22 No. 22M Munsell Crayola and No. 220M Munsell Perma Pressed Crayons

I have been on a quest to find all the retired Crayola colors. I made the chart below to swatch all the Crayola True colors that have been discontinued. Click here to get it. When I got to the Maximum and Middle colors I realized that I did not have those boxes and set out on a search to find some Munsell crayons. I tried Google which lead me to Etsy. I also tried eBay to no avail. I know a collector, Alan N. who is paring down his collection and asked him if he had them. He did and sold them to me!!!! They are super fragile and I have to figure out the best way to store them, but I was so excited to get a piece of Crayola history and add to the color chart. Click here to get the complete retired Crayola Colors checklist.

Colors

The colors are either Maximum or Minimum with the exception of black. There is supposed to be a Maximum Black but it was not in this box.

Since the retired swatch chart is in color order with all of the retired colors I rearranged the swatches in color order for the Munsell crayons. There are some really pretty colors! Crayola should think of bringing some of these back. All of these colors are super rare.

The colors in the Munsell Crayola and Munsell Perma Pressed Crayons box are: 

  • Maximum Red, Maximum Yellow Red, Maximum Yellow, Maximum Green Yellow, Maximum Green, Maximum Blue Green, Maximum Blue, Maximum Purple Blue, Maximum Purple, Maximum Red Purple, Middle Red, Middle Yellow Red, Middle Yellow, Middle Green Yellow, Middle Green, Middle Blue Green, Middle Blue, Middle Purple Blue, Middle Purple, Middle Red Purple, Middle Gray, Black. 


Collecting

Crayola acquired the Munsell Colors crayon line in 1926 and came out with 3 different sized boxes, 7, 12 and 22. I got the 22M and 220M boxes because they contained all the colors. The box is labeled on the front with nothing on the back. It contains the preferred color sorting order on the inside panel of the box. I lists each color, the color family, order number and a number I do not know what means for example Maximum Red is 4/14.

There are two boxes the No.220M Munsell Perma Pressed Crayon and No.22M Munsell Crayola. Both boxes contain the same colors though I did notice that the Perma crayons were more oxidized then the Crayola crayons. The front of the box says Five Principal Hues and five intermediate hues at middle value and middle chroma, Five Principal Hues and Five Intermediate Hues at Maximum Chroma with Middle Gray and Black.  what is interesting to note is they spelled Gray gray, but the Middle Grey with an e. I have no idea why Crayola released two of virtually the same box at the same time, but they did.

Here are the boxes.
No.220M Munsell Perma Pressed Crayon

No.22M Munsell Crayola


1 comment:

  1. Many of the Munsell colors were absorbed into the Crayola color palette. They became the rare No 52 box first and then later had their color names changed. Some were dropped too. They also adopted the color wheel technology from Munsell which is why we see colors like Orange-Red and Red-Orange. At the time Crayola purchased them, they were considered one of the very highest quality color crayons in the business.

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