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


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Perma Crayons No. 93: What's Inside the Box

I was so happy to pick up the Perma Pressed Gold Medal No. 93 box of crayons on eBay.  They are now my oldest box of crayons. I love the history of Crayola even though I do not have many historic boxes yet. The Perma Perssed fine art crayons came out in 1924 after Binney & Smith (the parent company of Crayola) acquired the crayon line of Munsell Color Company.  They were high quality crayons at an affordable price. Binney & Smith also incorporated the Munsell color wheel into its product lines.  At this time Binney & Smith also had Durel, Cerata, Spectra, Tiny Tops, Crayola, Munsell Crayola, and Munsell Perma crayons.  I feel like their line offerings were so diverse at this time because they were so new on the market, there had never been crayons before.  The crayon offerings have definitely been fine tuned.  Crayola now offers a standard set of crayon brand lines.  They may make specialty crayons, but they all fall under the Crayola brand.

*sources: http://munsell.com/color-blog/crayon-color-history-collecting-ed-welter/

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