The Scent Of Crayola Crayons Is Among The Twenty Most Recognizable Scents To Adults

Each year, on March 31st, children and adults pick up their favorite colors for National Crayon Day. Opening up a box of crayons opens up a world of imagination and hours of fun.

• 50 AD – Wax paintings first appeared in Ancient Rome.
• Mid-17th Century – The word “crayon” is first used in French and Latin, meaning a colorful stick of chalk or wax.
• 1813 – The first time the term “crayon” was used in a literary sense was in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
• 1885 – Crayola began its life as a company in 1885 when cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith took over a pigment business that Edwin’s father had previously owned.
• 19th Century – With Paris considered the world’s artistic hub, crayons of pure wax are produced for the first time here.
• 1903 – Binney & Smith created the Crayola Division and produced colored wax crayons for children for the first time.
  • The first Crayola crayon box sold for a nickel. It included the same colors available in the eight-count box today: red, blue, yellow, green, violet, orange, black and brown.
  • This color mix, along with their names, remained unchanged for 45 years.
• 1904 – Binney & Smith presented their An-Du-Septic chalk at the Colombian Exposition in St. Louis, winning a gold medal.  The chalk was designed to be dustless at many teachers’ requests and was an immediate success.
• 1962 – Crayola changed the name of their “Flesh” crayon to “Peach”
• 1972 – Crayola introduced its first specialty crayons in 1972, called the “Fluorescent Crayons.”  These glow-in-the-dark crayons added excitement to art projects and appealed to kids’ love of novelty.
• 1996 – Even Mr. Fred Rogers had his hand in the history of crayons by molding the official 100 billionth crayon in February 1996 at the Crayola plant in Easton.
• 1998 – The 64-pack of Crayola crayons was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998.
• 2003 – To celebrate its 100th anniversary, Crayola unveiled the world’s largest crayon – over 15 feet long, 1300 pounds, color blue.
• 2017 –  According to Guinness World Records, Ashrita Furman of Jamaica, New York, created the world’s largest crayon in October of 2017. The crayon measured 17 feet 1.1 inches (5.21 meters) long and was 1 foot 5.7 inches (.45 meters) in diameter.
• 2020 – Crayola launched the “Colors of the World” collection, featuring 24 shades designed to match a wide range of skin tones.
• The name Crayola comes from a combination of two words created by the founder’s wife. It combined craie, which was French for “chalk,” and oily, to create the company’s brand name.
• Wax and chalk-based crayons have been used by artists around the world for centuries.
• Crayons have one of the most recognized scents in the nation. The odor is a result of stearic acid — a derivative of beef fat — added to the batch to give the coloring tool its waxy consistency.
• The scent of Crayola crayons is among the twenty most recognizable to American adults
• America’s favorite crayon color is blue.
• Crayon stubs are informally known as “leftolas.”
• Alice Binney, the wife of Edwin Binney, came up with Crayola by combining the words “craie,” which is French for chalk, and “ola,” for oleaginous, because crayons are made from petroleum-based paraffin.
• One of the few independent buyers of Crayola crayons is artist Herb Williams. He’s known for creating sculptures made up of hundreds of thousands of crayons, which he buys from Crayola in packs of 3000.  
• Emerson Moser, who worked for Crayola for 35 years, was color blind.
• On average, children between the ages of two and seven color for 28 minutes every day.
• Crayola manufactures around 12 million crayons every day. That’s enough to circle the Earth almost five times annually if placed end-to-end!
• “Cerulean” became famous after being referenced in the film The Devil Wears Prada, highlighting its cultural impact beyond art.
• 120 – the number of colors Crayola crayons are available in.
• 50 – the number of crayon colors retired by Crayola.
• 3 billion – the number of crayons produced by Crayola in a year.
• 18th – the ranking in terms of how familiar the crayon scent is to adults.
• 1962 – the year when Crayola changed the name of their crayon ‘Flesh’ to ‘Peach.’
• 15 feet – the length of the world’s biggest crayon.
• 223 billion – the number of Crayola crayons produced to date.
• 730 – the number of crayons used by the average kid by the age of 10.
• Red barns and black tires got their colors, thanks in part to two of Binney & Smith’s earliest products: red pigment and carbon black. Red and black are also the most popular crayon colors, mostly because children tend to use them for outlining.
• Over time, the colors have changed, and the names have become more creative. Some of the most interesting Crayola crayon names include:
  • Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown
  • Robin’s Egg Blue
  • Tropical rainforest (blue-green)
  • Macaroni and Cheese (yellow-orange)
  • Razzle Dazzle Rose
  • Purple Mountains Majesty
  • Tickle Me Pink
  • Granny Smith Apple (medium green)

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Good Housekeeping

Wacky Uses

Days of the Year

National Today