Quantcast
Viewing all 59 articles
Browse latest View live

Rare and Not Rare: A Visual look at Crayola crayon color names you probably haven't seen


Every collecting hobby has its items that would seem to the average person to be rare but in reality are quite common.  I saw this when I collected beer cans years ago.  Everyone asked about "Billy Beer".  You know, the beer in a can that the President's brother produced.  The reality is that it was such a novelty, nobody ever threw any of them away and so the market is flooded with them.  I got tired of hearing about them or seeing them over the years.

When it comes to Crayola colors, there's a bit of the same pattern going on.  Crayola has played into the public's thirst for colors and publicly called out a few colors where they have changed names for one reason or another.  They have also officially retired many colors.  Both of these moves have prompted the general non-collecting public to think that any color renamed or any color retired must be "rare".

Take "Indian Red" as an example.  Crayola said they renamed the color to "Chestnut" to avoid anyone from thinking they were politically incorrect by using the word "Indian" after we'd gone to "Native American".  Of course the joke with that is that the color name stems from India for a plant used as the original source for the color.  Now, they could have changed the color to "India Red" and cleared up that misconception but rather than potentially open up another can of worms referring to India, they completely renamed it.



Does that mean that "Indian Red" as a Crayola crayon color is rare to find?  Not in the least.  Perhaps after a 100 years it might.  But the reality is that they used the color for 96 years before changing the name.  There are a lot of "Indian Red" crayons out there still as a result.  It isn't rare at all.

That brings us to the most infamous renaming of a color.  The 1962 Flesh to Peach renaming.


I probably get more mail and see more comments about "Flesh" than any other color Crayola has.  Let's get to some facts on this one:

- Yes, it was renamed to Peach in 1962.
- No, "Flesh" is not rare.  It was used for decades in many assortment sizes.
- No, "Flesh" isn't about people's skin color.  Look at your palms...it represents that color.  Every person in the world, regardless of skin color has essentially the same color on the palms of their hands.  That....is what flesh represented, not the pigmentation.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The story, which I've already documented on my web site, is a bit more complex than Crayola just renaming it in 1962 because of the "Civil Rights Movement".   In reality, it started out as "Flesh Tint".  This was a common color used in painting and other industries.  In fact, it is still used in some industries.  As for Crayola, they used "Flesh Tint" from 1903 until 1949 when they dropped the "Tint" portion and left it as "Flesh".  They used that until 1956 when they renamed it to "Pink Beige".  That name only survived for two years and was only found in one box of 48 colors during that time (the 64 colors box hadn't been introduced yet).  By the time they did introduce the No 64 box, it got named back to "Flesh" again.  This time though, the name only lasted until 1962 when they renamed it "Peach".  Yes, it has been over 50 years since we've been using crayons with the "Flesh" color name but the reality is that there are many boxes that have survived from the era when they did use it.

So...is "Flesh" a rare color?  Not as "Flesh" it isn't.  I wouldn't even say that "Flesh Tint" is very rare.  You can find it in nearly every 24-color Rubens Crayola box from the early years and there are a lot of examples of those boxes out there to find.  However, "Pink Beige" is an obscure color because of the only two year run of it and the fact that it was only found in one assortment size.  That's not to say you can't find one without too much difficulty.  I see that box come up on eBay several times per year.  Whether they have that color in it is always the question because many of these are used boxes.  And whether they have a decent unused one is even rarer.  Still, they are out there and not really, really hard to find.


And that brings us back to retired colors.  Whether it was the original 8 they retired back in 1990 or some of their "newer" colors that were retired later, none of these crayons are necessarily rare.


The complexity in Crayola's color history is that while they have publicly retired or renamed many colors, there are so many more that have simply vanished from their color palette without any fanfare.  They've renamed things without any publicity.  It is some of those that bring on the rareness factor.


Let's look at "Light Blue" for example.  I've written about this one often.  There is a "Light Blue" that was used for a box of crayons back in the 1910s for the E.C. Charleston department stores (which later merged into becoming Wolworths).  That crayon is very rare.  I know of only two.  One in a surviving box and one that got into another older Crayola box (which is quite common to have the wrong colors in a used box you find).

They put one in the very first No 64 box when it debuted in 1958.  This was a completely different color from before and was so close in color to "Sky Blue" that it was dropped from the assortment within months of coming out.  The only other assortment I've seen it in was the No 72 box as they were prototyping that one to come to market around the same time.  Nevertheless, this is still a reasonably rare crayon.



Their renaming wasn't only in the earlier years.  As late as 1997 they had introduced the color "Torch Red" but quickly changed it to "Scarlet".  It is a hard color to find now but it can be found if you know what boxes it is in (see my article on the website).


Many of Crayola's earliest colors are fairly rare just because there aren't many examples of those assortments that have survived.  Colors like Van Dyke Brown, Celestial Blue, English Vermilion, Lemon Yellow, etc. are probably colors few have.  Many of these don't have the color name right on the crayon itself.  In some of the earliest Crayola assortments, they only printed the color name on the box and used a numbering system on the crayon wrapper to tell you which color it was.  For color collecting purists, that is not the same as seeing the color name right there on the wrapper.


But Crayola's color history is full of obscure and rare colors.  "Gamboge Yellow" was only available in a hex style crayon and didn't appear in a lot of assortment sizes so it isn't that easy to find.

As the years went on, Crayola did more and more outside promotions, events and other activities that have created colors most of the casual consumer wouldn't even know existed.


Colors from exclusive restaurant chains such as the Chili's colors above are an example of now difficult to obtain Crayola colors.  None of the restaurants use them anymore and few people thought to keep them beyond just coloring with them in the restaurants so they can be hard to nearly impossible to find.



My best example of that is the color "Mirtilla Blueberry".  A reader sent me a picture of one she had because it was her favorite color from the Macaroni Grill color set.  Now, I had already acquired and documented what I thought were all the Macaroni Grill Crayola crayons but I'd never seen that one and yet there it was.  To this day, I still don't have one as I've never seen another.  To me...that is rare!




Back in the late 1990s Crayola dabbled with partnering on children's VHS videos by putting special 4-color sets into the clamshell video cases.  These were unique color names on the crayons made specifically for the movie.  As such, they are fairly obscure and take awhile to get all the sets.  Here are a couple of examples.



Some colors just fly by and almost get missed by the collecting community.  Take for example 9 scented colors that were in a Walmart exclusive box only just back in 2009.  I personally know of only four boxes that have made it into the hands of collectors just because they were gone so fast.



Others were held for an event that might have been obscure enough that only a handful of people even had an opportunity to get the colors.

An example of that is the Scarlet Pimpernel colors.  A benefit was held on January 27, 1998 at the Roseland Ballroom in New York.  They showed a play called "Scarlet Pimpernel" and along with the play, Crayola created four new color names and put them into a generic four color box to hand out at the performance.  These are quite rare now.



Another example are game events where Crayola made up special wrappers for players with unique color names as a promotion.  Few of these survive.  I know of two full sets for the Philadelphia 76ers.  I have one set.  There were also a couple of colors made for the Philadelphia Eagles and given out but I've only seen one box survive and be sold on eBay and unfortunately I wasn't able to win that auction so I don't even know the crayons.  I've never seen another example of them show up.



