The "So, What's Your Favorite Crayola Color?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking at the colorful Crayola crayon canvas that hags on the wall in my office that was made for me by my oldest grandchild, Courtney.  She made it for me in 2013 when she was eleven years old.  

This artwork is by Courtney Mencarini and given to her Tampah in 2013.

 Pretty neat, and the colors brighten the room, even on a dreary day.  And...we've had our share of those lately.  She used 35 crayons glued to the top of the canvas and warmed with a heat gun until they melted and the colored wax ran down the canvas.  I began to read the names of the colors and realized that some of them don't exist anymore.  But, before I tell you which colors do not exist anymore, I should give you some background on the Crayola Crayon factory that is about 50 miles to the east of my home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  It was in 1903 that Crayola released its very first box of colored crayons.  There were only eight colors in the box: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown and black.  Since that day in 1903, they have released more than 120 different colors including colors named periwinkle, denim and Caribbean green (one of my favorites).  But during that time, they not only added colors, they discarded some of them also.  One of the colors that has been deleted has an unusual background behind it.  

The very first color: Prussian blue

The color Prussian blue was actually invented in 1704 by a chemist in Berlin, Germany.  The color was so popular that it lasted longer than the empire for which it was named.  The Kingdom of Prussia was dissolved in 1918 after World War I, but Crayola added it to their lineup in 1946.  But, it only survived 12 years when they changed the name to "midnight blue" because of complaints that the name wasn't "Cold War sensitive."  In 1958 they also added "Indian red", but once again that caused a stir due to its racial connotation, and that was dropped finally in 1999 and renamed "chestnut".   In the 1960s, when the United States was at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Crayola renamed its flesh crayon to "peach."  Then in 1990 the company decided to permanently retire eight colors that no longer appear in boxes of Crayola crayons.  Those dropped were: Maize, Lemon yellow, Blue gray, Raw under, Green blue, Orange red, and Orange yellow, and Violet blue.  To replace them they added these new colors:  Vivid tangerine, Jungle green, Cerulean, Fuchsia, Dandelion, Teal blue, Royal purple, and Wild strawberry.  

All these colors were eliminated in 1990 at a mass retirement party.

Then, after a century of business, Crayola decided to get rid of five more colors which included: Blizzard blue, Magic mint, Mulberry, Teal blue, and Burnt Sienna. In 2017 Crayola shocked the world when they said, while on a retirement tour across the USA, they were going to retire the color Dandelion, or Dan. D as they called the animated crayon character.  To replace Dan D., Crayola asked their fans to name a new crayon color and they came up with "Bluetiful."  So, do you have a box of Crayola crayons in one of your drawers in you home or apartment?  Why not?  They were invented by cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith in 1903 and a box of 8 sold for a nickel.  Colors were black, brown, blue, red, purple, orange, yellow and green. Crayola got its name from the French words for chalk (crane) and oily (oleaginous).  Today Crayola makes over 100 different types of crayons including crayons that sparkle with glitter, glow in the dark, smell like flowers, change colors and wash off walls and other surfaces.  So, if you have some time to spare and want to try something different, buy an empty white canvas and glue your crayons across the top, heat them and watch them melt across your canvas.  You might be the world's next best artist.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.