Who knew craft stores would be home to so many scandals? But beneath their glitter, pipe cleaners, & plush for teddy bears, I guess the heart of American culture beats… Take the names of craft store acrylic paints.

According to Ceramcoat paints, by Delta, Santa must can only be a Caucasian — in fact, “flesh” tones only come in Caucasian.

I remember when Crayola renamed the “flesh” crayon “peach” sometime in the 60’s (Mental Floss says it was 1962, but I was born in ’64 and I remember the change — maybe it took forever for the new crayons to roll-out on store shelves?). And I believe there were several attempts by Band-Aid to promote varying shades of “flesh” tone bandages over the years… But that was apparently only after they tried more fanciful designer colors — ‘cuz decorating Dorothy Kilgallen in bright rainbow color Band-Aids is more important than providing options in the race-rainbow of skin tones.

*sigh*

I would have happily photographed any other, darker, warmer, etc. shades of “flesh” or skin tones, but there weren’t any.  They do, however, have a color for hippopotamus flesh. Make of that what you will.

Anyway, while I had my camera out in the paint isle, I also found myself compelled to take a photo of another paint. Plaid’s Apple Barrel acrylic paint in Territorial Beige.

That’s an odd name for a paint — just how is a color “territorial” other than by bleeding & taking over all the pottery, paper etc.? (Not something I look for in a paint.) That shade name was also used by Delta too, making it even weirder. Most amusing of all was seeing that at least one bottle takes it’s name to heart; see how one of the bottles is begging to take over the empty row next to it? Perhaps it even intimidated the other color to vacate the premises.

As for why I was searching for paint shades, that’s a project I’m not ready to dish about yet; stay tunned.