So a friend sent me this, thinking I'd get a kick out of it, and it was fun. But it triggered me autistic infodumping about the topic for like ten minutes, running around my house to get pictures for illustration lmao, so I figured I'd share this weird little cassette lesson with y'all!
So the joke here is, of course, that a pencil will fit into the cassette wheel to manually move it, rewinding the tape that has come out. Not true! While a standard #2 pencil is the perfect shape for the job, it's too small. Isn't tight enough in the cassette wheel to rotate it, just spins in place.
So you don't use a pencil, you use a pen. Specifically, a BIC pen will fit the wheel perfectly and rotate it easily. But this joke with the pencil doesn't come from nowhere. The reason it used a pencil is because most people think a pencil is how you do it, and there's a reason.
See, the pencil is the wrong size... in America! But most cassette manufacturers are Japanese companies (Sony, TDK, Maxell, Nakamichi, etc.) and in Japan, the standard pencil size is bigger while the shape is the same. As a result, in Japan, a pencil IS the perfect tool for the job.
And those Japanese manufacturers bringing their products to the US and Europe during the 70s and 80s would translate their cards, but not change the pictures. So while it never quite worked, the pencil is shown on every cassette instruction card as the tool to rewind an unwound cassette.
As a bonus, another tool that fits perfectly? Finn's sword from the deluxe edition of the 3DS Adventure Time game works like a charm, and is usually what I use :p
