Crayola is a brand of marking utensils, such as markers, chalk, crayons, and colored pencils manufactured by Crayola LLC (formerly Binney & Smith). The Crayola company was one of the first to make its crayons, chalk, markers, and colored pencils as well as other writing utensils and artistry tools non-toxic.

It is primarily popular in the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico, South and Central America, and the United Kingdom among other countries.

History

Since 1984, the company has been a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards. On January 1, 2007, the company changed its name from "Binney & Smith" to "Crayola". Information released by the company stated that the new name was adopted to showcase the company's well-known brand, which was in use in more than 80 countries and had 99% name recognition in U.S. consumer households.

Headquarters

The company's main plant is in Easton, Pennsylvania. The "Crayola Factory" is six miles from the real plant and is open to kids of all ages. A "discovery center" was built that showcases the manufacturing process of crayons. There is also a "Crayola Hall of Fame" in which the retired crayon colors (Blue Gray, Lemon Yellow, Orange Red, Orange Yellow, Violet Blue, Maize, Green Blue, Raw Umber, Thistle, Blizzard Blue, Mulberry, Teal Blue and Magic Mint)Fact: date=July 2008 are displayed and put in.

The Crayola Factory was recently featured in a Food Network episode of Dinner: Impossible. A dinner was held for 150 Crayola Factory employees at the Crayola Factory to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 64 box of crayons. Chef Michael Symon's mission was to create an eight course tasting menu for this event where all eight items of the menu had to match eight randomly chosen Crayola crayon colors.

Timeline

main1: Timeline of Crayola

Crayola colors

main1: List of Crayola crayon colors

Crayola crayon packs have come in a variety of sizes from 2 crayons up to 800 for the bulk boxes. The colors contained in a package have ranged from 2 up to 200 (although a 200 color package includes "special effect" crayons such as glitters or neons, etc.). In general, though, the most common packages are multiples of eight: 8, 16, 24, 32, (40), 48, (56), 64, 72, 80, (88), 96, (104), (112), and 120 packs. The 120 pack is sometimes a package composed of two 48 pack containers and a 24 pack container, but they are nevertheless different colors. There have been 240 pack Crayola Cases that simply house two of the 120 crayon cases, although a limited number of these have been produced since 2005. A 150 crayon pack featuring a plastic telescope-like case was made in 2008.