Articles & Features

Crayola No 64s – A chronological history

Part 2 – The replacements

Sometime in the mid-1960s, probably around 1966, Binney & Smith dropped their arched lettering use of the Crayola name and went to a straight text format. Sure, they would use a straight text format over the years to come but never in this thin upper/lower case combination again.

All the product lines were replaced with this new design and the No 64 changed to this:

There are lots of changes design-wise here. Beyond the brand name, they moved up the 64 onto the lid portion and dropped the word “CRAYONS” below it. The Different Brilliant Colors slogan was de-emphasized from its bolder three line format of before. Gone also was the “NEW!” from the banner and they added an arrow so you clearly knew know to turn the box around and follow the red banner to the back of the box where the sharpener lay waiting. Was it too confusing before? They also added Non-Toxic at the bottom and we saw the introduction of the registered trademarks for the chevrons themselves. Also, the “opening instructions” got simpler. They eliminated the bigger arrows and the “Break Seal – Flip back Top” wording in favor of a simple “Open Here” with a mock arrow. On top they added the City, State (NY at this time) and Zip Code (only 5 digits then) of their headquarters. Notice that the price is also on the top. This might support a theory that the white stripe chevron variation from the prior design was the last version available as it too carried the price at the top. It’s still inconclusive though.

The color line up for this new box was: APRICOT, AQUAMARINE, BITTERSWEET, BLACK, BLUE, BLUE GRAY, BLUE GREEN, BLUE VIOLET, BRICK RED, BROWN, BURNT ORANGE, BURNT SIENNA, CADET BLUE, CARNATION PINK, COPPER, CORNFLOWER, FOREST GREEN, GOLD, GOLDENROD, GRAY, GREEN, GREEN BLUE, GREEN YELLOW, INDIAN RED, LAVENDER, LEMON YELLOW, MAGENTA, MAHOGANY, MAIZE, MAROON, MAUVELOUS, MELON, MIDNIGHT BLUE, MULBERRY, NAVY BLUE, OLIVE GREEN, ORANGE, ORANGE-RED, ORANGE-YELLOW, ORCHID, PEACH, PERIWINKLE, PINE GREEN, PLUM, RAW SIENNA, RAW UMBER, RED, RED ORANGE, RED VIOLET, SALMON, SEA GREEN, SEPIA, SKY BLUE, SILVER, SPRING GREEN, TAN, THISTLE, TURQUOISE BLUE, VIOLET, VIOLET BLUE, VIOLET RED, WHITE, YELLOW, YELLOW GREEN, YELLOW ORANGE.

Ok, though they changed the box significantly, the color line up remained the same from the end of the old design with continued use of Type 6 wrappers.

This design lasted until the mid to late 1970s (probably 1978) when Binney & Smith decided to use their newly created corporate identity logo and replace their long oval logo. For the 64 box, they didn’t have to worry about replacing the oval logo, but since they wanted to add the new one, they made other changes at the same time.

“Wavy logo” – the new corporate identity “Oval logo” – the old corporate identity

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Though this box is still in the era before they dated their boxes, two clear indications of the date are that they didn’t create this new corporate logo until 1978 and the addition of metric sizing at the bottom of the new design. If you will remember, it was the latter part of the 1970s that the USA mounted a failed bid to convert over to the metric system. Much of the other changes were more subtle. The 64 was slightly smaller. They went to one line for the opening instruction text. The banner still existed but was shrunken and moved up to make room for the logo. They moved to repeating the content size at the bottom and added the crayon size to that. The top dropped the pre-printed pricing amount and the Gold Medal logo as well. Instead, they dropped city/state/zip and moved the Non-Toxic up there. This design ran up until just before 1986. It was also during the era that they first got into pre-designed product promotion by offering space on their box to advertise discounts or other items. This would continue as an effective method clear up to current times.

The color line up on this version was: apricot, aquamarine, bittersweet, black, blue, blue-gray, blue-green, blue-violet, brick red, brown, burnt orange, burnt sienna, cadet blue, carnation pink, copper, cornflower, forest green, gold, goldenrod, gray, green, green-blue, green-yellow, Indian Red, lavender, lemon yellow, magenta, mahogany, maize, maroon, melon, midnight blue, mulberry, navy blue, olive green, orange, orange-red, orange-yellow, orchid, peach, periwinkle, pine green, plum, raw sienna, raw umber, red, red-orange, red-violet, salmon, sea green, sepia, sky blue, silver, spring green, tan, thistle, turquoise blue, violet (purple), violet-blue, violet-red, white, yellow, yellow-green, yellow-orange.

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By this time, the wrappers had moved on to wrapper type 7 and that meant lower case colors for the first time. They made some color changes along the way BLUE GRAY got a hyphen with blue-gray. So did blue-green, blue-violet, green-blue, green-yellow, red-orange, red-violet, violet-blue, violet-red, yellow-green, and yellow-orange. Oddly, orange-red and orange-yellow had hyphens all along. One has to wonder: Was there a corporate meeting to debate the hyphen vs. non-hyphen benefit? Other than this odd change, there was no real shake-up in the color line up.

As you can see from this 1985 box, they completely dropped the red banner in favor of using this valuable space for something more. I guess they figured that 27 years was a sufficient amount of time to advertise the sharpener! Also, there were a couple of subtle and not-so-subtle changes made as well. The most obvious was the extremely thick font used in the Crayola brand name. This would become the next major design box as well and this particular box represents a transition between the two designs. They also increased the font size at the bottom and they added a registered trademark to the corporate identity logo. This is quite the obscure box as only one is known as of this writing – and it was only in poor to fair condition so I am not able to give you a complete inventory. Here is what is known of the line up: apricot, bittersweet, black, blue, blue violet, brick red, cadet blue, carnation pink, copper, cornflower, forest green, goldenrod, gray, green-yellow, green-blue, indian red, maize, mahogany, melon, midnight blue, mulberry, navy blue, olive green, orange, orange-yellow, orange-red , orchid, peach, ,pine green, plum, raw umber, red-orange, red violet, sepia, silver, tan, turquoise blue, violet (purple), violet-red, yellow, yellow-green, yellow-orange.

Finally, our last design change of the era is to a more generic thick font design: Really, the transition was simply to drop the corporate logo identify from the front and to put back the sharpener banner again. This would be the last design with the red banner for many, many years (ok, there were some reproduction efforts along the way).

For colors, this one had: apricot, aquamarine, bittersweet, black, blue, blue-gray, blue-green, blue-violet, brick red, brown, burnt orange, burnt sienna, cadet blue, carnation pink, copper, cornflower, forest green, gold, goldenrod, gray, green, green-blue, green-yellow, Indian red, lavender, lemon yellow, magenta, mahogany, maize, maroon, melon, midnight blue, mulberry, navy blue, olive green, orange, orange-red, orange-yellow, orchid, peach, periwinkle, pine green, plum, raw sienna, raw umber, red, red-orange, red-violet, salmon, sea green, sepia, sky blue, silver, spring green, tan, thistle, turquoise blue, violet (purple), violet-blue, violet-red, white, yellow, yellow-green, yellow-orange.

There were absolutely no color changes from the previous design version.

Continued in Part 3…