Other crayon companies may have continued with crayons labeled as ‘Flesh’ after Crayola changed the name. And crayons lasted a long time. I remember a lot of kids had a fairly new box of Crayola’s and an unmarked box containing a bunch of crayons of various makes and colors. ‘Flesh’ Crayola crayons were around in the early 60s, I don’t recall when they changed but I’m pretty sure Crayola and others had made the change by the middle of the decade. I don’t remember the details but I think it took Johnson & Johnson a lot longer to offer Bandaids in different colors.
Hell, I have a box of unused thin-line colored markers from 2002 that are still well-inked, and they have norhing on the staying power of a box of crayons.
Every school year we’d get a new box of Crayolas for our school supplies, and the old box went into the big crayon box at home. So there were always lots of Flesh crayons around long after Peach supplanted them.
I remember that, at my elementary school, there was just this gallon ice cream bucket full of crayons. They were all Crayola, but who knows how old they were.
I knew the color as peach growing up, but I do seem to remember that we stumbled upon some labeled flesh in that bucket.
Been collecting Crayola crayons for over 25 years. I likely have one of the most complete collections of Crayola crayon colors out there, 1122 different color names at the last count, I have 1059. The names I don’t have are from the early days of Crayola when some names were used for a very short period or some custom named colors used in promotions. About a year ago Crayola re-released sets of crayons, Colors of the World, Colors of Kindness, Neon, Confetti, Metallic, Glitter, Construction Paper, and Pearl. Some new color names came from these releases and added 114 new color names but none of the colors are new to Crayola. The new color names used in the 32 count Colors of the world are 27 new names and 5 are color names used in the past. The rarest color is light yellow from a short lived artists set from the late 20’s. The colors in this set were not printed on the wrappers, there is a list inside the box lid. The only known example is owned by a friend that has by far the largest collection of Crayola items out there. We are holding out to see who decides to sell their collection first, we made a deal to offer it to the other when we do.
Informative and impressive! Thanks.
Absolutely. The Crayolas laid down the color nicely. The only time I recall off brands was perhaps crayons available as souvenirs or give-aways. They were mostly wax with little pigment and only made pale colors on the coloring book.
Update: the list of original Crayola colors on Wikipedia
includes ethnic names (English Vermilion(!!), Indian Red, Venetian Red, Prussian Blue… even van Dyck Brown 
as well as chemical names, and it does include Chrome Yellow, Chrome Green, Cobalt Blue and a few others.
Were they also descriptive, or were they using the real thing back then, mercury in the Vermillion and so on?
Honestly, looking at available info online, Crayola is rather cagey about what exactly constitutes what they describe simply as “color pigment” citing propriety as the reason.
A careful perusal of the list of colors does, however, reveal both Burnt Sienna and Raw Sienna as still included in a box of 64 colors…
Agreed. The cheap crayon’s you’d get, say, at the restaurant to color you tablemat or the ones that were sometimes included in certain coloring books were utter crap. Even a 6-year-old me could figure that out. Like you said, mostly wax, not enough pigment. They also seemed to have a harder coloring feel to them, almost like you were coloring with a candle.
TIL that there are crayon collectors! 
I have a box of ‘flesh-coloured’ Crayola-brand coloured pencils. It’s called “Colors of the World” and contains 24 colours ranging from pale ivory to deep brown. It’s also notable for spelling the word ‘colour’ three different ways on the front of the box: ‘color’ (from the Crayola brand name), ‘colour’ (standard Canadian English), and ‘couleur’ (standard Canadian French).
Huh, where did you get those colored pencils? I’m thinking of expanding my colored pencil collection. (Not as a collection, per se, but as something to draw with )
Staples office supply store:
I would consider those names to be geographic rather than ethnic.
They’re neither ethnic nor geographical. As stated in Wikipedia:
Sienna is an earth pigment containing iron oxide and manganese oxide. In its natural state, it is yellowish brown and is called raw sienna . When heated, it becomes a reddish brown and is called burnt sienna .
Well, geological then, but the name is geographic. Sienna earth was named after the Italian city of Sienna.
Til
Discourse
Still, it’s associated with that particular location (presumably it’s mined near there?), not with the people who live in that location.
Which is probably also true of some of the other retired color names, but there was the perception otherwise, and they wanted to avoid that perception.