Red and orange dominate the collection, while both blue and green are only available in three albums.

The "Tintin and the Picaros" Album is the only one with a yellow spine.

In Germany, for example, all of the comic spines are red.

And in Spain all of them are yellow.

Yet, China, Japan and many other countries follow the same pattern as the French language original with it's five different colors.

But what do they mean?

One thing that seems to make sense is that the color of the spine is of high contrast to the colors of the album's front cover.

It is also noticeable that those comics with a similar front cover design often have the same spine color.

Yet, the most plausible theory is that the colors come from the early albums that used cloth to bind the album spines

which had no printing on them.

Back then they had to use what colors were available, which were mainly red and orange.

This explains the dominant spine colors for the Tintin albums.

The colors decided for the final printed versions, including blue, green and yellow

seems to be traced back to the collections publisher.

Although a special pattern for the use of the colors seems unlikely.