layer coloring; otherwise, the ink would really seep through the other side. 
2. The colors are still vibrant against cream paper. I was actually expecting the yellow to be washed out because of how bright it is, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. 

THE YELLOW LEGAL PAD TEST

This is the part where I dish the dirt and not leaving any crumbs behind. I try to be objective and fair here, though in occasional instances where I have to share my personal opinions, I do let them know they're subjective. Let's go. 😇 

pros 

1. No more missing caps. I think the retractable mechanism is a nifty feature. 
2. It comes in a lot of colors. It's so cool how they could come up with 36 colors. It's not one with the most colors in the market, but 36 is still something. I bet one of those is your favorite color. 😉 
3. You can buy them by piece. If you have Shopee where you are, then you can avail of this. It's nice that you can just get any specific color that you need or want, and you won't have to get stuck with all the other colors you don't really need. 
4. They write smoothly. Each stroke glided so easily on the paper. I tried them on smoother paper and rougher paper, and they delivered just the same smooth consistency. 

cons

VERDICT

ink flow

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price 

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design

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grip/comfort

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smudge

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accessibility 

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final rating: 4.5

RECOMMENDATION 

These are really cool for moms to use when spending art time with the kids. They have no caps on so you don't have to worry about caps flying everywhere. They're also in fine point so the babies would probably much have better appreciation of lines than with those bolder points.  

For students though, I wouldn't hard sell it. If you want, go get one; but if it's out of budget, I can guarantee you, you won't be missing anything aside from it's retractable. If you're just looking for a respectable marker to get the job done, a more affordable option is always available at stationery shops everywhere. 😇  

For collectors, yes, these are something worth considering. The design is pretty unique, what with the red marker dot for when the inks are out and about. They're also, in a way, easily accessible online, so there's that. Bottom line is, if you ever decide to get it, then it would be a cool addition to your collection. 

⚘ jls