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.

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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.