Dandelion crayon pulled from Crayola box
After 27 years, the crayon color dandelion is taking early retirement, making way for an upstart in the blue family, officials with the crayon company Crayola said Friday.
This was not the first time the company has retired colors.
In 1990, eight shades — maize, lemon yellow, blue gray, raw umber, green blue, orange red, orange yellow and violet blue — were retired and eight new ones, including the yellow hue known as dandelion, were introduced.
In 2003, four other colors were taken out and four new ones introduced.
Crayola this week counted down the days leading up to its formal announcement of dandelion’s retirement on Friday and posted teases on social media that sounded more like a promotion about the pending demise of a soap opera character: “One will say goodbye!”
Despite the countdown, the company posted the color’s retirement on social media Thursday with a jaunty video.
A company official could not be reached on Friday to explain the premature announcement.
NPR reported that a Twitter user Thursday posted a photo of a box of Crayons on sale at a Target emblazoned with “Dandelion is retiring! Get it now!”
On Crayola’s Facebook page, crayon fans lamented retirement of the color.
“I’ll tell you where I want Dandelion to go,” Rebecca Leach Sadowski wrote. “Right back in the dang box where it belongs!!”
Heather Brame posted that she was watching the announcement as it was broadcast live on Facebook.
“Sitting here watching this Crayola announcement instead of cleaning,” she wrote. “We are supposed to be adults but we are all here waiting to know what crayon is leaving.”
The strong attachments to a color came as no surprise to Mark Bieri, a manager at DaVinci Artist Supply on West 21st Street in Manhattan.
“People are very attached to a particular color,” he said on Friday. “It’s very personal.”
He said when a manufacturer discontinues a particular paint color “there’s always a reaction.”
As for the staying power and interest in crayons, Bieri noted that adult coloring books have gained a following. And then there are the childhood memories evoked by holding a box of crayons, as Bieri was doing during a telephone interview.
“I remember having a large box of colors like this as a kid,” he said. “When you open that box, it has that nostalgic smell.”
According to The Associated Press, the company says it will leave it to fans to come up with a name for the replacement color.
It’s only the third time in Crayola’s long history that it has retired one or more colors, and the first time it’s swapped out a color in its box of 24.
Crayola crayons were first produced in 1903 by Binney & Smith Co.
Crayola is based in Easton, Pa., and is a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards Inc., headquartered in Kansas City, Mo.