I just finished a trivia game that asked when Crayola discontinued the “flesh” color crayon. The answer given was 1962. Yet I seem to remember “flesh” (along with odd colors like “burnt sienna”, “cornflower”, “midnight blue”, and “raw umber”) as one of the crayons still included in the 64 pack (which was the ultimate status symbol when I was in the 1st grade). I spent hours just playing with crayons when I wasn’t drawing with them, and I am sure I remember “flesh” crayons. It was close to the “apricot” but just a shade darker. At some point they started calling the “flesh” crayons “peach”, and I recall the two colors being basically the same.
Since I was born in 1976, I must be wrong about remembering the flesh crayon – unless I had some really old crayons. How long can crayons last anyway? Maybe I just had 20 year old crayons at my school – some teachers will keep supplies stashed away forever.
From [here.](Partly in response to the civil rights movement, Crayola decides to change the name of the “flesh” crayon to “peach.” Renaming this crayon was a way of recognizing that skin comes in a variety of shades.)
I would say flesh comes always in pretty much the same color (at least in the cases of all my victims it was that way). It is skin which comes in different hues.
According to that web page, “flesh” was discontinued when I was four years old. I don’t think that can be correct. I’m sure I remember “flesh” being around when I was older. And 1962 seems a little early for the civil rights movement to have caused a change in a crayon name, doesn’t it?
We gotta be suffering from false memories, or we colored in previous lives. Not believing that factmonster site I checked Crayola’s own site Crayon History and they, too, say that “peach” replaced “flesh” in 1962.
We must have bought older boxes that had been sitting around in warehouses for a few years.
In the 1970s there were plenty of other sets of colours for children, such as paint-by-numbers and other things, that still used the label “flesh.” Perhaps even some off-brand crayons used it. So, our memories of there being “flesh” coloured things might be getting confused with Crayola’s 64 crayon set. I have a strong memory of there being flesh coloured paints and things, but I’m pretty sure that my Crayola box had “peach.”
As do I, from much later, probably late 70’s early 80’s Irleand.
It is possible as somone said that the Crayons had been sitting around for years, although 20 years seems perhaps a little long?
I remember not knowing what “flesh” meant or why a crayon would be called it. It was a Crayola crayon with the wavey lines and all.
My sister is an artist and I remember well when the flesh-to-peach switch occured because she wrote to the Crayola company complaining. Not about the name change, but about the fact that they subtly altered the color at the same time. The new “peach” was slightly more orange than the old “flesh”. She had really liked the particular pale tan of “flesh” and was sorry to see it vanish entirely.
Crayola was very nice. They sent her a lifetime supply of the old “flesh” colored crayons – five or size 64-boxes filled with them.
I was old enough to remember this happening and I was born in 1964. I would guess that the switch came sometime around 1968 at the earliest, which seems a more reasonable date given the evolving racial sensibilities of the 1960’s. I find it very hard to believe that the Crayola company was so progressive and forward-thinking that they eliminated “flesh” a full year before the March on Washington.
I suspect there’s some revisionist history going on here … .
I just sent an email to my sister to see what she remembers.
I’m not sure how legitimate of a source this is going to be taken as, but a Bloom County strip backs up the early 60’s date. One strip makes a joke about Oliver (a black kid, for those not familiar with the comic) drawing a picture of his mother. He asks for the ‘flesh’ crayon, looks at it for a beat, then sadly asks to trade it for the ‘burnt umber’ crayon. The next day’s strip, the ‘lawyer’ for the strip appears and apologizes to the Crayola company, trying to avoid a lawsuit, and mentions that in fact, the company hasn’t had a ‘flesh’ colored crayon since 1963. Not the 1962 mentioned in the above link, but perhaps they stopped manufacturing the color in 1962, but it wasn’t until the following year until they dissapeared from the shelves.
One more point. Although I distinctly recall using “peach” crayons to color honky skin when I was little (again, I was born in 1961), I also recall that everyone called that color “flesh,” and it was some confusion to me why it was called flesh but labelled peach. That’s why the memory stuck. Older siblings and teachers hadn’t made the mental switch yet and were still using the term they learned.
Perhaps people who seem to have a memory of flesh crayons are creating a memory of a label in retrospect? This is the kind of effect I would expect, knowing how our memory is stored based on after-the-fact interpretations of what we witness.
CurtC is probably right about memory tricks, but in my case I was the oldest sibling, born 1958, I could actually be remembering a crayon manufactured pre-1962. However, like many of the folks who posted above, the memory of coloring with “flesh” seems to be from a later time, when I would have been coloring with my brother, born 1963, or even the younger of my two sisters, born in '69 and '71.
Well, I was born in '76, and I distinctly remember debating between the “peach” and the “apricot” crayons to color faces and such even before I could read (I had this thing about having people read the color names to me.)
I’m thinking the OP is delusional or had some damn old crayons.