Other really rare Crayola colors are ones that are exclusive or only show up internally at Crayola (but occasionally leak out).  Examples include the "Colors of Binney & Smith" company celebration set they gave to employees back in 2003.


These were never intended for the general collector community or public and each of the names are a bit of company insider information/stories.  Another example is the "carbon black" commemorative they handed out to employees in 2011.


 There are also two very exclusive colors made specifically for special people.  The first was "the Color Purple" which was made only for Oprah Winfrey and presented to her on her show back in 2006.



While I know this is an extremely rare color not available to anyone, I actually have one because I have connections.  They did another event in 2009 for author Eric Carle in which they came out with this special color:


I missed this one and only knew about it because it came up on eBay (however I missed the auction).  They gave them out at a small celebration so there are some around but I consider it a very rare Crayola color.  Of course, I'm biased to what I personally don't have.

Speaking of what I personally have, sometimes geography creates rarity.  Such was the case for Crayola crayons in Europe.  When they converted Fluorescent crayons to other crayon names, they used different color names in Europe than they did in the USA.  This has created five colors that I believe I have the only examples of in the collecting community.


These were from 1990 and have so far only been found in a larger assortment from the UK during that time but conceivably they might be in a Neon/Fluorescent box from the UK from that era too.  It's just that very few UK boxes surface in the collecting market.

Crayons available in Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries sometimes had unqiue color names but they were found in many different assortments over the years so they are obscure but not truly rare


Still, they aren't colors you normally see.  There are many other one-off crayons.  Some are rare, some are not.



This Eastern Arts Association crayon from 1960 is quite rare but it doesn't have a unique color name so it it not as desirable.  Below, the True Blue special crayons aren't that rare so if you see one out there (and you probably will), don't get too excited.


There is also inaccurate information out on the internet.  Imagine that!  If you search on the rarest Crayola crayon you might find a Yahoo Answers reply about a "Plaid" color and how it was only put into so many 250-color assortment boxes because it was so expensive to make.  The story is a complete fabrication.  Crayola never made a plaid crayon and they never have had a 250-color assortment size.  200 is the largest and all the colors they can offer up at one time anyway.  Just beware of people making stuff up.  I try and correct these where I can.

Macaroni and Cheese is another color name full of variations, some which are very rare.  I'd done another post on color name variations and some of the variations are hard to find but perhaps only a couple of these are truly "rare".


And finally, Crayola is still providing rarity.  Just this year (2013) they did a Facebook only promotion of 8 renamed original colors to celebrate their 110th anniversary.  If you don't do Facebook, you probably missed out as they were limited and exclusive.  I don't think they'll be truly rare just because a lot of collectors caught it and bought up a bunch of them.


And occasionally, they do something you have no idea if they are rare or not because they are so foreign as in the case of these "Anpanman" crayons from Japan.


I guess we can end the discussion of rarity by suggesting that perhaps one of the rarest of all their colors is the infamous "C-Rex" color crayon from 2003.  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese had a contest and the winner would find a single Crayola crayon inside one of their boxes.  There was only one and the winner got to keep the crayon along with their prize for the contest.  Crayola themselves don't have a record of who won so who knows if it even still exists.  I'll leave you with the box it came in.




Reunited after 99 years

Recently, a Rubens-Crayola No 200 box came up for auction on eBay.  It sold for nearly $300 and I was fortunate enough to win the auction.  I've personally been waiting 12 years to see one of these.  It's one of the only boxes I'd never seen in pictures, ads or in a collection.

I already had a very clean version of the Rubens-Crayola No 500 box.  I've had that one for years and the crayons inside are unused.  There are very few of these around either.  I know of only two.  For years I had the only one that had ever surfaced to the collecting community and then another, much rougher condition one came up on eBay.

I often wondered what the No 200 looked like.  I guess it never occurred to me that it would be a smaller version of the No 500 but that makes perfect sense given all the other sizes look the same (but not like these two).

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I put the original No 8 box beside these to give you a comparison of the sizes

As I put the newly acquired box up into my collection, I thought, "I'll bet a pair of these haven't been together for at least 50 years, maybe more!" It has been nearly a hundred years since they were available for sale at retail.  They ran these from 1903  until 1914 and that was the last time we saw Crayola use the large sized crayons for many, many years.

That leaves me with just two of the original boxes to acquire.


 Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.


I've personally seen one of these boxes.  There's a No 49 in the Smithsonian in the National Archives.  As for the No 57, I knew somebody years ago that had one.  She might still have it but it's been about 10 years and I'd lost track of her.

Sometimes collecting is a slow process.

Readers emails and back stories

I get a fair amount of emails to the crayoncollecting.com website.  Most of them are inquiring about the history, age or value of some older crayon box they came across or have.  But sometimes, readers share a story or a perspective I would never have gotten from my research.  Sometimes family members will contact me with more information about a small company that I wasn't able to find much history on at all.  I also like to get the back stories of boxes when I see them up for auction.

Here are a few that I'll share with you:

1. Crayola No 41


After having the only known surviving canister for many years, a second one showed up on eBay.  It was very rough and not all of the crayons were in it.  My unopened canister came from a family that lived very close to the Crayola factory and the father of the farm collected various boxes from the executives that came down from their offices in New York to visit the factory.  Back in 1903 you couldn't just stay at a hotel, you had to stay at farm houses.  Theirs was one such farm house.

Earlier this year another pretty decent looking canister showed up on eBay as well.  That makes three known.  This one was opened (which splits the paper across the middle of the canister).  The owner of this particular canister was asking way too much money for the market at the time.  The recent recession evaporated nearly all the high dollar collectors from the marketplace and its taken time to rebuild that up.  Recently a Rubens-Crayola No. 200 showed up on eBay and sold for $278 but that box had never surfaced before and so it was much rarer and more in demand.  Now granted, the No 41 canister is the only wooden canister Crayola did and it did only run for about seven years, but the seller wanted $500 for it.  That was more than even the unopened version I have went for on auction back when there was a lot of demand for rare crayon boxes.

But I was curious where they got their canister so I asked.  I turns out that they found it inside of a child's toy tool box at an antique sale.  Talk about a treasure within a treasure!

2.  American Pride Penny boxes


Sometimes I have to publish advertisement images of boxes that haven't surfaced in the collecting community.  They might be out in the world somewhere but until somebody gets it to me, nobody has a picture of it to know what it even looks like. Fortunately there were a few periodicals that featured images of crayons in advertisements from the early years.

This American Pride box was a "penny box" from American Crayon Company back in the 1920s.  Many crayon companies did the penny boxes.  They cost a penny back then and they were used to entice consumers to also buy their larger assortments.

Recently, a large number of these came up for auction on eBay.  I again asked about the source of such a large number.  Usually, the back story when you see a lot of clean unused crayon boxes is that they were in a store that had been closed for years, that they were in a warehouse that had been closed but not liquidated or that somebody had bought an entire case of them and kept them for some reason.

