What: Mr. Pen is a store for kawaii stationery & home goodies
Where: 683 Bloor Street West (Korea Town; Between Manning and Clinton) / Toronto
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Mr. Pen is just over a year old! I recently visited to reap the benefits of their 15%-off sale (goes until June 20!) in celebration. Every time I step foot in the kawaii paradise, there are so many different things there. They’ve really found a way to maximize their space in order to order more of the cutest things ever.
When you enter the store, you’ll be overwhelmed at first notice of all of the stickers, notebooks, stamps and pens before you. As you continue through, you’ll find tapes, sticky notes, charms, keychains, erasers, stationery, postcards, pencil cases, wrapping paper, etc.
When you come upon the back section of the store, you’ll find the housewares: tea sets, mugs, lunch containers, backpacks, stuffed animals and so much more.
My favourite purchases from Mr. Pen have been stickers, sticky notes, stationery and washi tape. I’ve also found some adorable floral tins.
I am not the type of person to deck myself out in big obvious kawaii, or tote around erasers shaped like poo, but I think it’s all adorable and I like observing the culture. I get more smaller kawaii things (I have a really cute white-out roller that has little bears all over it). I also don’t necessarily feel like owning pencil cases that have English words spelled wrong on them, either.
The staff are always very smiley and nice, and don’t fret when I knock all the things over like I am prone to do.
I am super grateful for this store as I haven’t seen anything like it downtown, not even in Chinatown. Go Koreatown! I hope Mr. Pen makes itself comfortable on Bloor. Every time I go in, there are more and more customers, so the best is yet to come!
I recommend their products for: kids birthday parties, cute collections, letter-writing.
Holy s..tationery! I had a mini heart attack. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a store like this!! Great find, I’m not into kawaii stuff either, but the notebook and sticky notes sections makes me want to throw buckets of money in this shop.. oh my!
Godness me! I have dropped my jaw and I can’t put it back. It is wow. Why can’t they make at least a little store like this in my city? It’s ridiculous when there’s no stationery store in a country capital.
I love it there. You found a heaven 😀
wow. what a store! would love to be here but then again its a danger for my pocket i reckon. LOLs!
Have you noticed Stationary is spelled wrong? Not being a dick but I notice things like that.
If you mean on their store sign, I have… you said it! 😉 It is also one of my biggest pet peeves.
Dufferin Street on the East side, North of Eglinton. There’s an auto body shop (Forest hill something) with a lovely expensive illuminated sign and they spell it Enviromental. Argh!!! You can see it in google street view. Glad I’m not the only one who delights in this kind of OCD.
The sign IS correct. FYI know that there are two spellings and two meanings to each version of the word. Basic grammer and spelling. It’s always a must.
Actually it’s spelled correctly. If you know English there are two ways to spell it and two meanings. Stationery=paper goods and stationary=to be idle and not move. So next time know the difference between the two. I know this post is old but it’s a pet peeve of mine when people make mistakes without fact checking first.
Well the store is inconsistent and unfortunately the permanent sign outside has a mistake.
I’m not sure about the Auto Shop. If it is a name your barking up the wrong tree. Misspelled words are not uncommonly chosen as names, and a name can be almost anything.
I just went there yesterday! I didn’t see that many mugs or bags :((( But there were still lots of great pens.
Well, this post was three years ago, haha! I find they change some stock fairly often – I’m surprised there weren’t mugs or bags though, I’ve seen those the last time I was there.