I am sure that most of us can remember going "into pen" from pencil at primary school, and what a big deal it was. Well, this has recently happened to my seven year old son, and what a fuss we've had!



He was provided with the classic Berol handwriting pen - the red one with the blue tip (sound familiar?!) but he really couldn't get on with it, and I can't understand how these have been recommended for a first pen for such a long time; they are quite uncomfortable to hold, and the nib is scratchy and does not flow smoothly across the paper (but I'm guessing that they are cheap). After weeks of struggling with it, I went searching for the perfect pen, and I came across the Pilot Frixion Erasable Rollerball Pen.



To be honest, when I read what this pen was supposed to do I didn't really believe it. It claims to be fully erasable using the friction point at the end of the pen; it erases the gel ink purely by heat friction, leaving no debris behind, and then you can re-write over it using the same pen. It sounded a bit too good to be true, but I liked the look of the pen, and from past experience I find gel pens easy to write with so I bought it anyway.



The pen that I bought was black; with a tribal design in silver all around the body of the pen making it look funky and trendy. It is available in several other colours, each with the same design, and eight ink colours. To a young boy, style matters so he loved it straight away! It is made out of plastic, and the friction tip at the end is made out of very firm rubber; you can stick your nail into it if you push really hard and it bounces back. The area where you hold the pen is made from soft rubber with dimples so it feels soft, yet secure in your hand. It is extremely light to hold, and it has a snap on lid with clip.



The fine 0.77mm nib on this pen makes it very accurate and the gel ink flows out nicely and evenly, never flooding the page, even when writing slowly. So far, so good! When it comes to erasing mistakes, this pen is fairly hit and miss on the first few attempts. You have to wait for the ink to dry completely; and this can take several minutes. Even if you attempt to erase when it is the tiniest bit damp, you are left with a huge smudge. However when the ink is absolutely dry, it does exactly as it says it will: providing you hold the "rubber" at the right angle and apply exactly the right amount of pressure. No marks are left at all on the paper, and it doesn't take the top layer of the paper off at all like some of its predecessors. You do not necessarily need to use the rubber on the pen; any hard plastic will erase this wonder ink because it is heat that does the work, but hard plastic is more likely to leave indentations in the paper.



You are warned that the pen should not be used for signatures, legal documents, examination papers or other documents where writing needs to be permanent as it could obviously be open to abuse. Also to avoid accidental erasure, writing should not be left anywhere that it could be exposed to high temperatures, but for simple day to day school work, I think that this is an ideal solution.



It really is amazing if you work it properly, and I was absolutely staggered that it worked. It took my son a lot of getting used to, but he now has the hang of it completely. My only concern is that he doesn't concentrate as much on his writing because he knows that it can be erased - just like when he was using a pencil.



The Pilot Frixion Rollerball Pen comes in at £1.99, and I bought mine from WH Smiths - so far this is the only high street store where I have seen it, but it is possible to buy them online. One pen lasts around a term, but it is possible to buy a pack of three refills which are in the region of £4.50 which makes it a lot more economical.