In this case, it was the latter.  Apparently these came from E. Y. Allen, a noted collector in this area of Va., who recently died by his own hand just last year at age 92.  He refused to go to a nursing home and just ended it all. From his estate, in addition to a variety of guns, collector plates, books, paper and ephemera was a RoiTan Cigar box full of these crayons.  There were 40 boxes in all.  While this sort of floods the market for this particular box, it's fun to see and here stories of this kind because one never knows what else is out there waiting for collectors.

3.  Repurposing

I'll share a story from Mal O'Neil who wrote me earlier this year with a fond memory he had from a crayon box.  Here it is Mal's words:  "As a child, I owned crayons from a few different brands -- Crayola, RoseArt (ugh!), Alco, Penway...  One day, having run one crayon down to its wrapper, I peeled the Penway wrapper back just a bit -- only to discover a second wrapper! With an unfamiliar design and bearing the name of a different company! Flying Eagle!  I cautiously peeled every one of my crayons then, and probably regarded all new crayons from then on with a degree of suspicion, but I never found another infiltrator; nor have I ever even seen Flyin' Eagle crayons. Eh, still a mystery to me." 



Sometimes collectors can solve a mystery.  In this case, I was able to send Mal pictures of a number of Flyin' Eagle crayon boxes.  Some had the "G", some did not.  All of these were produced in China which made sense to me because many crayon companies have their crayons produced out of China.  It was probably the case where the factory that produced Mal's crayons had done a run of Flyin' Eagle crayons by mistake when they should have been doing another brand and simply put wrappers over the mistake.  The other possibility is that whichever company Mal's box was from, they had bought out Flying Eagle's crayon stock and were reusing it.  That happened to one of Crayola's crayon experiments several years ago.  They tried a lower quality brand called  "Doo Zee" for awhile but they failed.  They must have sold off the remaining inventory of crayons because another collector friend found them in a different crayon box later on that wasn't associated with Crayola at all.

4.  Private Detective

Finally, I'll share a story from another reader.  Unfortunately I couldn't locate the emails but one of my readers had a child's name written on one of his older boxes of crayons.  They researched and actually found the son of the woman who wrote her name on the box.  Alas, the woman had died just the year before after having lived well into her 80s.  Her son didn't seem that interested but my reader was satisfied that at least he'd been able to track the family down.  I've often had names on my crayon boxes too and similarly wondered if that person was still alive and where they were.

Crayola's new Special Edition "Sweet 16" exclusive in Toys R Us is out

 This just out for the 2013 Holidays:  Target has an exclusive new 16 count box to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the introduction of 16 new colors to Crayola's color family that they put into their 96-color assortment.


The colors are listed on the back but they include:  Asparagus, Cerise, Denim, Granny Smith Apple, Macaroni and Cheese, Mauvelous, Pacific Blue, Purple Mountains' Majesty, Razzmatazz, Robin's Egg Blue, Shamrock, Tickle Me Pink, Timberwolf, Tropical Rain Forest, Tumbleweed, Wisteria


The new colors were a big deal back in 1993 and they had a national contest to name the colors.  Here's what the crayons looked like back then before they were named:


Once the contest was over, they reprinted the crayons with the new colors and the names of all the winners.



Finally, they settled back to their normal wrappers.  Here were those new colors back in 1993 when they first go their permanent wrappers.



Finally, here's what the original box looked like back in 1993 after they feature

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Crayola Big Box (Limited Edition) - 96 colors.jpg

It's nice to see Crayola keeping on top of their own history and offering up new ways to remember these events.

Now, go get your copy of the new one before Toys R Us runs out.  Good luck!

Brodhaven's Wooden Crayon Canisters

In every large collection there tends to be small sub-collections.  Crayons are no different.  I have around 3,000 different crayon boxes of various sizes and shapes and about 2,000 of those are on display.  People that first visit my collection invariably get drawn to my collection of wooden canisters.  They are one of my favorite sub-collections.


The containers are wooden and they are made by a company called Brodhaven.  They operated out of Brooklyn, NY in the 1930s and 1940s but very little is known about their history or how these were sold.  They came with 6-9 crayons depending on the container.



Some of the characters were very simple.  They opened in the middle and had no arms.  Others had arms and rifles or drums.  They also did a lot of animal containers which would have legs, a head and usually a tail.  Colors would vary from one color to mutli-colored.

 |
Perhaps the most desirable were the airplanes.  I have two different styles of these.  This one is the most elaborate.  The cardboard slides off so you can remove the crayons from the fuselage.  

With so many color combinations, there are a lot of variations to pick up.  But these containers are both rare and desirable and they'll cost you usually in the $30 - $150 range depending on what it is.


Some of the animals used a bendable neck instead of the ones that just stuck straight up.


Tails on the animals were either angled or stuck straight out.  I always thought it was humorous that to remove the crayons on these, you had to get them from their behinds.


I don't know just how many of these they made but I enjoy it when I find a new one because I already have a very advanced collection of these.

The Burden of Proof

I get a lot of crayon related correspondence.  Most of it has to do with dating and valuing crayon items people have found.  They have no other resource to turn to on the internet because I'm the only one that has done any research at all.

The other day I got a request by a magazine to substantiate my claim that Crayola debuted the color BITTERSWEET in 1958.  Apparently both their website and Wikipedia say it debuted in 1949.

That makes sense to me now.  Bittersweet showed up in 1958 during the debut of the No 64 box which was their largest assortment of colors ever.  In preparing for that, they revamped their color inventory.  They had a bunch of colors they'd bought from Munsell many years earlier and were phasing out both the Munsell reference and the more functional color names that were used on those colors.  In doing so, they renamed and introduced a lot of colors.

Once they did so, they also revamped their other assortment boxes, which included the No 48 box which was the largest color assortment size from WWII to 1958.  I would guess that Crayola dated their color by seeing it in their No 48 box and knowing that they debuted the No 48 box in 1949.  Simple.  But very little with Crayola's color and box history is simple.  In reality, the colors were different in the No 48 prior to 1958.

Here's a photo of the original:



Of course, the magazine had a lot of questions...

How do know it debuted in 1958?  Because I have all of their No 48 boxes and all of their No 64 boxes and I've inventoried and cross-checked with other collectors.  I also confirmed these against the price lists from various years.

But how do you know the colors are the right colors for that box?  Because mine are unopened and unused.

If they are unopened, how do you know what colors are in them?  Because you can still open the flap at the top to get to them but everyone opens the boxes by unsealing the flip back lid.

How do you know they have the right crayons?  Perhaps they put in the wrong colors instead?  There weren't any other colors to add to the box at the time.  If they had left out BITTERSWEET they would have had to put in a different color and they didn't have a different color to use.

What about colors from later years that got mixed in there?  The color names are printed on a wrapper.  The wrappers prior to 1955 are very distinctive and have their color names inside of the Crayola oval design whereas the wrappers from 1958 and beyond have the color names printed outside that oval design.  You can clearly see from the photo above the earlier design.  Here is the No 64 colors:



Notice the difference?

