Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed for December 24, 2014

“Flesh” coloured Bandaid.

Maybe Al Sharpton wants a piece of this.

I’ll have Jesse marching on your a$$

“Flesh” as a Crayola color is a thing of the past. I guess the Mary Kay disaster is over?

Yes, we are indeed missing the first strip of this new arc (Jan 4, 1989):

Crayola renamed “flesh” to be “peach” in 1962 (though I was born in 1966, and I think I remember crayons labeled “flesh” — but crayons don’t spoil so I guess those were probably manufactured before 1962 and just were in a closet or store for a while before getting to me).

And looking that up on Wikipedia also gave me this fun-crayon-fact: “Indian Red was renamed Chestnut in 1999, due to concern that children might believe that the color represented the skin color of American Indians, although in fact it referred to a reddish-brown pigment from India, used in oil paints.”

Oh dear God, my soul has been so injured by that racist crayon. I don’t think I can go on!!

I’ve always loved this series – I remember “flesh” crayons as a kid and yes, it was after 1962. I bought this original strip about 20 years ago and it hangs in my office today.

I’m a person of color. What do you mean, beige isn’t a color?

Oh. Took me five tries before I got it. MY Crayola box calls that color “sand.” Also, Crayola was founded just after blacks were freed from slavery, so the terminology may be understandably outdated.