* Hey guys, what's up? It's Rae here and welcome back to my channel.
As you guys know, or maybe not know,
these are Prismacolor Premier colored pencils. These are some of my absolute, most favorite
colored pencils around. I have used them in so many videos, I have used them for so many drawings,
and truly truly truly for a very long time when it came to art supplies, colored pencils, specifically Prismacolors, were my go-to.
But,
there have been internet rumors pretty much stemming about the quality of these colored pencils.
*Classical music*
And just general concern over the quality over the past few years of these colored pencils.
So ladies and gentlemen,
I'm gonna do something that has never been done on YouTube before. I have purchased every single one of Prismacolor Premiere's major time periods,
starting from the 1930s, its very early inception, all the way up until modern day 2019.
And I am going to compare them together. We're gonna see if there truly is a difference between Prismacolor past, present and future.
So if you are new here and you would like to join the Raevolution, hit that subscribe button.
And if you already are a subscriber, please remember to hit the notification bell.
That way you can get notified of all my videos. So yeah with that being said guys, let's get started shall we?
*Laughs* Usually I just like hit the camera, but I'm not close enough so I have to scooch!
*Whoosh sound effect*
Alright, for contestant number one, we're gonna have to go all the way back to 1939,
when Eagle Pencil Company released their very first colored pencil, Prismacolor Premier soft lead colored pencils.
What you are looking at right now are the very first Prismacolors to ever exist.
And honestly, I gotta say I'm pretty impressed with how modern these colored pencils look,
I mean, that's a very sleek design if you ask me. And for these pencils being as old as they are,
I'd have to say they're in pretty decent condition.
And sadly
they didn't come with the original packaging but here is an image that I pulled from Google
and I will link that website down below.
Next up, we are gonna be going between the 60s and the 80s, when Berol Pencil Company bought out
Eagle Pencil Company and OHH,
MY GOD, the packaging on this is magical!
Plus, it matches my nails!
Now these ones, I have a lot of. I mean, this WAS the 48-pack,
it's a little bit less than 48, but man, I have a very great selection of colors.
And like the first generation, these are in incredible condition,
I can't believe I found these, but I will have to say you can definitely tell they - they just look old, you know.
Like, they have like, an old font on them.
And I'm kind of curious to see like, how well they'll hold up to modern day
2019 synthetic pigments, you know?
Now we're gonna fast forward to the 90s where I might age myself,
but I'm alive at this point,
and this is when Newell Rubbermaid, the Rubbermaid Company,
This is when they bought out Prismacolor Premier colored pencils, and we're able to date these back to 1999. And yes, at this point,
they are currently made in the United States of America. And the packaging on this, oh
my god, does it scream the 90s! And honestly, I am here for it. Like, I love - obviously, look at my nails. Again,
I love everything bright and like, 90s vaporwave aesthetics. I'm very happy about these ones.
But I do have to say, the whole entire time
I filmed this video,
I was struggling with the sturdiness of the packaging, like they'd all fall out every 5 seconds and that was very frustrating.
And plus, the color selection for this wasn't too great, I was missing a lot of essential colors.
And basically I had a lot of like, weird
secondary colors, so eh, I guess I wasn't too happy with 'em.
And now this brings us to modern-day,
2019 Prismacolor. And currently in 2019, as you're hearing this right now, the factory is in
Mexico and as far as I'm able to date it, when they moved to Mexico is where all the theories that the quality dropped,
and today we're gonna see if that's true, if it really did drop because they moved.
*Music*
All right, so I did some digging and according to vanillaartsblog.com, I will leave it down below,
one of the biggest concerns is off-center color cores. So basically, like every time you sharpen it, it's off-center
so it breaks really easily. And I guess I've never just paid attention to this
specific detail before, but I mean, when you get the modern-day Prismacolors, lo and behold, yes, they are
off-center, which again can lead to a lot of breakage.
Now to play devil's advocate, some of the older ones also
had off-center course, so it might not be a modern Prismacolor problem
but just in general of Prismacolor thing.
And by the way, can we talk about that green?
*Sad music*
And you know, even some of my good and trusty old Crayola colored pencils,
I even found a few of those that were slightly off-center. So it might just be a thing that happens with
colored pencils, you know, like the machine, while making 'em, might just hit wrong.
Now this test,
SPECIFICALLY, made me want to make this whole entire video because this is what truly piqued my curiosity when it came to
old versus modern-day Prismacolor colored pencils.
You know what I'm sayin?
Like in my opinion, they're kind of lit now, you know what I'm saying?
So if they were BETTER back then,
how cool would that be to test it out? And plus, it's important to note that a lot can change
in that time, like a lot of technology, a lot of
pigments can change, synthetic pigments, and I truly think that if we were gonna see a difference it would be here.
And surprise surprise, not really much has changed. I mean, especially when you look at the whites, you look at the blacks;
I mean, the pigment has always been there and
even for the pencils being that old, I was
GENUINELY,
genuinely impressed with how well they performed.
So yeah, I would say over the course of the literal 70 years,
uh, they've always worked really well and they were always very pigmented.
You go, Glen Coco!
Okay, at this point, get your tinfoil hats on because THIS is where everything went to hell! *Laughs*
Modern-day Prismacolors are
NOTORIOUS for breaking, just all the time.
Like, one quick Google search and you'll see it's, it's like a whole thing.
So I get to blending the two colors and pretty much instantly,
I'm like, wow, it's actually really hard to blend these from the 80s back!
So I start thinking to myself like wow, it's a completely different formula!
I better test it out to see if it really is or not!
And lo and behold, these pencils aren't layering on top of each other,
which is something I've NEVER had happen to me with Prismacolors before.
Example A,
2019 Prismacolor, buttery smooth,
the 90s Prismacolor, buttery smooth,
but when you look at Faber-Castell,
it has trouble layering because it's a harder formula.
And just to like, triple check to make sure I'm not crazy,
I pressed my new Prismacolors against a paper to see how soft it was, which it
destroyed the lead.
And if you try to do the same thing with the old Prismacolors,
it ain't happenin'!
Just like it ain't happenin' with modern-day Faber-Castell. Them suckers are so incredibly hard!
So, class, I think we just solved a huge internet mystery.
Sometime between the 80s and the 90s, Prismacolor changed up their formula to be drastically softer.
And because the formula changed, people weren't used to it, they didn't say anything about it. And that's why we started seeing all these problems,
it's not because Mexico, it's not because the quality went down,
it's because, in my crackpot theory, they changed the formula (and didn't say anything).
*Upbeat music*
Now we have arrived to the most
important test out of all
the other tests and that's the drawing test.
And what better way to test a drawing than do the exact same thing side by side, right next to each other with all the exact same colors.
*Continues*
Okay, are you guys ready to see the final result between the old and the new? Drumroll please:
*Drumroll*
Da da da da! It's very very subtle in the differences,
but there are differences. For example, the highlights in the new version,
they just pop out THAT much more than the old version. If you zoom in closely,
you can definitely see that there's like, a texture between the old and the new.
And with the new Prismacolors, the pigment kind of like, slid everywhere
which is something you don't see with the old ones. And I feel like, unless you have like, kind of a trained eye on Prismacolors,
you wouldn't notice.
And am I saying a harder formula is bad?
No, not - oh!
No, not by any means. I don't think it's bad at all,
I think it's just different preferences. And with that being said guys,
thank you so much again for turning into this "VS" video,
if you would like to see more, I will leave a playlist down below and uh,
yeah, what that being said guys, thank you so much again for watching and I will see you next video. Bye!
*End music*