Of course, that still doesn't offer "proof".  What if they debuted the color and then dropped it and re-introduced it later in 1958?  Eventually, I went to my archive of price lists and while I didn't have anything useful from 1949, the price list in 1953 contained all of the colors for their boxes and what they offered in bulk.  BITTERSWEET was nowhere to be found on these.  In the 1954 price list, they listed every color in the No 48 box.  Guess what?  It wasn't there either and that was their full color line.

That should be the proof.  I finally left them to contact Crayola.  Why don't you ask Crayola to offer up proof that it did exist prior to 1958, I told them.  Prove me wrong!  

Oh, and as for Wikipedia...they just blindly site the inaccurate Crayola web site reference.  I've long given up revamping the Crayola color list over there because they deal in referenced information, not original research and since I'm the only research around, I'd just be referencing my own stuff.  I did that for the "Crayon" portion of Wikipedia and once had somebody tell me I'd plagiarized from my own website.  Of course, I wrote both!

Lost Forever

A fellow long time collector and friend of mine recently lost his entire crayon collection to a house fire.  And while it is thankful that nobody was hurt, they lost nearly everything.  Of course, personal family items and mementos are the hardest things to lose as those cannot be replaced.  But when you are an advanced and passionate collector, losing that collection is also very hard.  He won't start again and I cannot blame him.  He had many hundreds of Crayola boxes going back to their origins in 1903 and it would be hard if not impossible to replace.

In the collector community, which is small to begin with, he had perhaps the second largest Crayola collection in the world.  That's quite sad to hear that all of those boxes and crayons are lost forever.

I wanted to feature a few of the boxes that Spencer had that even I don't have; ones that we may not see again.

The first of these he had just recently acquired.  Probably from the late 1950s or early 1960s, nobody had ever seen this particular box before as most of the 72 color boxes were the standard designs with the house on it at that time.  There is no back story or history behind this but it would be nice to know more about it.  A shame that now none exist that we know of.



This next one is another variation of the 72 box that had never been seen before and Spencer had two of these.  I was going to trade or buy the extra from him but had never gotten around to finishing the deal and so again, the collecting world now has no examples of this design unless another surfaces somewhere in the future.



The next box is a brand that Crayola used as an artist brand around 1934 to 1937.  Spencer had the only example I'd ever seen surface.  While it isn't exactly a sexy box, it is very rare among Crayola items.



Other boxes that Spencer had that nobody else had were odd ones that had come out of Europe or were on the market so briefly that none seemed to have made it into the collecting community.  Here are a couple of examples:




Spencer, your collection was incredible, be proud of what you had while you had it.  I'm glad we have the photos to remember some of these only-one-known examples of Crayola items.

As for the rest of you collectors, may your crayon items stay safe and protected.

Finally...the 2013 Crayola Halloween crayons

I really should have posted the Crayola Halloween collection with "Tip" on each of the boxes last fall when they were out but there were so many Crayola sets to feature last year that I just never got around to it.

The set was found in most Walmart stores and unlike the Meltdown set of earlier, this set was more readily available.



The set had eight different theme color boxes, each with a different picture of "Tip" on the front.  It included:

Bewitched
Bony Bodies
Fang-Tastic
Full Moon
Goon Lagoon
It's Alive
Mummified
Once Bitten

The colors inside were not new and the wrappers were not new.  These were simply a unique selection of Crayola's existing colors put into 8-color boxes based on the theme color used.  For example, Bony Bodies contains all black/gray/dark blue colors.

This marks the fourth such 8-color theme set Crayola has done recently.  Their first and longest running were the Target ones.  After that, there were the Meltdowns, the Tip Color set and now this Halloween set.

It's been quiet as of late so we will have to see if Crayola continues to ride the theme'd set wave or not.  Fortunately for us, they always have something in the planning.

Crayon Efforts at Addressing Skin Tone Color

I do get a lot of correspondence to the web site.  Much of it people are just asking for information about a crayon item they have because there is nowhere else to go to find it (I know, that's why I got into this hobby so heavily).

But on occasion people also share interesting crayon related things they come across.  Case in point, Paul, emailed me with this project related to skin color...which as everyone knows has been a problem for crayon colors to represent all of our various pigment colors among each race.


I'll republish this exactly as the link explained it:


A Brazilian crayon brand created a set of crayons for Uniafro, a program  of the Ministry of Education of Brazil which establishes criteria for financial assistance to higher education institutions in order to promote actions for the initial and continuous training of teachers of basic education and for the development of specific teaching materials under the Affirmative Action Program for the Black Population in Federal Institutions and State Higher Education.The set of crayons represents 12 real skin tones.

The  courses, as well as teaching materials, aimed at the implementation of Article 26a of the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDB) and the promotion of the study of African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture. The intention is to contribute to overcoming the prejudices and discriminatory attitudes of racism through the application of qualified teaching practices in these subjects in basic education schools in Brazil.
Of course, this isn't the first time we've had crayons addressing the myriads of skin colors among humans.  Here are a couple of other examples:



New Crayola Colors for 2015 with their new Color Alive Product

For all of you Crayola color name collectors and fans, 2015 brought you new colors after over a year of drought from Crayola.  Those that collected containers from Crayola saw a continued stream of new boxes during 2013 and 2014 but no new colors since 2013.

As we rolled into 2015 though, Crayola introduced a new interactive coloring product called "Color Alive".  While this set of themed coloring crayons used various licensed characters and reused existing colors, each themed set brought us a brand new color.  

The new color was a special crayon that is used to activate with an app designed to bring special coloring books alive on screen.

Here's the write up of one of them:  

"A special app and the included Creepy Crawly Crayon transform coloring by activating a virtual experience complete with color effects. Crayola Color Alive Monster High comes with six Crayola Crayons, special color effects crayon, free app download, and 16 action coloring pages featuring Monster High characters for young artists to color and interact with."

Pretty interesting.  It reminds me of the movie "Big" when they came up with an interactive comic book.  Looks like Crayola has come up with an interactive coloring book and in the process has given collectors new containers and colors to acquire.

So, without further ado, here are the new colors:

Show Stopper (part of the Barbie Color Alive set)
Pixie Dust (part of the Enchanted Forest Color Alive set)
Banana Banana (part of the Minions Color Alive set)
Creepy Crawly (part of the Monster High Color Alive set)
Fire Breath (part of the Mythical Creatures Color Alive set)
Ice Blast (part of the Skylanders Color Alive set)

And yes, each wrapper is unique for these special crayons.

No word yet on whether this is all Crayola will be doing or if we will see more themed sets for this new product.  Let's hope we do!







Crayola Plunges into the Deep End of the Licensed Characters Pool

One of the interesting differences in Crayola's 100+ year history is that when compared to other crayon companies, they had very few licensed characters featured on their containers.

There were some early on such as these rarities:




But these were done in the early 1900s and are quite rare.  In fact,the Snookums box is so rare that none are known to exist so far.  I've written about that box before.  Baby Snookums was perhaps the first child movie star to have products licensed.  Alas, he ultimately died due to "blood poisoning" before reaching his teenage years.

