Do you remember Letraset? Those sheets of letters that came on a sheet of plastic that when rubbed over with a soft pencil could be transferred onto a sheet of paper? I’m sure you can still get them from places like Staples of other office supply shops.
Well, the Rub Down Transfers I’m thinking of were very similar to these, and indeed the first instances of them were made by the company that made Letraset. Instead of little letters on the plastic sheet you had full colour pictures which could be rubbed off onto paper or cardboard to make an interesting scene.
Also known as Action Transfers or by the brand name Kalkitos, you normally bought them as a pack containing a sheet of the transfers and a thin cardboard background image onto which you could rub the transfers to make an instant piece of artwork.
Sometimes you also got a special plastic wand that you could use instead of a pencil to rub the transfer down, but I always preferred using a pencil since you could more easily tell when you had rubbed over the entire image, so you didn’t lift the plastic too soon and leave half the image behind.
There were a huge number of sets to choose from, some licensed from films and TV programmes (I remember having a set for E.T.) whilst others were of more generic themes such as wild or farm animals, cars, superheroes and much more.
I certainly enjoyed playing with these as a child, and they have recently been relaunched in Singapore. Head over to the Kalkitos website if you want to learn more though, as they apparently will ship worldwide.
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I used to love letraset (I had forgotten the brand name though until reading this).
I remember they were usually in a particular font, like Olde-English style lettering, or maybe it’s just that I preferred that font.
I used them mostly to put my name on all my school exercise books!
I remember my Mum had a sheet of them in her stationery drawer, which I used to use to rub down my name. Only problem with that was you could only do it a few times before you used up all the letters you needed.
I used to get these …..I had Marvel ones like Spiderman and The Hulk ….I loved them ….there was a handy stores across the road from us at the time and we used to get them there……It reminds me too of the old Marvel torches we got I had a Hulk one…basically it was a normal torch with a big hulk’s head attached to the end making the light green….Spidey’s of course was red……ahhh innocence was bliss lol
Thank god!!! I loved these have looked for months to find out what they where called I had loads , knights, dinosaurs, spiderman, asterix, just loads wanna buy some more lol.
I used to have these and they were branded “Presto Magix” amazing!
Hi, does anyone remember getting a rub on tattoo with sweets or gum ??
I was googling all sorts of weird things looking for these. Excellent!
Now I just have to find that plastic-reusable sticker scene thing I used to love, with an Animals of Farthing wood theme XP