Action Transfers

They consisted of a printed cardboard background image and a transparent sheet of coloured dry transfer figures of people, animals, vehicles, weapons, explosions and so on.

Since Letraset had a patent monopoly on the dry rub-down transfer process, until the end of the 1970s any transfers supplied with these sets would have been printed by Letraset, firstly at Waterloo Road in London, then later at Ashford in Kent, and finally at their factory in Italy.

Letraset, the company that developed the Instant Lettering transfer sheets that dominated design and publishing before the advent of desktop publishing, created the first dry rub-down transfer sets for children and marketed them as "Instant Pictures" in 1964.

Letraset purchased a rotary gravure press which they installed at Ashford in Kent, and there they produced true full-colour transfers for the first time starting in 1967.

The impetus for the move was a joint venture undertaken with Gillette to produce Action Transfers under the name Kalkitos.