Still, Crayola only had a handful of licensed characters clear up until this century.  Then all of a sudden we started seeing Disney boxes coming out of Asia.  You never know what is legit coming out of Asia but they looked official enough.


And in 2014 we started to see other sets using popular licensed characters show up after their huge success with the Target/Walmart themed box sets.  They suddenly had 3-box sets of Avengers, Disney heroines and Disney characters.





It is an interesting move considering the industry history.  Golden spent years using licensed characters trying to sell their crayons and history is overflowing with other companies failures to make it through the use of licensed characters.

Were these one-offs?  Is this just a passing trend or a new direction?  We'll all have to wait and see how it shakes out over time.  Still, it gives us something new to add to the collection!  For that we are all thankful.

Star Wars and Crayons

Science Fiction hasn't really been a great source of crayon licensee material in the past.  While Star Trek has had several TV series and movies, the only thing ever put out for it was from Avalon back in the late 1970s!  

Star Wars, another incredibly popular series of movies, didn't even have a crayon licensee until the early 2000s and then it was only a single Rose Art 16-color box.



Well, 2015 changed all that.  Crayola contracted with Disney who now owns the rights to Star Wars and has begun to put out various Star Wars crayon and toy items.

But it wasn't the first time they have tried anything Star Wars.  This item was released several years ago in Canada.


They have also been doing a slow production of various Star Wars products outside of their straight crayon box line:




And while most of these have been one off introductions, in 2015 we saw a full focused licensee launch of Star Wars items in time for the new movie and Christmas shopping.  For us crayon collectors, it gave us four new No 64 boxes to get.  Two of those could be found in special collectors tins.




The other two are available as straight crayon boxes in retail stores and online at their web site (among other places).




Of course, none of these introduced any new colors or wrappers inside these boxes though.

They also introduced several other items as part of their licensed catalog:




For all of us crayon collectors out there, I hope the licensee trend continues as it provides a lot of fun additions to your collection.

Crayola in 2015 - A Look Back on What's New and What's Changed

I have a little catching up to do here on the blog as I missed reporting on anything in 2014 and there was a lot happening on the Crayola crayon front.  But let's start with this year as there were many changes this year too.

The Minion set came out in 2015.  It was another set of theme'd boxes with 8 colors and available in Target stores.  The big news there was the introduction of a new color:  banana bonanza.


Each box in the set contained this new crayon color along with specially chosen colors from Crayola's catalog of active colors.  This was all for the promotion of the Minions movie that came out during the summer of 2015.  Crayola also did a Pip Squeaks set too.


There were also changes to their standard product line.  They redesigned the larger boxes (64, 96 and 120) to bring back Tip on them.  Interestingly, each box is different in design; they didn't just clone one image of Tip and use it on all three box sizes.  No changes to the color line ups here though.


There are always sets that include crayons along with other art mediums that Crayola offers and this year they also added the Crayola Color Can.  This is a combination set of Twistable crayons, colored pencils and markers.  There are 20 different Twistable crayons in this set; all of which are part of the standard color names they offer so nothing new here for you color name collectors.


But fear not, Crayola wasn't done there.  They introduced an award winning Color Alive set that features not only new colors but a revolutionary way to color and then bring the coloring into the digital world.  These are dated 2014 but showed up int 2015 to retail.  They brought us 6 new colors too which I featured in a previous post on here.


As in previous years, with the addition of all these theme'd sets and new concepts, we can happily say that Crayola is not resting on their dominance laurels at all.  And as collectors, we benefit from their ambitions.

How to Age Date Your Crayola Boxes

Perhaps the most common question I get from readers contacting me is on the subject of just how old a particular box of crayons is.

Over time, I figured this out by comparing pictures from periodicals, price lists and catalogs to determine when Crayola used a particular design on their boxes and when they switched that design for another.

And while there are a lot of very detailed minor changes within some of their box designs, a good time measurement can be gained using the following as your guide:

The Ornate:  This design was used on their crayon boxes from 1905 to 1928.  Most likely your box will be in the range from 1910 to 1928 as the first five years was used exclusively for the No 8 box and has an Eagle on the Gold Medal and not two people.  There are further age clues based on whether the box says "Paris" or "USA" on the bottom front.  The USA one is the newer of the two variations and didn't start until 1919.


The Triangle:  This design was used from 1928 to 1933.  There were two variations.  One where the flap has a similar design around the box number and one without.  The one without is the newer and didn't come out until 1932 which means it was only around two years and therefore isn't one you'll find surfacing that often.


The Cyclone:  This design was a short lived design that lasted only one year:  1934.  That doesn't mean it is necessarily rare as I've seen a fair amount of these surface over the years.


The Octogon:  This design was used from 1935 to 1940.  There are two variations to help age these further.  One will mention "USA" and one will not.  They dropped the "USA" in 1938.


The Square:  This was used from 1941 to 1945.  I actually named this one incorrectly as it should be a rectangle but the key is that it is fairly similar in design to the Octogon versions except they squared off the corners instead and they dropped the large "C" and "A" on the Crayola and used uniform letter size.


The Arch:  This design was used from 1946 to 1949.


The GM (Gold Medal):  This design was used for many years.  It ran from 1950 to 1956 and there were three different variations along the way.  The earliest two were before Binney & Smith (now Crayola) incorporated in 1955 and therefore had "Co" instead of "Inc" on them.  But the earliest of those two did not have a registered trademark symbol above the Crayola name.  That was something they added in 1953.  Also important is the introduction of the "chevrons"; those angled lines on each side of the front of the box.


The Oval:  This design was used for a very long time.  It ran from 1956 to 1978!  In those 22 years with that particular logo, they had many variations.  If the Crayola name was arched then those were the earliest of this design running from 1956 until 1965.  There were two variations.  The earliest (1956 to 1961) will not say "Non-Toxic" on the front while the later does.  After 1965 they switched over to a non-arching Crayola name for the rest of the years.  There three variations of that design too.  The earliest (1966 to 1969) will mention New York on it.  The one without it ran from 1970 to 1976.  The very last variation added reference to the size of the crayons on it and ran from 1977 to 1978.


The Wavy:  From 1979 to 1987 Crayola used a different logo on their boxes.  Over the course of that time they went from a very thin font style with the Crayola name to a very thick version.  The thin version ran from 1979 to 1984 and the other from 1985 to 1987.


The Trap:  By the latter part of the 1980s, the company split up their crayon boxes.  Those bound for retail had hanger tabs on the top of them (except for the larger sized boxes) and those going to schools or sold commercially continued with the traditional tuck boxes.  The newly created hanger tab boxes came with a trapezoid window on them that allowed you to see the crayons.  Designs with this window get confusing because they used these windows for a lot of European boxes that doesn't necessarily correspond in date to their main Crayola line in the USA.  Similarly, specialty boxes started to come out.  Many of the Fluorescent boxes used a trapezoid window on them; even tuck boxes.  Anyway, this core design on the hanger tab boxes ran only in 1987 before they moved to a new design altogether.


