A True Crayon Experience

 

I found some crayons at The Shops at Willowbend today.  I was heading to another store but was drawn into the Crayola store. More specifically, I was drawn in by the comforting smell of thousands (tens of thousands?) of fresh Crayola crayons.

A lot has changed since old folks like me were little kids. Wooden Lincoln Logs are now made of plastic, they put a talking chip in GI Joe action figures and even outlawed lawn darts. What they haven’t changed is the look and the smell of crayons. 

Crack a yellow and green box of 8 or better yet – 64 crayons and you will be transported back to that first week of school in the elementary grade of your choice.  

Crayons for children were first created in 1903 by the Binney and Smith Company.  The two cousins began producing slate pencils for schools around 1900. They next created dustless chalk and one year later perfected the non-toxic and colorful Crayola Crayons. Many have tried but no company has come close to competing with Crayola.  

The Crayola store at Willowbend is part of the Crayola Experience – an interactive crayon playland in the mall that looks like a fun way to kill a winter afternoon with the grandkids.  For now, I settled for browsing the attached store which had every imaginable variation of Crayola product.

The store showpiece is an entire wall of fresh crayons where customers can pick out their favorites and create their own box set. I’m sure it was the aroma of those open-air crayons that drew me in. Every imaginable color was displayed with the date the color was “born.”  Over the years, many new colors have been introduced while others have been retired but here they all were for the picking. 

I found three old “crayon friends” along the wall whose names brought back coloring book memories: Brick Red, Cornflower and Periwinkle.  I think it was the names more than the colors that I remember. Red, blue and purple just don’t have the same allure to a budding artist.

It’s not just the smell or the names that has made crayons so popular. Coloring is one of the first activities we learn to do on our own. A toddler or an eight-year-old can get satisfaction from putting a crayon to page. They choose the color, they pick the subject and create their own refrigerator masterpieces with a little stick of wax.  Coloring is much more than the busy work some parents and teachers think. It’s a license to create within or outside the lines. 

Another reason might be the billions of crayons Crayola drops on the world each year.  The company estimates that it produces 12 million crayons per day which rounds out to about 3 billion per year. That’s a lot of crayons!

I took my three old “crayon friends” home for a quarter each. They now live in my desk where I can open the drawer and catch a whiff of crayons instead of that stinky Elmer’s Glue. 

Send your crayon memories to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com