We Compared Crayola Crayon Food Colors to Actual Food
Crayola crayons have some odd, specific and oddly specific names—over 120 of them. The wax coloring implements have seen a lot additions to (and subtractions from) their palette since the original box of eight colors debuted in 1903.
Until the late 1950s most crayon color names were plucked from a reference text called "Color: Universal Language and Dictionary of Names," but as the variety grew (usually due to consumer demand for certain shades) naming duties were given to creatives inside Crayola’s headquarters and, ultimately, to the rest of the world (with occasional naming contests that began in 1993—giving us Asparagus, Macaroni and Cheese and Granny Smith Apple, to name a few).
With the recent demise of Dandelion, Crayola is once again turning to folks like you to give its replacement, a new blue hue, its name. Inspired by an Oregon State University research team’s discovery of a new pigment called YInMn, fans of coloring (inside and out of the lines) can submit their ideas until June 2nd. Why replace blue with yellow? Because in polls, blue tones took six of the top ten spots. And hey, there’s no Blueberry or Blue Corn Tortilla crayon...yet.
We decided to pit Crayola’s current slate of food-named colors against their real-world counterparts to see how they stack up. To be fair, it is hard to capture tones and nuance (especially fluorescent colors) on camera, but we’ve given each crayon an accuracy rating from 1 (least) to 10 (most). Plus, we had a lot of fun coloring in the process.