The DTC (Development Through Creativity):  From 1988 to 1989 they were experimenting with a whole new logo on their boxes that never really took off and they dropped it in 1989.  But during their redesign, they also went to a much brighter green color on the boxes and this was the transition from the older color hues to the more current modern color hues.  The retail version with the hanger tab also switched over to a "smiling face" open window from the trapezoid version.




The Thick:  From 1990 to 1996 they stuck with a very basic thick font on the Crayola name to identify their crayon boxes.  During this time, the hanger tab boxes had variations of what they said in their upper right.  The earlier ones would save "Different Brilliant Colors" and the latter ones "Non-Toxic".  The latter ones not showing up until 1992.


The Rainbow Underline (RU):  This design ran from 1997 to 2002 and came with several minor variations to help break down the age of the box.  If it had big green lettering for the number of crayons in the box then that version ran from 1997 to 1999.  After that they switched to red lettering.


The Smile:  In 2003 they went with the fact that their window showing the actual crayons looked sort of like a smile with crayon teeth and they designed a mock window looking just like that.  They also added a crayon squiggle logo to their boxes.  The squiggle logo only lasted until 2005 but the smile logo continued up until current day.



The Rainbow Smile (RS):  It's a bit confusing but they introduced a variation incorporating the smile and the rainbow into a design that first appeared in 2003 and was used on various crayon lines clear up to current times.  This wasn't, however, used with their standard No 8,16, etc.


The Preferred by Teachers:  On several of their core sizes such as the No 8, 16, etc. they went with a design that used a "Preferred by Teachers" on it.  There were two variations of this.  The first was in blue and ran from 2006 until 2011.  The next was in red and ran from 2011 until 2014.


Of course, there will be more changes in the future to add on to this guide and among different sizes such as the large boxes there are different aging clues.  Similarly, their other brands and crayon lines have their own distinctions or exceptions.  But these serve as a good guideline for general age across their product offerings.

Just who is Crayola's Tip?

With Crayola changing their large box core products to a new design this year featuring Tip, I thought it was time to ponder just who this character is and when he started.




Tip is the Crayola character/mascot that they use on many of their crayon products.  He is a characterized crayon.

He started to appear somewhere around 1992 as near as I can figure.  Crayola remains a bit mysterious on his origins when looking at their own web site and material.  Nothing new there.





He's been on virtually all the 96-sized boxes of crayons they put out but Tip does get around on various sized boxes, various crayon lines and even on the European, Canadian and Asian boxes.

With all the new sets featuring Tip, it looks like his popularity is growing, not fading.



It's not the first time Crayola has used other characters on their boxes though.  Let's look a some of the other characters drawn onto their boxes over the years.  Bear in mind that none of these have had the generic appeal or intent of Tip who was used on so many of their products:




First up is the Chummy Animals characters from one of Crayola's failed Toy Set line in the early 1920s.  Many of the Toy sets were themes and so there were a lot of one-off characters.  Very few of their boxes in the early days featured a lot of graphics.


For their Color 'n Smell line they used some graphics such as the nose and also the small mouse and shoe.  The earlier Magic Scents just had a couple of the objects to smell such as a strawberry or a rose.



Crayola's extension of their failed Toy Set line was their Kindergarten Outfit.  Every self-respecting crayon company had one of these in the 1930s and Crayola was no exception to this.  They used a Dutch boy and girl on their Outfits.



Of course, when they worked with other companies they sometimes had characters such as this space one they did for a Crayola giveaway in a McDonald's Happy Meal.


Their Mini Kids line in Europe always contained blocks to spell out the crayon line and featured a small bear.  Along with that, they used this bunny on this particular box.



With their multicultural line they drew in a world with kids in some way.  There were usually always four of them and they had different variations over the years on this line.



The My First line was another European crayon line that featured characters on the box; in this case a bear.



I thought I'd put this Tip box here as it isn't really Tip, it's more like "mini-me Tip" or Tip as a kid.  This was another European box.


The "My World Colors" was another variation of the Multicultural line of crayons and while different, this used the same theme of kids and a globe.  In this case there are five kids instead of four and they are more animated than real looking.


With the "Room Full of Fun" box they added a door exploding open with the force of all the stuff crammed inside.  This was a one-off for a promotional offer.



And while the school girl was never really on the front of their boxes, she was on nearly all of their original boxes in the back.  It's a good way to know if you have a vintage early box.


When they introduced the 72-color box, they originally had a box and his dog on it but those faded away with the actual launch design.


For their "State Your Color" event, where they offered everyone to help them name a color for their state, they used the outline of the states as characters on the box.  Generally all of their largest boxes had graphics whereas the small sized boxes didn't.



For awhile they sold their bulk crayons (crayons all of the same color ordered specifically or bought from a non-retail specific location) they used an elf.  This was the first version.



 Later they flipped the box up and created this version of the elf.



Here's another of the failed and rare Toy Set line drawn with characters.  This one, like the other I featured above, has never surfaced.  It is only through advertising that we know they existed.



For the Wizard's Giant Box of Crayons they featured Tip but they also added a lot more graphics to it.


This World-Pak box featured a plane and two kids as a promotional effort on travel.


As part of their Easter promotion they used this bunny and created a box with very Easter-like colors.

So...as you can see, it looks like Crayola did indeed do a lot of graphics over the years.  It's only when you inject these alongside over a thousand different boxes where they didn't do any that you realize how unique these particular examples were to their business model.


The Unusual Western Crayola Crayon Container






In the early 1960s Crayola put out a very unusual crayon item.  It was their "No 82" container which was shaped and designed as a holster and had a reusable plastic pouch to get the crayons out of.

This container is now very rare and there are probably less than five known.  It contained the large sized crayons in the standard 8 colors.

Crayola went on to use the "No 1008" container for a few years.  These weren't shaped or theme designed at all, they just continued with the reusable plastic pouch design and the larger size crayons.  They only ran for a few years and disappeared from the market.

 

Crayola's Other Crayon Products

We all just think of "Crayola" now as the company and the brand.  While the Crayola brand of crayons have been around since 1903 and dominated the market since the 1920s, it is sometimes confusing that the company had a different name (Binney & Smith) and that it has had many different crayon products other than just "Crayola".  Let's take a look.

ANTI-ROLL

 


It's unclear when these were introduced, probably some time in the early 1950s given that the box says "Co" which means they were before they incorporated in 1956.  They were one of the first non-rolling crayon with a flat side to prevent them.  They hung around until late 1970s and were then morphed over into their Arista crayon line.

ARISTA


Arista is an artist line that showed up in the 1980s and carried on the anti-roll line of crayons along with other products such as oil pastel crayons.  They are still sold to this day.

BESCO

 

Besco was a line of pressed crayons that started in 1927.  Pressed crayons are much heavier than molded crayons and are used in artistic and industrial arenas.  The brand stayed around until the late 1970s.

BLUE JAY



Although this doesn't indicate Binney & Smith, it was made by them on contract from Blackwell-Wielandy.  They did three known sizes and these are difficult to find.

BOSTON





Boston was an earlier pressed crayon product than Besco.  They started this line back in 1915 and continued with them until they transitioned to Besco.  You can find Boston crayon boxes clear up to 1932 so there was some stock overlap as Besco started up in 1927.

