Stephen von Worley on Weather Sealed posted this chronological growth of Crayola colors from the line-up of original eight introduced in 1903 by Binney & Smith to the 133 colors available today. By von Worley’s calculations, Crayola colors double every 28 years.

For a product targeted heavily to consumers who are too young to read or to talk about the good ole days when reds were redder, it is interesting to note that Crayola has remained dedicated to innovation, upgrades and product naming. In addition to its standard colors, Crayola has launched specialty sets with names like Magic Scent and Silver Swirl. It has discontinued colors with low market appeal; apparently, Maize, Raw Umber, Blizzard Blue and Thistle just didn’t cut it with seven-year-olds. Other names, of course, had to be retired for political correctness. Prussian Blue was renamed Midnight Blue in 1958, Indian Red became Chestnut. Also, bowing to pop trends, Crayola introduced metallic FX colors like Big Dip O’Ruby and Blast Off Bronze, and glitter shades like Red Violet with Glitzy Gold Glitter (a name that rolls right off the tongue), and Silly Scents like Sasquatch Socks, Big Foot Feet and Alien Armpit. It had to discontinue regular scents like Chocolate and Jelly Bean because parents complained that kids found they smelled good enough to eat – and did.

All this effort makes Crayola even more endearing, especially when you consider that with just four colors – c, m, y, k – you can arrive at any color in the spectrum, and Crayola’s target customers aren’t so jaded that they’d reject a product because it’s “last year’s model.”