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PR190 Dandy Tattooze Transfer Bubble Gum [1974]

The first picture above is courtesy of Tonni Hansen, & the next is from Andrew N (of Australia) who, as you can see, is an avid collector of Dandy Gum.

He also provided us with this scan showing the wrapper:

Here are some Tattooze with the paper removed. You'll observe that they were printed by Letraset, which caused some amusement when it was first noticed. We think perhaps Dandy may have approached Letraset (after the success of "Dandy Bubble Gum with Action Transfers") on the basis that they were 'the transfer people'; & Letraset were not a company to turn down an opportunity. Printing waterslide transfers or temporary tattoos is, of course, a lot easier than printing dry rub-down transfers.

Some time after posting the above, Andrew N was lucky enough to obtain two full sets of Dandy Tattooze from the estate of a serious collector. The original idea was that he'd send us one full set to scan, but of course that involves removing the protective tissue — not to mention a potentially hazardous trip fully around the World in the care of the postal services. Quite understandably, Andrew decided this was too much of a risk, so by way of consolation he scanned his Tattooze himself — with the protective tissues in place & in their plastic wallets! Here's a sample of one of his scans (reduced in size):

Meanwhile, I'd obtained some more myself from a dealer who insisted that he had several rolls of these Tattooze. This confused me at first, until I realised that of course the full sheet of artwork would come off the press in a continuous stream, which when passed through a slit cutter (as shown in the Printing Presses article, under the "Cutting Department" section) & ended up as reels.

So my twelve Tattooze in fact form one of five complete columns from the artwork sheet of sixty transfers.

This brings us to another issue; the serious collector's "full" sets each contained fifty-nine Tattooze, rather than sixty. A discussion followed as to whether or not one transfer might have been redacted, withdrawn, or just plain left blank. However, this issue is now moot, since one of my Tattooze is not present in Andrew's set of fifty-nine, & must therefore be the missing transfer — which is not missing after all.

So I regret to inform you, Andrew, that the "crossed swords" transfer above is missing from your collection (unless you happen to have obtained it since)!

Armed with Andrew's scans & my own complete column (shown here along the right-hand edge), I was able to deduce enough information to show you a rather rough simulation of the complete set of Tattooze as they might have appeared on the original artwork sheet — unavoidably back-to-front, of course:

Just to point out how much of this is solid info & how much conjecture:

Tattooze with black trim marks: these must go along the left-hand edge.
Tattooze with breaks at the bottom of the red vertical stripe: these must come from the bottom of the page.
Tattooze with breaks at the top of the red vertical stripe: these must come from the top of the page.
The 'clenched fist' transfer must therefore definitely be in its correct place: bottom left.
The right-hand column has all its transfers in the correct vertical order; I can't guarantee it would have been the rightmost column.

You may also be interested in our page "How to apply Temporary Tattoos" for further reading…

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Packets & Tattooze

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PR190 Dandy Tattooze Transfer Bubble Gum [1974]

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