PR154 Elastoplast "Flags & Costumes of Europe" [1973]
A collection of nine transfer sets from Smith & Nephew Pharmaceuticals, to celebrate the UK joining the European Union (or the Common Market, as we then called it).
As has been observed elsewhere, you'd have to live a life of danger to collect nine sets randomly distributed in tins of plasters…
Photo courtesy of Paul Hart
Note the booklet on the right of Paul's photo.
"SPECIAL OFFER! Rub down one of the Action Transfer symbols from the transfer sheet and send it together with your name, address and P.O. for 15p to Special Book Offer (…) In return we will send you a 20 page booklet which gives interesting information about the nine countries in the Common Market, and includes space for your Action Transfer kit for each country. You can then start your collection for all 9 titles."
The covers (above) are identical apart from the name of the country. Below you can see how the transfer sheets slots into the crescent-shaped slit in the card — on the left of the top card, & the right of the bottom card:
For a while, we only had France & Denmark scanned, but then I managed to acquire a couple of partial uncut sheets:
So now we have eight of the nine sheets. Only Eire is still missing (although the top middle of Paul's photo at the top of the page may give you some idea).
The serial numbers don't always obviously correspond to the featured country on each transfer sheet, so here's a crib:
- PR154/1 — United Kingdom
- PR154/2 — Holland
- PR154/3 — Germany
- PR154/4 — France
- PR154/5 — Denmark
- PR154/6 — Luxembourg
- PR154/7 — Italy
- PR154/8 — Belgium
- PR154/9 — Eire
Later, I managed to obtain some more of these sets, so here are the background maps — awaiting the application of their transfers — for the sets we have.
If you're wondering why some countries are named in white while the rest are in black, the design rule is clearly: "if the country name overlaps the country, then use black text; if not, use white."
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