Kalkitos - Something I Used to do When I Was Young and Now My Kid Gets To Experience It Too

When I was a young lad I used to remember getting my mum to buy something called 'Kalkitos'. It was basically a fad in the 1970s and early 1980s. Kalkitos according to Wikipedia " were a type of art-based children's pastime that was extremely popular in Europe, South East Asia and Central America in the 1960s to 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."

I loved buying them and making my own composition from them and now, after all these years it is available again. I was at Amcorp Mall and I happened to stop by a shop selling vintage toys and curios on the second floor ( if I am not mistaken) and it sold some Kalkitos. You could buy it online through Kalkitos' website too. These used to cost three to four Ringgit but now it costs RM23.50. A great jump in price even though it is now manufactured across the Causeway in Singapore instead of Europe.

I bought the above background image for my 8 year old daughter to do. The reason I bought it is so she can experience a little of the days where we didn't have playstations, smartphones and other electronic gadgets to fill our time when we were kids. She seemed to enjoy it a fair bit and asked me to go get summore. But at RM23.50 for a piece of cardboard and stickers, I told her she'll have to wait.

Visit Kalkitos' for more details as I couldn't be bothered to write more on this even though it brought back some good childhood memories.