How easy was it to Tipp-Ex your club's crest onto your pencil case at school?

[EIM]

Everyone knows that all the top lads, the real boys, drew their club's crest on their pencil case in Tipp-Ex. Some used biro, some did it on their exercise books, but the faces, cool cats, lads, lovers and dancers did it on their pencil case and used Tipp-Ex.

Forest fans, of which there were a few at school, had it easy. Their simple line drawing of a tree was easily rendered. I always liked the Sheffield Wednesday owl logo of the early 90s. I reckon I could have Tipp-Exed a dead good Sheffield Wednesday owl. Manchester United's crest was less easily reproduced, though I tried, my version even including the football boots adidas added in 1991. In the end though I settled for the clearer, cooler, rakish MUFC stickman.



There must have been some right difficult badges and crests to draw though. Intricate and complex works that required a GCSE in technical drawing to get right. A less skilled draughtsman would leave his pencil case covered in an unrecognisable white splodge and would spend the rest of the term being called "spaff case" until he got a new one from Smiths in the sale.

So. How easy was it to Tipp-Ex your club's crest onto your pencil case at school?

[Greenlander]

My best mates dad claimed to have designed that Sheffield Wednesday owl of which you speak.

[Sits]

I wasn't a Reading fan as a kid, I was an Ipswich fan. But I never attempted a Suffolk Punch on my pencil case. It was all bands. I liked drawing the Motörhead skull and gothic writing. But not Tipp-Ex, always Ball Pentel.

That's how far I was from cool.

Most of my mates were Gooners; they had it easy.

[3 Colours Red]

A Liver Bird is just about doable. The Wrexham crest is fucking impossible - the Prince of Wales feathers are crammed in and the two dragons holding the ball are far too fiddly.

Unless you had incredibly fine motor skills and one of the squeezy Tipp-Ex pens to more easily control the application, any fine details would get a bit lost.

[longeared]

My best mates dad claimed to have designed that Sheffield Wednesday owl of which you speak.

It was designed by a student with no interest in football at a Sheffield college in about 1973, so if your best mate's dad meets those criteria then the story is true.

And yes the owl was wonderfully easy to draw on a pencil case. Still is, I did one on a beach with a stick a couple of summers back. We'll overlook the fact that the chairman changed the badge.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

A Liver Bird is just about doable. The Wrexham crest is fucking impossible - the Prince of Wales feathers are crammed in and the two dragons holding the ball are far too fiddly.

Unless you had incredibly fine motor skills and one of the squeezy Tipp-Ex pens to more easily control the application, any fine details would get a bit lost.

There was a graffito of LFC that overlapped, so the bottom foot of the L would extend through to form the middle bar of the F, and the top bar of the C. The three letters then stepped down in a way that would please gardeners who install water features. It could also be used to overwrite swastikas, as a surprising number of kids had them on their pencil cases in the early 80s.

[Jah Womble]

The swastika was, of course, adopted by young punks as a 'shock' symbol in the late seventies. I'd wager that most of the genuine types from that era are pretty embarrassed about that now.

Obviously I had the cockerel on just about every surface. (My being a decent draughtsman even at school age, it generally looked decent. Indeed the only other Spurs fan in my class used to get me to do his, as well.)

Have to admit that I've never seen the Man Utd 'stickman' before now. The only problem with it is that it doesn't obviously resemble the requisite initials.

[slackster]

At my NE London secondary school I was convinced one of the reasons some fellow pupils plumped for West Ham was the ease of scribbling the crossed hammers on bags, books, bog doors, walls and other student sundries. And apart from being the perennial bridesmaids to sexy neighbouring Irons, Spurs and Arse - Orient’s Wyvern crest was far too difficult to draw. And it didn’t get easier when we doubled up on the tricky bipedal dragons either. No wonder only 1 other chump from our year was an O’s fan.

[Mumpo]

My best mates dad claimed to have designed that Sheffield Wednesday owl of which you speak

A colleague of mine designed the new Morecambe crest a few years ago. Unfortunately he used a prawn rather than a shrimp as source material. You'd be surprised (or perhaps not) how many people noticed.

[Stumpy Pepys]

The Bolton crest was fairly easy with a biro, but I never attempted it with Tippex.

[Felicity, I guess so]

The swastika was, of course, adopted by young punks as a 'shock' symbol in the late seventies. I'd wager that most of the genuine types from that era are pretty embarrassed about that now.

Obviously I had the cockerel on just about every surface. (My being a decent draughtsman even at school age, it generally looked decent. Indeed the only other Spurs fan in my class used to get me to do his, as well.)

Have to admit that I've never seen the Man Utd 'stickman' before now. The only problem with it is that it doesn't obviously resemble the requisite initials.

There's a PhD student in my dept. wrestling with shock aesthetics in punk (porn as well as swastikas). As I told him I genuinely did not ever dream of wearing one, even at 14 in '77 I was more of a defaced union jack kinda fella (lot easier to get hold of that year, too...) and not long after joned RAR and ANL, so became convinced against the idea.

We never had tippex- maybe when I was doing final year dissertation. At school, it'd have been sniffed and thrown around. There were a few hand-written crests, but we had a long-running game of designing our own kits for various teams and I'd do loads of Gladbach ones. As it happens the 'B' logo with the striped rhomboid would be a piece of piss, even with my 'handless' draughtsman skills.

[Sits]

Some had it easy

[Patrick Thistle]

Looking back, this would have been dead easy to draw. I don't think I ever tried it though.

[Tony C]

They didn't have Tippex when I was at school. However in the grand HMHB manner I did draw it on the sole of my slippers with a biro.

[Kevin S]

I suppose in my mind it would have looked like this but the reality was a far chunkier, wobblier and less detailed effort.

[Greenlander]

It was designed by a student with no interest in football at a Sheffield college in about 1973, so if your best mate's dad meets those criteria then the story is true.

And yes the owl was wonderfully easy to draw on a pencil case. Still is, I did one on a beach with a stick a couple of summers back. We'll overlook the fact that the chairman changed the badge.

His dad might have been having us on then, but there might be a grain of truth too. He's a big Wednesday fan though no way was he a student in the early-70s, too old. However he was certainly living in Sheffield and lecturing at an Art College in the city back then, so just maybe it was someone in one of his classes.

[ad hoc]

It was designed by a student with no interest in football.

He's a big Wednesday fan though

There's not necessarily a contradiction between these sentences

[treibeis]

I'm surprised these hard lads had pencil cases in the first place. I never did. I'd have got the shit kicked out of me for it.

[Gangster Octopus]

Yeah, I never had a pencil case either.

[EIM]

You went to school like a hundred years ago or something. Pipe down, gramps.

[Gangster Octopus]

Oi, treibeis, he's ragging on your age...

[Nocturnal Submission]

Oi, treibeis, he's ragging on your age...

There's going to be trouble when he wakes up from his nap.

[treibeis]

Oi, treibeis, he's ragging on your age...

Yes, but he's at that difficult age. Late thirties. They pretend they're young with young people and old with old people. The pencil case caught him out. He didn't know where he was.

[Sporting]

I remember desks with ink wells. I always managed to stain my white shirts with fountain or cartridge pens.

[treibeis]

I remember desks with ink wells. I always managed to stain my white shirts with fountain or cartridge pens.

Fucking hell, you must be 200 years old or what. Our desks had ink wells, but not even the teachers knew what they were for.

"I managed to stain my white shirts"? Fuck off.