Web Page No 2774 10th April 2021 John Bull Printing Sets

1st Picture: John Bull outfit No6

2nd Picture: The Rubber Dye pieces

3rd Picture: Gift set

4th Picture: Multi printing set

The Story of Britain’s Most-Popular Printing Toy John Bull Printing Sets 1922 was a good year for budding printers. In Twickenham a young man called Donald Aspinall set up the Adana printing machine company, while a short distance in the City of London, three businessmen were laying the foundations of an equally famous printing-related company. The name of their small enterprise—The Charter Stamp Company—means very little today, but their most famous product—the John Bull Printing Outfits. John Bull Printing Sets are among Britain’s oldest and most popular toys. It was looked upon as the perfect ‘stocking filler’ by generations of parents and grandparents. Cheap and simple to use, they provided hours of fun for little fingers.

Early John Bull sets consisted of just upper-case characters and rubber illustration blocks were introduced into the sets by the late 1920s, but had also been sold separately for three decades or more. By the early 1930s a slab-serif typeface with upper and lower-case characters had been introduced and more expensive sets included printing blocks showing a clown, juggler, and Native American Chief and farm or zoo animals. Endless versions were issued from the company works in South Norwood. Sets were numbered anywhere from “1” to “250”. There were also “Special” sets the most commonly seen survivors are sets No. 4, 8, 18 and 12. Perhaps the strangest John Bull product is that which uses Monotype. These sets, with Monotype metal types, appeared soon after the WW2. The set contained 120 pieces of Monotype Gill Sans, although, rather curiously, the accompanying instruction leaflet was set almost entirely in Stephenson Blake’s rival sanserif, Granby. A special wooden type holder accommodated two lines of type, held in place with a thin wooden wedge and spaces were provided for use between words. A foam-rubber ink pad with non-toxic, water-based ink was supplied, so the results cannot have been very satisfactory. By 1950 this metal variant had been discontinued.

The company proclaimed the John Bull Printing Set to be 100% British made. This was true. Boxes were made on site, the rubber letters were moulded and vulcanised at the factory and even the non-toxic water-based ink was brewed up in large buckets. The product range expanded and by the early 1960s included a small rotary hand press which could accommodate several lines of rubber type in a grooved drum. By 1970 children could buy a John Bull farmyard set, backgammon, draughts and even a board game version of the BBC Mastermind quiz show. In the late 1970s costly plastic injection-moulding equipment was purchased for soft polymers, although the old vulcanised rubber system was retained for foreign language sets. The export market was important as a source of income, but the cost of producing new moulds for foreign territories was prohibitive. In the 1970s between 60,000 and 100,000 John Bull Printing Outfits were being made each year. Surplus manufacturing capacity allowed the production of components for another maker of educational rubber stamps. The John Bull trademark was sold to Dekkertoys of Peterborough in the late 1980s, but today the famous printing sets are no longer available. Second-hand sets occasionally appear on Ebay but new printing outfits are no longer manufactured.

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Mary Writes Hello, Hope you having a good Easter despite all. It`s a lovely sunny day here but tomorrow is meant to be like the winter of 1963, never to be forgotten. My Dad shot some pigeons for us to eat. We couldn`t see our veg plants in the garden but the pigeons came for them. In Denmead some birds were found frozen on top of sprout plants . Dad walked across the fields to where the rd was, & met a postman looking for the postbox. The rd between the hedges had filled up with snow, so Dad & the postman were walking on top of it. Most people seemed to stay indoors. I can`t remember being concerned, just got on with my revision, as my GCEs were that summer. It seemed a long time before we went back to school. 20 odd yrs later I was living in Scotland, where they know what heavy snow is! They are much better prepared for it, so cope with it. Life goes on much the same as always. Take care,

On this day 10th April 1960 – 1965 10/04/1960 the number one single was My Old Man's a Dustman - Lonnie Donegan and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. On 10/04/1961 the number one single was Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. On 10/04/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was The Budget (All Channels) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. On 10/04/1963 the number one single was How Do You Do It? - Gerry & the Pacemakers and the number one album was Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & the Shadows. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. On 10/04/1964 the number one single was Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was The Budget (All Channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Two footballers suspended over match fixing allegations. On 10/04/1965 the number one single was Concrete & Clay - Unit 4 Plus 2 and the number one album was Rolling Stones Number 2 - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.