8/2/2006

Remember: always bring the Crayolas
By Tom Range, Sr.

Savvy parents never fail to pack a supply of crayons in their Vacation Survival Kit.  Invariably there will be rainy days during which motel room-bound children "won't have anything to do."  Some scrap paper and crayons will keep them occupied, at least for a few hours.

The most prolific of crayon makers, The Binney & Smith Company, with its registered trade name Crayola, was incorporated in 1902.  Its founders, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, began producing the Crayola brand in its mill in Easton, PA, in response to a need for safe, quality, affordable wax crayons.  The Crayola name, coined by Edward's wife Alice, comes from "craie," the French word for chalk, and "ola" from oleaginous or oily.  Their targeted customers were primarily art teachers in school districts.  They marketed their crayons in boxes of eight, containing the colors yellow, red, orange, blue, green, violet, brown and black.  The eight-crayon box sold for a nickel.  The school children were so enthused with this new product that demand mushroomed as the tots demanded their own boxes.  The U.S. government even bought the crayons for its Indian reservation schools.

The Depression and World War II caused a slump in sales but the post-war baby boomers, the first generation to grow up with its own boxes of crayons, created a huge demand for Crayola crayons that soon made them a hot consumer product.  The eight-crayon selection grew into 16 colors.  Added to the basic eight were combinations of colors such as yellow green, blue green, carnation pink, white, red orange, red violet, and hot magenta.  In 1949, Binney & Smith came out with newer color combinations in a box of 48 crayons.  By 1958, the company debuted its box of 64 crayons with a revolutionary built-in crayon sharpener.  To fill the 64-crayon box new and exotically named colors were devised, the names sometimes being suggested by their youthful customers.  The more outrageous named Crayolas currently available include unmellow yellow, wild watermelon, atomic tangerine, neon carrot, tickle me pink, and macaroni and cheese.  It would take the discerning eye of a Van Gogh or a Renoir to detect the difference in hue between, say, "macaroni & cheese" and a normal combination of "yellow orange," but what do grown-ups know?

There have been only three instances when the company has changed the name of a Crayola while still keeping the original color.  In 1958 "Prussian blue" became "midnight blue," the teacher/purchasers explaining that Prussia had virtually disappeared as a country from the European map so their students could not relate.  A second instance of name changing occurred in 1962 when "flesh" was converted to "peach" with the realization that in the global economy the pink-like "flesh" described a relatively small percentage of the skin color of worldwide customers.  The third instance occurred in 1999 when the color "Indian red" became "chestnut" in deference to the country's Native-Americans.  In accordance with various international trading agreements, notably the North American Free Trade Agreement, Binney & Smith adopted labeling their colors in French and Spanish, as well as English.

In inventorying the contents of a kid's crayon container, it usually being an emptied tin cookie box, one can find what appear to be rip-offs of the Crayola products.  Examples: eight "Crayons" labeled in English and made in Indonesia, six "Fun Crayons" in English made in China and one "Crayon" in English made in Thailand.  There were even eight items wrapped in replicas of U.S. paper currency bearing the legend "Made in Mexico by Dixon-Ticonderoga."  Only Binney & Smith products bear their trademark "Crayola."

In 1984 Binney & Smith became a wholly owned subsidiary of Hallmark Cards Inc. of Kansas City, MO.  Over the years the company has introduced various products including "Washable Markers" and more sophisticated crayon products for artists.  In 1977 it had acquired the rights to Silly Putty.  Both Silly Putty and the legendary Crayola 64-count box of crayons have been added to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

So when next the reader is confronted with children and grandchildren on a rainy day, get out the cookie/crayon box and the scrap paper and enjoy a day with Binney & Smith's Crayolas.


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