Crayola makes crayons in 24 new skin tones

Yes, but – as always – nothing will stop them from drawing green and purple dogs!

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Nice catch, Ontario. My parents are from Lancashire though so I suspect she had modified an old-world phrase to reflect her adopted province’s bizarre attachment to bagged milk.

(Edit: I asked my Mum and she said the English version would be “You look like a pint of milk”.)

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This is what comes to mind when reading tales written for children or Sci-Fi and Fantasy books. They are so full of light/white = good and dark/black = bad imagery and symbolism. It disappoints me to see it in newer works of fiction, since there are other options from which authors could choose while world-building.

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it’s a marketing strategy, which, if you subscribe to certain theories of the firm, supplants business “philosophies”.

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“Light = good”, “Dark = bad” is kind of inbuilt in every human culture ever, because we’re primarily diurnal critters who rely a lot on our sight, and especially our color vision.

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It does seem like they’ve missed some tones at each end of the spectrum.

I grew up with a guy who would have needed “transparent white with blue vessels”, and went to school with another who would have needed “really really burnt umber”.

I do like that there’s “medium golden” for winter and “deep golden” for winter and summer beach me tho.

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Needs some browning, onions, a bay leaf, salt to taste, cup of water, and about two hours simmering.

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Don’t even go there. Now the “other white meat” people will want “pinky pork” and the ostrich people will want “Large Bird Red”, and don’t even get me started on the fish farmers… (Salmon Orange)

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I’d add some tomato paste and maybe a dash of red wine. :slight_smile:

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In general, newly introduced products are not just marketing strategies. They may express an overall shift in a company’s larger brand, but ultimately they’re not cost centres like marketing but products to be marketed, advertised, distributed and sold. This particular product would be a marketing strategy if it was a loss leader or promotional giveaway, but it’s meant to be sold like other crayon packs.

A significant mainstream challenge to the traditional “shareholders firstonly” business philosophy has come – at least in lip-service form – from the Business Roundtable. In this context (but more so from the point of view of simple market opportunity), a product that appeals to Americans of all skin tones fits in well.

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And coincidentally, it matches up with the skin tones used by the partnering cosmetic company (most of whom are interested in expanding their market base), so there’s cross marketing appeal.

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FWIW, Crayola first introduced “multicultural” flesh tone collections in 1992.

https://www.crayola.com/faq/another-topic/when-did-you-introduce-crayola-multicultural-products/

The color that is now called “peach” hasn’t been labeled “flesh” since 1968 1963 (though other crayon manufacturers kept that label for many years after).

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Wax crayons? So 20th century. Wax sticks in the digital era? No, what’s needed is a Bluetooth-controlled spray pen with 256 megs of selectable colors and even more intensities and textures, with ‘ink’ emitted by a little chemical synthesizer. Favorite combos can be named – Flaming POTUS Mandarin come to mind – and colors can be recreated from scanned images, so save those Polaroids.

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Now that that’s straightened out, how many shades of zombie flesh do they have?

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Good call; I remember reading an article about the decision to stop referring to ‘Peach’ as “Flesh tone.”

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I remember learning about how Crayola had discontinued that color designation from this old Bloom County comic from the 1980s and the “correction” published shortly after.

Gotta appreciate the subtle jab at Band-Aid too.

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70% off in the boingboingshop!

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Completely irrelevant to the topic, but a trigger for posting the always topical…

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Theories of marketing - in its true and broadest sense (not merely to mean selling/advertising, etc.) - suggest that it ought to be in charge of every facet of a company.
Marketing at root is about researching the market to identify market needs and design and produce products to meet those market needs. Seems like Crayola may have finally done that.

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