There are 100 different coloured pencils with no repeats. When I was researching into the Crayola 100 coloured pencils, I found that there 4 different versions of this 100 set. The first set has ‘The Big 100’ printed on the front of the box but it only contains 60 different colours with the other 40 being repeats, The next set has ‘100 different colors’ on the front and it does have 100 unique colours but the gold and sliver was removed from the previous set. After the 120 set was released (which adds 20 new colours from the 100), a new version of the ‘100 different colors’ came out which includes 10 of the new colours from the 120 while removing 10 of the old ones (neon/highlighter colours). This is the version that I received from Mightyape, manufactured date is 2020. There is now another version of the 100 set which contains the 24 ‘Colors of the World’ colours which is printed on the box. 8 of the previous existing colours were renamed to hair and eye colours. I think the set that I received has a good balance of different colours while removing all the metallic and neon/highlighter colours as you can buy those separately. The pencils come in 2 trays in the box, with each tray holding 2 rows of 25 pencils and are in order according to the colour chart at the back of the box. Each pencil has a round full colour barrel design, 17.5cm long and 0.7cm thickness, the lead core is 3mm thick and is centred. The pencils comes pre-sharpened, however some of my pencil tips were flattened/broken. They have individual colour names printed on them in 3 languages along with the crayola name in gold, making it easier to find the colours you need. I recommend doing a swatch of the pencils as the barrel colours doesn’t always fully match the actual colour. The pencils are hard wax based and they do layer well, either multiple light layers or a heavy layer. However after many layers, it will make the surface reflective in bright light due to the wax. The colours are vibrant on paper especially the darker colours, the lighter requires a bit more effort but overall they are all good. Pretty similar to the Faber Castell red range of pencils. The white pencil works well on black and brown paper and can blend the other colours but doesn’t work well as pure white on top of other colours. Some colours do leave a bit of ‘crumbs’ but doesn’t smudge. Pencils can be sharpened to a sharp point without breaking. They blend pretty well but don’t expect a very smooth transition. I didn’t test for water resistance and lightfastness. Overall this is a good purchase for the variety and balance of colours but I wish Mightyape would sell the 120 set (there is a 150 set but it’s only available in America) and they need to update the product image above as that is the older set version which have different colours.
