I found this Crayola crayon color history quite fascinating. (Led to the link via Itchy Robot.)
The crayons started out, like our nation, quite simply, and in recent years have gone completely nuts (some might say, just like ... oh, never mind). The beginning colors were pretty much the colors of the rainbow plus brown and black.
In 1949, after World War II, we were breathing a little easier and added some more luxurious colors, like orchid, magenta, and Prussian blue. The latter was changed to midnight blue in 1958 when teachers complained that their kids didn't know it referred to the uniforms of Prussian soldiers.
1958 added some of my least-favorite colors, including raw umber, raw sienna and burnt orange. Yuck. It's like they put a massively depressed person who really hated his or her job in charge of adding new colors -- who liked these hues? Who NAMED these hues? (Raw umber got the boot in 1990. I'm just saying.)
In 1962, they realized the subtle racism of that pesky crayon world, and renamed "flesh" "peach," which does not seem accurate to me, as I was born well after '62 and I swear I remember "flesh" crayons.
Supposedly they added fluorescent colors in 1972, but that was just when my own crayon years were beginning, and the only one of these that sounds vaguely familiar is "chartreuse."
And since then, Crayola execs appear to be on Crayola crack, because the colors they've been adding are loonytunes. Macaroni and cheese? Timber wolf? Purple mountain's majesty? Fuzzy wuzzy brown? Inch worm? Jazzberry jam?
Apparently they let Martha Stewart choose others -- antique brass? Fern? MANATEE?
Sometimes they just appeared to be naming colors as the result of lost bets, how else to explain how there is both a "brink pink" and a "pig pink"?
Somewhere along the line, "Indian red" got renamed "chestnut," even though it supposedly referred to ink, not skin. That color was the topic of one of my favorite Bloom County strips ever -- they discussed the whole renaming of flesh to peach, and there was silence for a moment until another character drops the bomb: "Still got Indian red, though." (Damn, I miss that strip.)
The whole history page fails to discuss however that it wasn't the specific colors that determined your crayon coolness, but how many different colors were in the box you had. Everyone could have the 8-pack, but possessing the 64-color box, with built-in sharpener, meant you had well and truly arrived.
11 comments:
I think macaroni and cheese, timber wolf, and purple mountain's majesty were among the crayons named in a national contest. Around 1996, I think? For a while, those crayons had the names of the winners on them. So, mildly crazy, yes, but not entirely the fault of the Crayola company.
Pleast let me know when they add "architectural colors". My boss at the engineering firm I work for once told me to choose "architectural colors" as a basis for a Powerpoint presentation.
I remember "flesh" crayons, but they were from K-Mart's house brand. I don't remember any Crayolas called flesh; it was always peach for me and I was born in 1976.
Macaroni and cheese and the other "crazy" names were were named by the national contest, as spygirl said. It says under the "Colors Available 1993" heading: "16 new colors added in 1993, named by consumers." I remember the contest (I was about 11 or 12 at the time) - I think the actual colors came out a year or two before they got their names so that people could see them to name them. I remember trying to think up names, but I don't think I entered any in the contest. Personally I liked the names - the "macaroni and cheese" color really is exactly the color of the Kraft food.
Hey, I used to have that 64-pack with the built-in sharpener! That was the coolest.
Hi Gail! Been reading for about a month or so, check out our favorite web superhero, Spidey, reviewing crayons on x-entertainment
http://x-entertainment.com/articles/0913/
Penny
"they put a massively depressed person who really hated his or her job in charge of adding new colors" LOL.
I had the 72 pack one that came in a glass case. I felt so special carrying it to school. It really was a status symbol.
My living room is painted 'manatee'. Now I am going to tell people, helpfully...."you know, like the crayon?"
Cool post.
I'm a youngun, so for me the first major change in my life was when the flourescent colors went from "ultra _____" to their new stupid names. That was the beginning of my anger toward Crayola.
However, the removal of important colors like green blue & orange red was the last straw for me. I didn't stick around long enough to find out about Asparagus and Timber Wolf. It took a very upsetting babysitting job for me to find out about those.
Damn Crayola.
Wait wait wait…. I was born in 1982... And I KNOW I had a flesh crayon in my day! and my friend here who is a year older also says she had flesh. She even remembered the transition when she got a peach in her box instead. So someone is telling a lie!
This is so funny because I named one of the crayons in 1993 - the ugliest one ASPARAGUS. I was 7 at the time and I can hardly remember anything about it other than receiving a huge certificate and a "golden" box of crayons. I remember you had to write a little essay about why you named the crayon and I said something like "I don't like asparagus and I don't like this crayon." If you named a crayon you got a trip to disney world. Unfortunately there were 3 other people who came up with that name and a 37 year old woman had a better essay than me (go figure). So is my mark on the world in crayon? Lets hope not because I really can remember squat about this experience. BUT it is a fun piece of trivia for cocktail parties.
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