On October 15, 2021, the US Patent and Trademark Office published the news that Newell Brands had cancelled their trademark for one of the world’s most famous pencil brands, the Mongol.
Eberhard Faber IV was interviewed by Sean Malone, and Mr. Faber suggested that the name came from Purée Mongole soup. An update notes this story as being apocryphal.
(I’m really happy that Contrapuntalism remains online, though at a different address. It has a remarkable sixty posts that mention the Mongol pencil!)
I reached out to Newell, but did not hear back. They spoke to me last year about the Mirado, but I didn’t hear back about the Mongol.
So why the cancellation? I don’t know, but I’ll speculate that in 2021 Newell don’t want a trademark that can readily be interpreted as an ethnocultural or racial term.
There are still Mongol pencils in other countries – Colombia, the Philippines, and Venezuala.
Truly the end of an era, this pencil brand will not be quickly forgotten.
The end of a venerable name in North American pencils.
When I was a kid, and the Mongol was my family’s pencil of choice, I had no idea that “Mongol” was anything more than the name of a pencil. It just seemed like a cool, unusual name.
What a shame – even moreso given the Mirado was discontinued last year.
Does that leave the Dixon Ticonderoga as the last ubiquitous classic American pencil in production? Musgrave and General still make pencils but as far as I can tell, they didn’t have the ubiquity the Mirado, Mongol, and Ticonderoga do/did.
The Mongol was never sold here in the UK as far as I know. I don’t even know if Eberhard Faber had any market presence here. I’ve never seen one here organically across the five decades I’ve been using pencils; the pencil market mostly consisted of Staedtler, Faber-Castell, and Derwent.
I have some USA made Mongol pencils in their original box. Also have a few boxes of Chicomderogas(Chinese Communist made Ticonderoga’s).