Planner Review: Easy Tiger Pocket Planner

When I was wandering through the corporate card shop. Yes, my office actually has a card shop in the building! I stumbled across the new Easy Tiger planners. There are two sizes available — this pocket sized edition (5.5×3″ for $18) as well as a larger desk-sized edition (5×7.5″ for $35). I decided to take my chances with the smaller pocket edition and Jesi will be reviewing the larger edition later.

The planner is hard cover wrapped with real fabric. The text appears to be screen printed onto the cover so it will quickly show wear which I think will be nice. The fabric, of course, picks up lint and pet hair like crazy so be prepared to live with that or keep a lint roller handy.

Inside, the pages are printed in a combination of red and black ink and in the front of the book is cocktail recipes. THIS is what sold me on the planner. That, and the fact that every goofball holiday is listed on the weekly calendar pages. Want to know which day is Houseplant Appreciation day (January 10)? It’s on the calendar. While I need to write various meetings and such on my calendars, what might keep me inspired to keep using my planner is to be able to look up and discover what day is International Space Day (May 3).

There is also a couple pages of Common Grammar Errors, Social Media Acronyms, Weights & Measures, and a page for lists (Want & Need/Pro & Con). There is the usual, useful stuff too like the year-at-a-glance calendars for 2019 and 2020 and a page to write your contact info should your planner go missing.

The weekly pages include the week count across the bottom and the day count but in a cheeky way — “another one down –  49 weeks to go.”

The weekly calendar is a Sunday start rather than a Monday start which, after all the Japanese planners, takes a bit of getting used to but most Americans are probably more accustomed to the Sunday start. The weekly pages are a week on one page so there are two weeks per spread.

The month-at-a-glance is set up as a list which is pretty common in European planners. Saturday and Sunday are highlighted in grey with a month over two pages. There’s a dotted line in the middle of each day on the monthly pages though I am not sure how to utilize it.

I wasn’t certain how this planner would behave with my pen tests and the book is also quite small so I planned my pen choices accordingly. The likelihood of trying to use a BB or 1.1mm stub in a book this small is pretty foolish, Due to the overall size of this planner, the line spacing is pretty tight so I tested mostly fine and EF pens whether they were fountain, rollerball, felt, etc. I’m not going to be using a brush pen with this.

The widest I attempted was my Ranga Bamboo with the fine architect nib but it was pretty tight writing on the lines anyway. I am more inclined to use fine Japanese fountain pens, gel pens, pencils or rollerballs with this planner. Pairing this with a Pilot Vanishing Point or a Caran d’Ache 849 ballpoint with a fine point refill would probably be a great combo. It would be pocketable and easy to add quick notes.

That said, most fine and EF fountain pens wrote on the paper with no bleed through or show through issues. The Ranga had a little bit of bleed through which may have as much to do with the ink as the slightly wider nib.

I didn’t get a photo of the back but printed on the back is says “Proudly designed in Kansas City, MO Wave when you fly over” which always tickles me.

Do I like this planner? Yes. It’s irreverent and fun. Is it entirely functional? That’s yet to be determined as it is pretty small but it feels durable with the hardcover covers and the paper is pretty good quality. Not many sassy planners out there complete with cocktail recipes and all the holidays (When is National No Beard Day? It’s today.). I’m looking forward to putting it to use.

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Reminder: I work at Hallmark but no one asked me to write this review and I paid for this planner with my own money. For more info, see the About Us page.