BEST SELLERS

…with a highlighter, you’d have one of these mega-handy and ultra-cute Mini Brightwriters®. Measure approx 2” long x 5/8” oval, with chisel tips, molded grips and pocket clips. Our each is (4)-pack in green, pink, yellow, and orange, with which nothing rhymes with.

If you make cool stuff, people will pass it on to your children’s children’s children and you won’t spend eternity as just an old picture on a lost thumb drive. We suggest: Making Inventive Wooden Toys, a 184-page paperback with plans for (33) toys, many of them ballistic, out of scrap wood and easily found hardware; or Making Poor Man’s Guitars, a 176-page paperback with detailed instructions for building string instruments out of cigar boxes, frying pans, tin cans, mailboxes and washtubs, with a beer-can microphone thrown in.

The Woodworker’s Shop Journal is a hardcover book with (100+) pages of 1/4" grids for project planning and sketches, plus (20+) pages of quick references, charts, lumber specs, tool guides, checklists and tips. Also a good place to keep passwords and other personal information because burglars are famous for not caring about carpentry skills.

The next best thing to lightning bolts! 200,000 volts of electrostatic energy created by our Van de Graaff generator. Measures 6-1/2” diameter by 15” tall, includes a spare belt and a set of instructions detailing lots of fun experiments. For grade 6 and up. This is not a toy and should be used under adult supervision. A great tool for teaching about electricity. For your convenience, we now have Lightning Belts: replacement belts to drive that overworked generator. Operates on Standard 120 VAC with the included 3' cord.

This political globe (i.e. with country boundaries) measures 11” dia, a tad larger than a standard basketball (which is 9.55” dia), and comes on a 7-1/2” base with latitude marked on its bracket. Shipped in two halves--all you have to do it push them together, although you should also feel free to use the halves as stylish bowls.

Undated, universal calendar has (50) month-long sheets, so it's good almost until your brand new car's paid for. Stick it on the fridge with the strip magnet on the back. Sheets are 8" x 6" with a 5-week x 7-day matrix that you fill in. In two shades of blue with orange highlights.

There's nothing better for long, lonely days than watching critters in the back yard, and this National Wildlife Federation® paperback, Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife, shows you how to expand your local menagerie beyond squirrels and sparrows. Includes (17) wildlife-friendly projects for the entire family in (168) pages with more (200) color photographs. Contains instructions on getting your yard or garden certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat, too. Be the first on your block to be able to say that at a cocktail party.

This is your chance to own a genuine cow magnet. Fed to cows by vets and farmers to attract the odd metallic parts of cows' diets (they tend to scarf up nails, staples and other stuff with the grass) and prevent bovine traumatic reticuloperitonitis, also known as hardware disease. Used for lots of magnetic lab experiments because they're so handy. In plated alnico, 3" long x 1/2" dia in a rounded tubular shape. Approx a 5-lb pull.

Let’s say your old pencil case has seen better days, or you’ve added pens to the collection and you now need a second case. Good luck finding a cooler one than this one. Made of crushable black polyester, it has a large clear vinyl window on top and (the best part) a bridged double-zipper. That’s two zipper pulls moving as one, courtesy of the black strap connecting them. Nice action on the zippers, too. Case measures approx 8-1/2” x 6” x 2”, and it’s not partial to pencils. Fill it with craft supplies, prescription bottles, toiletries, batteries, rubber bands or just about anything you can pull from your junk drawer.

Physics project alert! This robust puppy of a magnet has dual 6V coils and stands 4" high x 3-1/4" wide, not counting the side terminals. Each coil draws 2.4A at 6VDC, and is conservatively rated for 40 Newtons (approx 9 lbs) at that voltage. Can be wired in either parallel or series, and comes with a mounting hook. Works great with a 6-volt lantern battery.

You can’t beat the original, genuine, authentic, standard, classic, fine-point Sharpie® permanent markers with the pocket-clip cap. But maybe you can! Limited edition, color burst Supersonic Yellow and Power Pink! Packing a powerful punch. Accept no substitutes, unless we say it’s OK. Our each is a pack of two!

You don't have to be a scientist to love these science and lab notebooks. All new, mostly hardcover, most with graph paper pages, some with lines, all with numbered pages and room for project or experiment names and dates. In a nutshell, they’re big, blank books that are as suitable for your diary entries, drawings, poems, collages, shopping lists and hand-written great American novel as they are for science notes. A few have university, lab or drug company names on the front and most are 8-1/2” x 11” with some a little smaller and some a little larger. (But Surplus rules apply: you get what you get without throwing a fit) Can you say “assorted”? Our each is a pack of (2) different, at least one of which will be a hardcover.

Says so right on the packaging. Measures (pun intended) 18” long x 1-1/2” wide. Has 1/32” increments for the first inch, then 1/16” on one edge and 0-45cm in 1mm increments on the other. Made in England of blue-tinted translucent plastic. (There is no legal penalty for using it at home or in a school.)

Same here, but we're just 150 miles from Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, the troll capital of the world, so we have a special devotion to the little long-haired cuties. Troll along with us and grab anything that appeals to you: Good Luck Trolls is a “hair-raising journal,” an 8” x 6” hardcover book with scattered trolls and blank pages for you to write down your deepest troll thoughts; the Mad About Trolls activity book has (24) pages of fun, quizzes, puzzles, stickers and general trollishness; and the fun Trolls' card games and book of tricks includes a deck of cards with, yes, Jacks, Queens and Kings of Trolls, plus troll tricks. If all this makes you want to visit Mount Horeb, don't miss the National Mustard Museum, either.

The human body is a puzzle, really. Get a head-start on anatomy class with one of these anatomically correct breakaway models in authentically colored plastic with detailed cross-sections. Pick the 2" tall, 7-piece eyeball; the 3-1/2" tall, 6-piece human heart; or the 3-3/8" tall, 6-piece rubber and plastic human head/skull/brain. All stand on 3" square bases.

Actually, it's a Round Stic®, without the “k,” which is the name BIC® gives to its #1 selling ballpoint pen. They're black, and round, with black ink and medium points. Also have separate caps with pocket clips. Hard to go wrong at (10) for two bucks. “Writes First Time, Every Time®,” they say.

Same here. We suggest Erasable Me, the re-markable magnetic wall calendar kit for people whose lives won't stand still. Includes a 16” x 12” magnetic whiteboard calendar, an 8” x 6” notepad, a pair of two-color erasable pens (black/red and blue/green), (2) whiteboard erasers, and a cute little yellow Q-man pen-holder. For ages 6+.

A must-have for micro-warriors; Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction by John Austin (author of the best-selling Cubicle Warfare) is 241 pages of detailed instructions for building (42) implements of spitball warfare from ordinary household objects and office supplies. With the caveat that this is written for responsible individuals who take reasonable safety precautions (don't do anything your mother would scream at) we have to say that we love the binder-clip crossbow and the tongue-depressor catapult. Volume 2, which is 251 pages, has a secret-agent flair with new gadgets like the push-pin dart, toothpaste periscope and cereal briefcase. Volume 3, 267 pages, continues with a Medieval flavor and over a dozen catapults and ballistae, plus a buncha bows and crossbows. Oh, just buy the whole 3-volume Library of Destruction and get it over with.