Crayola Crayon Facts
The first box of eight Crayola crayons retailed for 5 cents in 1903. Modern children can choose from 120 different shades, including 23 reds, 20 greens, 19 blues, 16 purples, 14 oranges, 11 browns, eight yellows, two grays, two coppers, two blacks, and one each of silver, gold and white.
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Company History
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Cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, owners of a pigment company, developed crayons in response to requests from teachers for better art materials. The brand name Crayola was created by combining the French "craie," or stick of color, and "ola," from the word oleaginous, meaning oily. According to the Crayola website, nearly 3 billion Crayola crayons are produced annually. The company has maintained headquarters and manufacturing facilities in Easton, Pennsylvania, since the early 1900s.
Color History
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Only eight colors were found in the original 1903 Crayola Crayons box--red, green, blue, yellow, orange, violet, black and brown. Beginning in 1949, Crayola added new colors to make a 48-crayon box. In 1958, 16 new colors joined the line, and a 64-crayon box, which featured a built-in crayon sharpener, appeared on the market.
For the first time, eight crayon colors were retired in 1990, including green blue, orange red and burnt umber. They were placed in the Crayola Hall of Fame and their replacement colors bore descriptive names such as cerulean, dandelion, jungle green and wild strawberry.
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Name Changes
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Over the years, the company has voluntarily changed the name of three crayons in response to public sentiment. Prussian blue became midnight blue in 1958, and flesh became peach in 1962. Indian red was changed in 1999 to chestnut. In 1992, Crayola introduced a box of 16 multicultural crayons, intended to give children an assortment of skin tone-based colors.
Consumer Involvement
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In honor of Crayola's 90th birthday in 1993, the company introduced 16 new colors. Consumers were invited to submit names for the new shades. Purple mountain's majesty, razzmatazz and shamrock were some of the winning names, and now appear on Crayola labels.
Manufacturing Process
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Crayola crayons begin with powdered pigment added to liquid paraffin wax. The wax is first heated, then poured into cylindrical molds, with one mold making 2,400 crayons. After the crayons are cooled by water, they are hydraulically ejected from the molds and sent to an automatic labeling machine. Packing machines then collate the colors into the assortments sold in stores.
Fun Facts
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In 1998, the Crayola crayon was featured on a U.S. postal stamp. In the same year, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., added a 1958 64-count box of Crayola crayons to the permanent collection of the National Museum of American History. In the year 2000, Crayola performed an online color "census" to determine Americans' favorite crayon colors. Blue turned out to be the most-liked color, with 6 shades of blue--cerulean, midnight blue, periwinkle, aquamarine, denim and blizzard blue--voted onto the top-10 list.
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References
- Photo Credit crayon boy 3 image by Paul Moore from Fotolia.com
