Vintage Easter Egg Coloring Kits

Courtesy Garage Sale Finds blog

Will you be coloring Easter eggs this year – if not for yourself, maybe for your grandkids?

Maybe not. I know the price of a dozen eggs had gone up again, although I have no idea what it is now. It takes me months to finish off a carton anyway. Sometimes when I get around to frying an egg, I notice that the expiration date stamped on the carton was at least several haircuts ago. (For the record, I go every five weeks.) But I do like hardboiled eggs.

Anyway, coloring Easter eggs has always been a big part of the holiday. Unfortunately, when I was growing up, our eggs never really turned out that great. The colors were usually pretty drab and uneven. Designs applied to the eggs using the waxy 'magic' crayon usually resulted in an unattractive, illegible design. 

Finally, my siblings and I would pollute some of the eggs with the goofy stickers that came with the kit, or insert them in the little paper wraparounds. 

Of course, Mom always bought the PAAS egg coloring kits. You can see the front of one of the boxes at the top of this post. 

Here's the back of the carton (below). There's also a sheet with one of those wraparound stand-ups. They were pretty cute.

Anyway, I was surprised to see that egg coloring kits have been around for a long time, and that PAAS wasn't the only company making them. Here are some vintage boxes and kits that have somehow survived through the decades to make it to eBay.

This kit from the late 1930s provides kids with colorful transfers of famous King Feature comic characters to be applied to the eggs. There's Popeye, Wimpy, Olive Oyl, the Jeep, Blondie, Maggie and Jiggs, the Little King, Krazy Kat, Officer Pupp, Ignatz the Mouse and – Barney Google!

I see there's also Flash Gordon and the whole Katzenjammer Kids gang (Hans and Fritz, Mama and der Captain).

Here's the back of the box, featuring an oddly-proportioned Popeye.

This PAAS kit is from the late 1940s. It still has Popeye and Dagwood transfers, but now the Disney menagerie is included, including Donald Duck, Pluto Pup, Bambi, Thumper and Br'er Rabbit (from the Song of the South). Oh, and a cross is tossed into the mix as well.

Here's a much later PAAS kit. Sorry, Popeye – no fisk fighting on Easter eggs any more.

Like I said, other companies besides PAAS produced coloring kits. Here's one from RIT.

I much prefer this RIT package with a Wild West theme. Sort of a GRIT RIT kit.

And finally, J.J. Fleck of Tiffin, Ohio produced a set of 'Easter Egg Trims." Apparently you moistened them and placed them on the end of the egg.

Apparently the concept never caught on – possibly because of the nightmarish clown design. 

Click here to read a comprehensive, well-written history of J. J. Fleck and his company