Rotring tikky eraser

Today I was surprised when I found in a stationary store a rotring eraser. I don't know why but lately it is very difficult to find rotring erasers. They seem to have been replaced by the Faber Castell, Stabilo, Pelican, Factis, Stadler and other less known brands. But what is better suited to accompany a mechanical Rotring Tikky pencil?

Even though not the best eraser it does a very good job. One downside compared to the more praised Faber Castell 18 71 20, the Rotring is not dust free. It makes more crumbles.
But like the Tikky it is affordable, good quality and long lasting. It got me through College and it's still going strong.
The Tikky comes in three sizes, 20 being the biggest, then 30 and 40.
What has happened to it in the meantime? I guess it got a makeover.

It used to be an all white eraser with white paper cover. The branding and the name was hot red symbol for Rotring and the fine print on the side in black

In the meantime and seems the Rotring changed though color of the covering. It is now black, only the Rotring symbol remains red while the rest of the writing is white.

I do not know if this is an improvement, I really liked the simplicity of the previous design very Google ish for a lack of a better word. I mean it is simple and straightforward.
On the other side, I can see a benefit from the black cover. I have my old eraser since college and in the meantime the white it is not that white, it's kind of dirty yellowish. So the dark cover might add a plus in the long term.

On the Rotring site, the photos of the eraser still feature the white hood. But digging deeper and looking through Rotring catalogs the change was made around 2015.

Tianhao mechanical pencil

At the last visit at the local supermarket, I saw this mechanical pencil somewhat copying the design of the Pentel Graphgear 500, that came along with a pack of 20 2B leads, all for 0.50 $. If interested you can see some more look-alikes in the post Copy cats.

My thoughts were, I can not go wrong with the package, if the mechanical pencil is crap, at least I get an almost free pack of leads.

The design of the mechanical pencil is interesting, I would call it nice. I like the fact that the grip is a separate piece of plastic with a silver color while the barrel is black.

The mechanical pencil looks ok with the condition you look from a distance. At a closer glance, you see the pencil has a bend in the shaft. The fixed sleeve is a little larger than the diameter of the lead so there is play in the lead, and this causes the lead to break a lot. Also, the lead advances too much at every push. In combination with the soft, easy to break leads it came with it is a disaster to write.
But I found later why the sleeve is so larger, maybe ...
The led it came with branded as microled even though is 0.5 mm it is larger, or at least some of the mines are. I tested various leads in the post "Mechanical pencil lead", including the one that came with this pencil to see if is there a real difference in quality between known brands that have decent quality products and cheap no name leads. Biiiig mistake. I used a Rotring Tikky and first the lead broke. Not a tragedy but it got stuck in the sleeve and I could not get it out. It was stuck like glue in. I had to use a needle and pliers to push the led out. After a bit of struggle, it came out with a plastic bit that is inside the sleeve of the Rotring Tikky which has the role to keep the lead tight with no wobble when you write.
It does not come with an eraser, but this is not a problem for me as I do not like to use the erasers that come with my pencils. Not because they are not capable, but because I do not like the look after use. I always have an eraser block with me.
The clip rotates around the barrel and does not inspire confidence. But I think this is the greatest feature of the mechanical pencil. At least you can have the hope of losing it sooner rather than later. But probably this will not happen as the clip is not that problematic.

In conclusion, the mechanical pencil is bad and it's not usable.