Letraset Stationery — Action Transfers

In the late 70s, Letraset Consumer Products decided to expand into character-licensed stationery. There were several ranges:

Walt Disney
Star Wars
Super Heroes
Posters
Thelwell
And not forgetting these related items:
Doodle Kit
Rotadraw

Walt Disney

In 1978, Letraset's 'big deal' licenses were for Star Wars & The Rescuers. Hence the predominance of Rescuers stationery in their 1978 trade catalogue… by 1981, it was Super Heroes (both Marvel & DC) & Thelwell. Other years may well have had their own favourites, but so far I've never seen any of them. Anyway, back to 1978 (or more accurately, late 1977):

Letraset 1978 trade catalogue

The transfers referred above to were available in the Ready Brek 'The Rescuers' promotion, where I've already objected to the errant apostrophe at the top — so no need to comment on it here.

Star Wars

John Hunt told me that the success of Star Wars came as a surprise for Letraset, but by the time of their 1978 trade catalogue they were clearly already aware of its "block buster" (sic) status.

Letraset 1978 trade catalogue

"More new Star Wars stationery products coming soon" — but luckily, Craig Spivey is on the ball as ever with this display of ALL the various items in the range:

Photo by Craig Spivey

The most interesting item is the "Space Writing Set", which as shown on the Wall's / Look-In Star Wars promotion page, contained a sheet of six transfers.

Inside the others, by the very nature of the products there's nothing to report, of course, but here are the backs of some of the items:

Next, a fascinating box of envelopes. The close-up of the twelve-envelope pack is by courtesy of Todd Chamberlain.

Finally, thanks to invictus111, a very rare item: a promotional notebook for Letraset's Star Wars Stationery (& their Large Sets) from the 1978 toy fairs:

Original photos courtesy of invictus111

The Harrogate Toy Fair launched on the 17th January, after the Toy and Hobby Fair at the Birmingham NEC from the 13th to the 19th, & evidently the stationery & the Large Sets were available by then. We already knew the Wall's transfers were available by February, but here in this notebook one of them is rubbed-down:

Original photo courtesy of invictus111

Reportedly, this was applied at the Harrogate Toy Fair itself, so these transfers were also printed by January (although we know they were reprinted several times). Circumstantial evidence, but fairly close to 'trout-in-the-milk' standard!

On the other hand, the promotional notebook depicts the six original stationery items referred to in the 1978 Trade Catalogue, which says "More new Star Wars stationery products coming soon" — one of which was the "Space Writing Set" with its six transfers. There's no reason to suppose Letraset simply weren't prepared to put out their four other stationery products yet — for whatever reason — & this doesn't necessarily imply they didn't have the Wall's transfers ready by then, even though you might think…

But either way: January — February… not a huge gap in time!

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Super Heroes

Thomas Salter 1981 trade catalogue

The entire Super Heroes stationery range was by David Souter, & if you're very lucky, he might be willing to let you buy some of the original artwork!

• Full details on our Super Heroes Stationery page →

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Posters

This photo is from the Thomas Salter 1981 trade catalogue. Each Supa-Poster pack contained two outline posters, & five felt pens for you to use in colouring them in. I have no doubt that the narrative content of the posters was as wide of the mark as Letraset's other character-licensed products, but in fairness I don't suppose that the target market were all that concerned about it, as long as the likenesses of the characters were accurate — which they were.