CERATA




Cerata was designed as a lower cost crayon line.  This was a redo of their initial Cerola crayon line that was extremely short lived.  Cerata crayons came out in 1912 with this ornate box and later they developed more standard looking boxes that weren't as interesting as during this period of their business.  They survived into the 1930s.

CEROLA


Binney & Smith's first attempt at a lower cost crayon line was Cerola and this is the only known box.  It came out in 1911 and was quickly replaced by the Cerata line.

CHIC'AGO




This is another extremely rare only-one-known box from their Chic'Ago pastel crayon line.  This was only around from 1930-1934.

CRAYOLET




Crayolet was a crayon line sort of like a "Crayola Lite" and it was more successful than Cerata because it lasted from 1926 (with another fantastic box design that was shortly lived) to the late 1970s.

DOO ZEE




Doo Zee was their last attempt at a lower cost crayon line.  It was designed to compete with all the cheap Chinese contract crayons coming in and populating stores as house brands.  It only lasted in 2001 and as it wasn't a success they sold off the inventory of crayons to a third party and various collectors found them used in something else entirely.

DRAWELL





This was another contract brand with no indication that they produced it but I'd run across some documents showing so during my years of research.  It's a mystery to me as to when they started this and when they stopped but it lived long enough of have two distinct box designs over the years.  Most likely this was 1920s to 1940s.

DUREL





Durel was a very early pressed crayon product that was introduced in 1909 and continued up until WWII when they were having trouble sourcing colors and after the war they dropped this line completely.

EASY-OFF

Easy-Off was introduced in 1972 as another washable crayon line.  They also moved to the larger sized crayons although they had used that size clear back in 1903 for a couple of their Rubens crayon boxes before phasing them out for decades.  This line didn't make it passed the 1970s though.

FUGITIVE


Binney & Smith has had a whole catalog of industrial crayon products going back to even a year earlier than their Crayola crayon line in 1903.  This is just one of many.  It is very difficult to know the run years for these.  This particular box, the only one I've ever seen, is pre-1956 though.

GOTHAM





Gotham is another industrial crayon line.  There are a couple of known examples of this brand that have surfaced.  They seem to be from the mid 1950s to early 1960s.

MUNSELL





Crayola acquired Munsell Color's crayon line back in 1926.  Prior to this, Munsell was widely regarded as the state-of-the-art high end crayon to have.  Crayola has already begun to dominate the market as the best crayon at an affordable price; something they wanted to expand upon and by buying Munsell, they grabbed the high end too.  Initially, they created Munsell-Crayola and Munsell-Perma boxes using the unique colors and by 1934 phased them out and incorporated the colors into their own evolving palette.

PERMA





Perma debuted in 1920 as yet another pressed crayon targeted toward artists.  The crayon line survived until the 1980s.

POCKET





This is another only-one-known example from Binney & Smith's industrial side of their crayons.  However, these came in a box similar to what they would use many years later for Crayola, holding four crayons.  They also used a different company name although the address is that of Crayola's headquarters at the time.  These were probably only around from 1903-1910.

POOH




Crayola didn't do a lot of licensed characters like their competitors, but they did dabble in them on occasion.  One such case if Winnie the Pooh.  These came out just for 1996/1997 and were gone.

PORTFOLIO




More recently Crayola started the Portfolio line of artist products which included oil pastels; a close cousin of coloring crayons as a color medium.  I'm not entirely sure when they started but they still produce them to this day.

RUBENS




Crayola's most famous artist line of crayons was Rubens.  These started right from the inception of crayons in 1903/1904 and continued on until they were incorporated into the Crayola line around the 1930s.

SPECTRA




Spectra was a pastel line of crayons that went back 1917 and continued on until around WWII when it also was phased out after the war.

STAONAL




Staonal is the oldest crayon line the company has.  It came out the year before Crayola and is on the industrial side of their business.  It continues in various forms to this day

TINY TOTS





It was thought early one that little kids needed little crayons as they had little hands.  The reality is they do better with just the opposite but these were targeted for just that back in 1924 when they came out.  They only lasted until 1934.

WASHABLE





Crayola was playing around with Washable crayons as early as the late 1950s.  This line only lasted a few years though.

WIDSTROK





Here's another obscure mystery pressed crayon they did.  This was an only-one-known but has since been destroyed in a fire so now no known examples exist.  Not sure what dates this ran but suspect this box ran from 1934-1937.











 
 

 
 

Crayola is Retiring another color on National Crayon Day 2017

In March 2017 Crayola has their consumers in a stir once again as their announcement to retire one of their colors from the No 24 box.  Now, whether they have said for the first time in history or whether they meant "for the first time on National Crayon Day", this is by no means the first time they have "retired" something from this box.  That is, if you take a color disappearing forever as a retirement.  Let's look at the history.


Way back before anyone can remember, the No 24 box evolved from the Rubens Crayola line.  That was a complimentary line from their Crayola line that targeted artists.  They put out their 24 color box in 1903/1904. It contained the following colors:

BLACK, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Chr. Green DK, Chr. Green L, Chr. Green M, Ch. Yellow Med, Cobalt Blue, Eng. Vermilion, Flesh Tint, Gold Ochre, Indian Red, Madder Lake, Magenta, Olive Green, ORANGE, Prussian Blue, Raw Umber, Rose Pink, Ven. Reds, Ult. Blue, VIOLET, WHITE, YELLOW (note that Chr. is short for "chrome", M is short for "medium", DK is short for "dark".

The majority of these original colors have been renamed or vanished without any publicity or public outrage.  I guess you could say they were "retired" if Crayola would only acknowledge those old colors in the first place.  As time went on, the Rubens box morphed into the regular Crayola line as the No. 24 box.  The year was 1935.  The transition was gradual as they kept Rubens (he was a master painter) face on the boxes but renamed the box.  Eventually they removed Rubens altogether.  The colors in that first No. 24 transition box with the new Crayola numbering were:

BLACK,BLUE,BLUE-GREEN, BLUE-VIOLET, BROWN, BURNT SIENNA, DARK GREEN, GOLD OCHRE, GREEN, MIDDLE BLUE-GREEN, NEUTRAL-GRAY, OLIVE GREEN, ORANGE, PRUSSIAN BLUE, RED, RED-ORANGE, RED-VIOLET, ROSE PINK, TURQUOISE BLUE, VIOLET, WHITE, YELLOW, YELLOW-GREEN, YELLOW-ORANGE.

