About Sakura
Sakura Color Products Corporation was founded in 1921 in Osaka, Japan, originally making crayons and watercolors for schoolchildren. In 1984 the company invented the world's first gel ink formulation, releasing it in Japan as the Ball Sign 280. When Sakura's North American arm, Sakura Color Products of America, launched in Hayward, California in 1986, the pen was rebranded for the US market under a new name: Gelly Roll, which became the name generations of writers now use for gel pens generally.
The invention was formally recognized in June 2000, when Sakura received the Award of the Director General of the Japanese Patent Office for the gel ink roller ball. Sakura's catalog runs well beyond pens, including PIGMA Micron archival pigment fineliners and Cray-Pas oil pastels, but the Gelly Roll line remains its best-known US product, expanded over the decades to include opaque metallic inks (introduced 1997) that write on black and colored paper, plus glitter and shimmer finishes for journaling and craft use.
Brand website: sakuraofamerica.com
What Sakura makes
Sakura's range runs wider than the products we review. The lines we know best from our own testing are marked with a star:
Gelly Roll gel pens
the original gel ink, including metallic, glitter, and shimmer finishes — featured on DeskRated
PIGMA Micron fineliners
archival pigment ink drawing pens
Koi Watercolors
student and professional watercolor sets
Cray-Pas oil pastels
Sakura's original oil pastel line
Craft and drawing supplies
sketchbooks, pencils, and erasers
Why we recognized Sakura
The DeskRated Top Brand recognition isn't paid for and can't be applied for. We award it to the brands whose products consistently stand out in our hands-on category reviews. Sakura earned it on the strength of the products below, evaluated the same way every product on this site is: bought, used at a real desk, and judged on merit.
Sakura products we rated highly
Sakura Gelly Roll Classic Gel Pens, Medium Point, Multicolor, 10-Pack
This is the pen that started the gel ink category, and in our testing it's still the only one in its class with archival-quality, acid-free, fade-resistant ink built for documents, signatures, and artwork that need to stay legible for decades. Its opaque pigment ink is the only formula in our lineup that shows up clearly on dark, colored, or glossy paper, and the 10-pack gives journalers and mixed-media artists a curated set of archival colors in one purchase. One of our top picks for anyone writing or creating on surfaces other than plain white paper.
Read the 7 Best Gel Pens of 2026 guide →What earned Sakura the recognition
- Invented the world's first gel ink formulation in 1984, a chemistry breakthrough later honored with the Award of the Director General of the Japanese Patent Office in 2000.
- The Gelly Roll's opaque, pigment-based ink is the only formula in our gel pen testing that writes cleanly on dark, colored, and glossy paper.
- Archival-quality, acid-free, fade-resistant ink formulation makes it a standard choice for signatures, records, and long-term artwork.
- Over a century of manufacturing history (founded 1921) behind a product line that now spans pens, archival fineliners, watercolors, and oil pastels.
- A sustained 4.7-star rating across nearly 4,000 reviews on the exact 10-pack we tested.