New Crayons for Kids Come in Authentic Skin Tones From Around the World!
If you haven’t experienced it yourself, it’s difficult to understand what it’s like to feel left out of a range of everyday products like toys or makeup growing up, just because it isn’t imaginative enough to include you. But Victor Casale, the talented makeup chemist who has brainstormed with Crayola to create a new range of diverse skin tone colors, knows all about it: “As a kid, I had to use pink and brown crayons to try to get my color; it was almost impossible to do, “he told Good Morning America.
But Casale’s been working on happy endings throughout his career, taking pride in reversing this reality to make products inclusive instead: “As a product formulator for [inclusive] complexion products, I have witnessed the feeling people show when they find their skin shade. It gives them a sense of being acknowledged and represented.” And as Casale says on Crayola’s website: “I am hoping every child who uses these crayons and finds their shade will have that feeling.”
It is likely that this combination of IRL understanding, and a career spent translating the needs of consumers as chief chemist at MAC cosmetics, chief innovative officer at Cover FX, and now at the helm of his “clean beauty” company, MOB Beauty, made him the perfect person to develop this pioneering new crayon range, “Colors of the World”. It is launching in Walmart stores in July for the back to school season.
So @Crayola specifically formulated crayons with 24 different skin tone shades so kids feel represented when drawing themselves/their families and I just… ?????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/eNSRNmjg3h
— RyanKellyMUA (@RyanKellyMUA) May 25, 2020
These crayons come in an exciting palette of true-to-life skin tone shades that mirror the diverse world we live in today. The launch was unveiled to the world in May 2020, to coincide with the United Nations World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. And in bringing it to the market, household name art supply brand, Crayola, has an ambitious mission:
“With the world growing more diverse than ever before, Crayola hopes our new Colors of the World crayons will increase representation and foster a greater sense of belonging and acceptance” Crayola CEO Rich Wuerthele stated in a news release. “We want the new Colors of the World crayons to advance inclusion within creativity and impact how kids express themselves.”
Despite still only being available to preorder, this new range has been warmly welcomed by several child development specialists and commentators as an empowering and long overdue way for kids to express their identity through what comes naturally to most —drawing.
Among the most recent critics of the “sameness’ of art supplies was nine-year-old Virginia schoolgirl, Bellen Woodward. In 2019, she launched a “More Than Peach” project to call for multicultural art supplies and awareness in US classrooms. As the Washington Post explains, she got people to stop thinking of the peach-colored crayon as the “skin-color” one.
Colors of the World crayons come in realistically-named shades like “Deep Almond”, “Medium Deep Rose” and “Light Golden”, to help kids easily find the shade they identify as their own. There are 24 specially formulated colors representing people of the world, which combine to represent more than 40 different skin tones, and eight classic crayons for coloring eyes and hair. The new line also includes a coloring book with landmarks and characters from around the globe.