As you can see, they have already had colors disappear from either of these boxes.  Given that the current box as of 2014 (have they changed?) has the color assortment:
apricot, black, blue, blue green, blue violet, brown, carnation pink, cerulean, dandelion, gray, green, green yellow, indigo, orange, red, red orange, red violet, scarlet, violet (purple), violet red, white, yellow, yellow green, yellow orange

So in reality, we have only five colors that still have the same name in that No 24 box:  Black, Orange, Violet, White and Yellow.  Apricot didn't become an color until 1958, Blue has changed its original color twice.  Once in 1935 and once in 1949 so the blue you are coloring on today wasn't the blue people colored on back in 1903/1904.  Besides, the original box contained Ultramarine Blue anyway.  That color was discontinued back in 1958 when they redid many of their colors for the introduction of the 64-color box.  Blue Green has only been around since 1930 as that color name.  It originally came from a buyout of Munsell Color Corp. where they inherited the unique color back in 1926 as Middle Blue Green.  Blue Violet originated in 1930 but has changed its color back in 1958 and was called Violet Blue even.  Brown has been around since 1903 unchanged but they didn't use it in the original boxes under the Rubens line, instead choosing to include Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber instead (and Burnt Umber disappeared back in 1949).  Carnation Pink has only been around as a color name since 1958 but the actual color wass the same as Rose Pink which was in the original No 24 box so that color has been there under different names for the entire time.  Cerulean and Dandelion are  relatively new colors, having been introduction in 1990.  Obviously each time something gets added to the box, something goes away.  Gray wasn't introduced as a name until 1956 because it used to be called Nuetral Gray and that color was introduced in 1926 and didn't show up until the transitional No 24 box in 1935.  Green wasn't in the original box either as they were Chrome Green colors back then (light, middle and dark).  Those colors disappeared early (middle and dark in 1910 and light in 1935 during the transition box.  Even the original Green from 1903 changed color in 1930.  Green Yellow didn't come around until 1958.  Indigo is a very recent color, introducted in 1999.  Red wasn't in the original box.  They used English Vermilion and Indian Red in it originally.  It showed up during the transition box in 1935.  The color red has stayed consistent throughout.  Red Orange, Red Violet, Violet Red, Yellow Green and Yellow Orange were all introduced in 1930 back when Crayola used a color wheel approach.  Scarlet is also a more recent color coming in 1998 from the series of new color promotions they did back then.

As you can see, the No 24 has a long history and the colors have not been static at all.  Crayola's color history is also much more complex than simply a few retirements.  Renamings and disappearances were done throughout their history.  In today's world, yes, they "retire" colors but it is no different than the dropping colors of colors from before except that now there is a big promotional production around doing so.

And while you may be happy or sad on the color they choose to retire, understand it is merely a drop in the vast color ocean of changes that have been happening all along over their 110+ year history.

 

Dandelion Retires And A New Blue Color Is About To Be Named



Now that Crayola has formally announced the retirement of Dandelion, much to ire of die-hard color customers, they are in full swing promoting the naming of their new blue crayon that will replace Dandelion.  

Of course, the big announcement on of Dandelion on National Crayon Day didn't go as planned.  Those pesky retailers already had boxes of crayons with the printing of its retirement on the box out in the retail shelves a couple of days early despite Crayola trying to control that debut date.  The crayon collecting community had word of it immediately but we didn't spoil their surprise and just waited.  Apparently we weren't the only ones and Crayola was forced to announce it early.  Okay, fine, they rolled with it and did their celebration promotion on 5th Avenue anyway.

Meanwhile, you've got an uproar in your customer base by choosing Dandelion.  These days it is odd that they are still sticking with their old ways from the 1990s by retiring colors to make room for new colors.  Really, Crayola?  Your palette is so big that you can't add a new color?  Now, I guess any publicity is good publicity (well, unless you were United Airlines recently) so this will bolster awareness and crayon sales.

Still, why couldn't they have put Dandelion on the bench and simply removed it from the No 24, 64, 120 boxes without having to take it out of their entire color palette?  Then again, we crayon collectors know that it isn't truly gone.  Right now you can order special boxes of just Dandelion.  Crayola even promotes that.
 
You can also get a huge crayon of it if you don't want to run out.  Crayola has been selling 2lb crayons recently and the retirement of one color should sell a lot of Dandelion.
 
And now with the retirement tour over, Crayola has turned their attention to the renaming contest.  They've official revealed the new Blue color.  Here's the data on it:

When a new blue pigment called YInMn (yin-min) was discovered in 2009 by Mas Subramanian, a chemistry professor at Oregon State University, we (Crayola) were very excited. This discovery is the first new blue pigment in 200 years and is the inspiration for the new blue crayon color. Now, we need your help. The new blue crayon needs a name, so submit your Name Ideas and be entered for a chance to win!

Of course, the new color created a new uproar because many felt that Dandelion didn't have a lot of close colors from which to choose in the Yellow family where as the new blue, despite the fact that it may be a new blue color pigment, many simply couldn't tell much of a difference between it and other blues.  It wasn't worth the sacrifice for another blue even though polls told Crayola that the Blue family was what their customers wanted the most.


Nevertheless, Crayola is now in full swing of their repetitive ways of doing a public naming contest to decide the name of the new Blue.




Of course, let us not forget that they did another naming contest back in 1992 after officially retiring a bunch of colors in 1990.  Which ironically, Dandelion was one of the new colors introduced through a contest.  Yes, it is a bit odd that people are crying over a color that has only been around for 25 years where some colors are over 110 years old!


Still, even if the new blue isn't exactly that different from what they already offer, it won't be their worst color blunder.  That distinction goes to the introduction of the No 64 box back in 1958 when they did a major color overhaul and put both Light Blue and Sky Blue in the original boxes.  These too colors were so identical, they quickly removed Light Blue from their color line up and quickly replaced it with Turquoise Blue, making Light Blue one of the rarer crayons to get if you collect Crayola's crayons (which many people do).






Personally, if I were head of the Crayola Marketing department, I'd be getting together with the company's corporate historian and taking advantage of their complex color heritage by introducing back some of the original forgotten colors that they have never publicly acknowledged (English Vermilion, Van Dyke Brown, Chrome Green, Gamboge Yellow, etc. etc.)  At one time I understand, they didn't have much on their history.  They do now.  They bought my private collection back in 2014 and have the physical crayons to be able to re-engineer those colors.  They have my timeline history on this website (I shared my research with them).  They could be adding to their palette through a lot of different promotions based on their history.  Companies like Coca-Cola, Levis, Nike, Harley Davidson, Budweiser do this successfully all the time.  Nobody is going to complain about adding to the color palette.  So, Crayola, embrace some new ideas by embracing your old ones!

100 Years of Colour in the UK


This box came out in Europe last year. I'll bet no collector ever saw it either. It celebrates the 100th year Crayola has been in Europe


Crayola did a Crayola Bus Tour that stopped at various retailers around the UK, and invited kids and adults alike to celebrate ‘100 years of colour’ with games, themed play areas and performers.


It went from August 24th to September 3rd. The Crayola branded double-decker bus visited locations across the UK with dedicated play areas featuring the Crayola My First and Toy products.


The tour stopped off at a selection of Toys R Us, Smyths and Hobbycraft stores up and down the country, targeting key back to school buying periods over the end of the summer holidays.
 

Pip and Tip Crayola character performers were on hand to guide families through the various games and activities. And, they produced this commemorative box to mark to occasion.



Of course, the majority (if not all) of crayon collectors are in the USA or Canada and they likely didn't catch this event and acquire the box made for it.

But the good news? As of Jun 2017, there were still 10 boxes left on Amazon.uk!
Viewing all 59 articles
Browse latest View live


<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>