Colorforms
"They stick like magic!"
Once in a while, in this fast-moving, flighty world of ours,
coloring with crayons is just too time-consuming and indelible. There
are plenty of us who change our minds, well, frequently—we can’t commit
to a particular wardrobe ensemble in our crayon pictures; we cannot,
for the life of us, decide where the sun or the purple horse should be
positioned. So for those of us who couldn’t sit obediently at the
kitchen table and work in our coloring books for hours on end, for
those artistes given to fits of impatience and whimsy and impulse,
there are Colorforms. These were a good alternative to the sometimes
high-pressure cauldron of crayon art, because no creative decision was
irreversible, and no portrait permanent. Besides, as Toy Rule #112
clearly states, things that stick to other things are cool.
In the early 1950’s, a company called Colorforms hit the
educational toy market with their eponymous products. The original sets
contained either basic shapes or letter and number decals—all in bright
prime colors. The decals were made of paper-thin plastic, easy to press
onto the Colorform playboard that came in the box, and just as easy to
peel off. The sets were marketed as learning toys for ages three and
up. A kid could get familiar with shapes, master the alphabet and his
numbers…and if he had at it long enough, perfect various math and
spelling skills too. In 1965, the smiley Miss Weather Colorforms set
arrived, and it was here that the toy became humanized. Kids dressed
their two-dimensional friend in clothes appropriate to any kind of
climate situation.
Miss Weather was just the beginning. Soon, characters like Sleeping Beauty,
familiar to kids from books and television, found their way into the
Colorform sets. The playboards became slick cardboard renditions of
empty rooms or landscapes, and so in addition to experimenting with
wardrobe, players could move the decals around and create different
scenes. And soon there were sets devoted to more than just singular
characters—whole casts from TV shows and movies materialized in decal
form. The Colorforms licensing department hustled and bustled, and best
selling sets included The Green Hornet. If a TV show from the 70’s and 80’s boasted a hearty kid demographic, chances are there was a matching Colorform set.
Colorforms were low maintenance (if the decals became fussy—
adhesively fussy that is—the playboard need only be wiped down), low
cost, low risk…but high fun. There’s a press/peel artist inside of us
all. It’s time to let him out.
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