Action Transfers or Kalkitos[1] were a type of art-based children's pastime that was extremely popular in Europe, South East Asia and Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. They consisted of a printed cardboard background image and a transparent sheet of coloured dry-transferables containing such things as people, vehicles, weapons, explosions, animals and so on. These figures were to be applied on to the background scene through a process called chromolithography, accomplished by rubbing the back of the transparent sheet with a soft pencil. Clever part application of transfers could result in such imaginative compositions as a character with an arrow sticking out of his head, or people dismembered by explosions.
A number of different sets were produced by several companies between the late 1970s and the 1980s; these included sets based on popular comics and cartoons (e.g., DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Scooby Doo, and Disney cartoons),[2][3][4] television series and movies (e.g., Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica),[5] as well as original content sets.
The first Action Transfer sets were marketed by Letraset, the company that developed the eponymous transfer sheets that dominated amateur publishing before the advent of desktop publishing.[6] In the 1960s, a division of Letraset called Letraset Consumer was established, with the mission of using the Letraset technology to develop children-oriented figure sheets. These were called "Action Transfers". They were originally monochromatic, but later evolved into CMYK colored figures.[7][8]
In the early 1970s, the production of Action Transfers was transferred to an Italian branch of Letraset, Sodecor. Sodecor's Action Transfers became extremely popular in Italy under the brand name "Trasferelli".
Letraset later sold the license to create transfers to several other companies, including Waddingtons, Patterson Blick, and, most notably, Gillette, that contributed to the world-wide diffusion of Action Transfer under brand name "Kalkitos", packaged as a magazine.[9]
After 1980, production of Action Transfer was continued by a British company named Acorn, that included several ex-Letraset designers. The popularity of this game declined in the 1980s and production ceased.