09/11/2026
Fun Fact Friday! 🖍️
That little box of crayons from your childhood has a surprisingly colorful history—and it starts long before coloring books and classroom art projects.
The company behind Crayola began as Binney & Smith in 1885, producing industrial pigments such as carbon black and the red oxide used in barn paint. As the company moved into school supplies, conversations with teachers helped reveal a need for an affordable, dependable drawing material that children could use without the mess of some earlier artists’ crayons.
Crayons themselves weren’t new, but the use of wax with colored pigments created a firmer, cleaner stick. In 1903, Binney & Smith introduced its Crayola crayons for children. The first box contained just eight colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown and black) and sold for five cents.
Even the name has a story. Edwin Binney’s wife, Alice, a former teacher, coined Crayola from craie, the French word for chalk, and ola, from a word referring to something oily.
And that “Gold Medal” on these old boxes? It wasn’t won for crayons! Binney & Smith received a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair for its dustless school chalk and proudly displayed the award on Crayola packaging for decades afterward.
The boxes pictured here also represent two different Crayola lines. The smaller No. 8 boxes were school crayons, made for everyday classroom use. The larger Rubens assortment was aimed more toward art students and artists, offering a much wider range of colors.
By 1939, Crayola offered an assortment of 52 colors, but WWII changed the crayon box. Wartime shortages made some pigments difficult to obtain, forcing certain colors out of production. After the war, Crayola reorganized its palette, and in 1949 a new 48-color assortment appeared, like the Rubens box shown here.
From teachers and industrial pigments to a World’s Fair medal and wartime color shortages, there’s a surprising amount of history tucked inside something as simple as a box of crayons.
Do you remember which Crayola color you always reached for first? 🖍️ Comment to share!
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