Pentech Ultra Sharp.

Product: Pentech Ultra Sharp

Manufacturer: Jakks Pacific Inc., Malibu

Description: Wood No. 2 pencil with eraser that uses erasable liquid graphite through a ball point

Price: $3.19 for a package of three at Rite-Aid

Jakks wanted to give students a pencil that would never need sharpening, so they could be used for those standardized tests that often stretch on for hours.

While the Ultra Sharp looks exactly like a wooden pencil, it doesn't quite perform as well and costs nearly 10 times as much.

At first glance, the only thing distinguishing the Ultra Sharp from a regular wood and graphite pencil is its metallic ball-point tip; it's basically a tube filled with liquid graphite in a sheath of wood.

Unlike a pencil, which can write upside down, the Ultra Sharp only leaves consistent lines if held in the standard pen position.

It erases very cleanly, but not quite as well as a regular pencil. It's extremely sturdy, much harder to break than even a plastic ballpoint pen. And even when snapped in two, the liquid graphite was nearly impossible to coax out of the tube, so even in the worst-case scenario, your shirt's safe. Still, the old-fashioned No. 2 does much the same job as the Ultra Sharp, at about $1.69 for a pack of 20.