Color Me Olive Green?

While reading My Mom's Blog, Millie comments on her love of crayons and coloring, which sparked my curiosity: wonder what Crayola is up to these days? Can't you just close your eyes and remember the first days of elementary school in the fall when you had a brand new box of Crayolas and the delicate scent that wafted out when you opened them? Greedily refusing to share your pink and red when your seat neighbor had used her own all up on valentine hearts? Having attacks of quick anger at spoiled brats whose mothers bought a 64-count box instead of the 16-count box listed on the official school supply list? Crayola envy is not pretty.

Now, I consider myself to be fairly hip and up on what's sort of cool. I am not overly fond of the blue M&M's, but I can get along with them. Last time I purchased crayons, Crayola still had the nice big box of 64 crayons with the neat built-in sharpener on the back. (Okay, so it might have been a few years ago.) Whoa, Nellie! Crayola now has more ways to Color My World than "Chicago" could write lyrics about. I never imagined crayons would need to be politically correct but check this out:

"The Crayola 16 count Multicultural Crayons come in an assortment of hues that gives a child a realistic palette to color the people of the world. The 16 different colors (olive green, apricot, black, white, raw sienna, cerulean, sepia, silver, goldenrod, burnt sienna, mahogany, salmon, burnt orange, periwinkle, peach, and tan) are for coloring skin, hair, eyes and smiles. These crayons are recommended for children ages 4 and older."

Multicultural. I wanna know what race is Burnt Orange, other than an Irish carrot-top too long in the sun, or maybe Pattie in 1969 with a botched application of Coppertone QT (way before "Endless Summer", dahlings)?





You can even purchase 64 crayons all of the same color if you are psycho about it. Play here with your mouse to see all the color choices. Sixty-four crayons of "Pig Pink". What kind of sicko wants a double handful of oinking crayolas? If you click on "Favorite Mixes" you can select a customized sampling of crayons for "Heavy Metal", or "It's a Girl (nope they lay off the pig pink), or my choice: "Ocean", with varying hues of blue. There is even a selection called "TV Dinner". Yuck. As a child of the Aluminum Tray Processed Whale Puke frozen food era, this has zero appeal.

Then, I found a link at The Crayola Store that I thought would be nostalgia heaven. You can buy a box of 64 crayons that includes "retired" colors. Now, Ronni might take umbrage at Crayola's choice of wording for discontinued shades, but I was expecting to see color names such as Thistle, Brick Red, or Cornflower in the set of old-fashioned hues. Nope, try Mulberry, Teal, Magic Mint and Blizzard Blue.

Oh well. I suppose I can accept all the Crayola changes as long as I can still buy a "Wendy, the Good Little Witch" coloring book, or maybe "Baby Huey". What? No Wendy or Baby Huey?

Crapola.