64 Crayons And Nothing On: The Smell Of Burnt Umber In The Morning

Crayola's 64 box of crayons, with a built-in sharpener, was the big prize for school kids back in the day.

Transcript

00:0064 crayons and nothing on, the smell of burnt umber in the morning.

00:05In the beginning, crayons came in boxes of 8, barely covering the basic rainbow, plus

00:10black and white.

00:11White actually became a rainbow of its own as it steadily picked up all the other colors.

00:17We thought we were happy enough with the basic 8, but then Crayola moved up exponentially,

00:21releasing boxes of 16, then 32 crayons.

00:26Boxes no longer had to be yellow or brown, they could be shades of pink or peach.

00:30Shades could be raw, normal, or burnt.

00:34Subtlety was finally possible.

00:3632 seemed to be the ceiling in the crayon world, but then Crayola released its magnum

00:41opus, the 64-crayon box with a built-in sharpener.

00:45The sharpener meant we no longer had to use crayons worn to the nubs for delicate work.

00:50White could be restored to white, not the speckled egg tone it affected later in life.

00:55We suddenly had raw umber and burnt umber, raw sienna and burnt sienna.

01:00Apparently no one at the factory knew how to cook umber properly.

01:04The 64 box remained the Cadillac of crayon collections until companies started releasing

01:09exotic fare such as metallics and skin tones.

01:14Magic markers and gel pens also got in on the multicolor act, allowing for fancy tricks

01:19like blending and shading.

01:21Just hand me the one called red, and I'll kick it old school.