Photo from eBay auction page
Man. Man oh man. There is a beautiful Yikes! branded pencil sharpener on eBay right now. Though there are only 3 days left, there are no bids! The last thing I should be doing is bidding on it, as I don’t need a $10-quality pencil sharpener for $20 (or way more). But it would look great next to my collection of Yikes! pencils, wouldn’t it?
Photo from auction page
As I mentioned in my post about Yikes! pencils, the sharpeners seem to be pretty darn rare to find. The seller also has an auction for a couple wacky Yikes! branded erasers, still in their blister packaging. I actually don’t remember these from my youth, so I am loving the language from the back of the package that the seller posted:
Spend more time erasing than writing? Here’s just what you need—a true triple-whammy of primo mistake-munchers in color combinations from your worst nightmares.
Tow away your worst word wrecks with WRECK-TANGULAR erasers. Go ape for the shape of TRIANGULAR erasers. Get your hand on something that’s totally TWISTED.
Now all three are together in YIKES! Mondo-Combo Eraserama. But use with caution—with color clashes this loud, you could put an ear out.
I wonder how long these items have been sitting in the back of someone’s supply closet?
UPDATE: Ooh! It looks like there is another, alternately colored sharpener, too! This one looks like it must’ve been the option for girls, as there is more pink and purple involved.
Woodclinched 
Ooh, I had one of these! The tri-colored one, in colors that would have matched that second pencil sharpener: pink, purple and yellow. I was fascinated enough by it that I wrote about it in my journal at the time…I was an office supply geek even then. I never saw the commercials at the time and don’t remember YIKES! being a cultural phenomenon in my part of the country, but I loved the loud colors! And you gotta love the blurbs on the packaging. Had a bunch of the pencils, too. I suddenly have YIKES! envy.
It seems that Papermate had been chasing a demographic similar to Yikes with their Foohy brand pencils and related items. I have found a number of these at One Dollar Only stores in Phoenix.
Correction: That should be “Dollar Tree” rather than “One Dollar Only”.
I haven’t seen the Foohy brand! I’ll look it up. Y’know, I’ve found all sorts of interesting things through Dollar Tree. A reader found a great little eraser for really cheap at a Dollar Tree a while ago.
We used to have a Dollar Tree here in Fort Wayne, but no longer. We only have Dollar General, which doesn’t have anything good. (-:
Hmmm, ebay didn’t send me an alert about this stuff. Good thing, because I’m on a buying freeze – necessities only (newly unemployed). I have some of the erasers, including one I used at my previous job that I left in 1998. It never seemed to wear! nothing in blister packaging, though.
The sharpeners are cool, although the plastic is a bit flimsy.
I was in my mid thirties during the Yikes! height and got my limited fix at Walgreens. What does this say about me?