You might wonder why on earth it would be worth spending £6-8 for 12 pencils or over £20 for 24 when you can buy budget pencils for a fraction of the price. There is, however, an adage we hold dear in this house - "buy cheap, buy twice", and this proves to be true with these pencils; they may be more expensive than the norm, but they are the only wooden colouring pencils we've found in years of buying art equipment that are actually a pleasure to use and not an exercise in sharpening continually due to broken leads.

The pencils are triangular in shape and have a nice soft covering - they are very pleasant to hold and use. They've got some sort of covering on them which makes them non slip. For such a simple item they have a few other nice design features. There's a space on the pencil on one of the flat sides to write your name, handy if you are going to be taking them to school. The box itself, as you can see in the picture, which is plastic, doubles as a stand. The sticker on the front shows you which order to put the pencils back in and can also be closed so that the pencils are protected.

Probably the most important feature of these pencils is the actual colouring lead. This the manufacturer promises has an "anti-break system" - I don't know what this means, other than as you sharpen the pencils you can see the inner lead has a white coating on it. This doesn't show up on the paper when you are using a pencil. All the colours are bright and true to the outside of the pencil and you get exactly the colours as pictured above in the 24 set, slightly less in the cheaper 12 pencil set. We have bought both in our time and I find they really are worth it as the coverage these give is great - the lead is of exactly the right hardness, and also we have yet to have a lead break yet inside the pencil. The pencils are very long lasting and I think the design of the box does encourage the user to keep them tidy.

It's nice to know also that these pencils come from sustainable sources. These slim pencils are ideal for use by children and adults alike - they are by far the preferred choice of the school children I know and seem to produce better results on the paper than the cheaper pencils do. All things taken into consideration even though these pencils are more expensive than most they really are a great buy in my opinion, they are a quality item that are a pleasure to use. Highly recommended.