I was having a nice reminiscene with Orbiter about the good ol’ childhood toys we played with.
Hands up for those who remember fashioning jewellery from plasticine and having that icky waxy feeling on your hands after that! Legs up for those who remember rag dollies and masak-masak with your mommy’s cooking pans and berries from the garden. No swanky Playdoh, Barneys or Nintendos for us little tikes back then!
I do miss my childhood days but one thing I really miss from it is this:
If you don’t know Kalkitos then you’re probably a different era from mine! We used to get to choose our own Kalkitos from the bookshop which came in a wrapped pack. Open it and you’ll find a printed colourful landscape, sans any characters or pictures. Attached together will be a piece of plastic with the printed characters. You just use a pencil, shade them in and voila, they’ll stick to the landscape! The entire landscape is up to your imagination!
The challenge was to shade hard enough so the characters will transfer properly onto the landscape in one piece. Don’t do it properly and you might find that your cartoon transferred only in bits and pieces! The other challenge was to create a nice landscape and if you were an obsessive child like me, you spend hours agonising over where to put your characters only to find that like neighbour’s grass, PB‘s always looked nicer! *pout*Â
I tried Googling it up but the company making this seems to have mysteriously disappeared. It seems like the only place you can get this now is on Ebay for a king’s ransom! So, if anyone sees Kalkitos around, do holler! I’ll love to do another one again!
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Of course, from different era! Never heard of Kaikitos. It does sound like fun though. But your neighbour’s grass always immaculate, by the look of things, huh? Haha.. Burritos, anyone?
Pinkelle says: Nah, neighbour’s grass isn’t always greener. The lawn just sometimes looked better kept than mine!
Ooooh! I remember this! I only never knew what the name was =P I LOVE those games
Pinkelle says: Thanks for coming by! I know, I loved loved them too! But dunno where to find them now!
Hey! I remember playing with this! And the obsessive kid part *hands up* guilty as charged! LOL!
But it didn’t have a name back then… maybe mine was the ciplak version?
Pinkelle says: LoL at obsessive kid! Ciplak version?! Hm…never seen that one before!
i played that also, wonder why cannot find nowadays hor..
Pinkelle says: Ya, maybe the company producing it died already. Should set up a new business doing it!
yes yes YES! *both hands up*
I used to buy so many Kalkitos to play with, even though they’re all the same, hahaha! just love tracing those figures on. so much fun!
Pinkelle says: Yay! *waves hands* They’re so so fun aren’t they?! But can’t find them anymore
*jumps up and down, waving hands madly*
I wanna play too! We have Kalkitos challenge, yes?
Pinkelle says: Yay! Let me try to get my grubby hands on a Kalkitos kit first then we can have a challenge of who can trace the best!
Guilty as charged
Pinkelle says: So fun right?! But I’m not willing to pay 10 euros for them on eBay!
My favourite Kalkitos scene was the one you displayed on your blog, the ‘Wild, Wild West’ one featuring red indians versus cowboys. I particularly remember one of the figures being a red indian chief with his full-feathered headdress! Each series came in different sizes as well. My mom spent a fortune and bought me the largest of the ‘Wild, Wild West’ series, about the size of two A4-sized papers, so I really spent lotsa time stencilling in the action figures, enjoying every second of it! Great stimuli of every kid’s imagination. Bring back Kalkitos and those good ol’ days!
PE says: Yeah, I wonder what happened to them!
Perhaps it’s time to kick off a Kalkitos business! 
Amazing, and I thought Kalkitos was exclusively a Portuguese thing, because the name makes sense in Portuguese.
You see, the verb “calcar” is “to press” and “ito” (=singular. “itos”=plural) is kind of a diminuitive (kind of as in english you add a “y” to words to express a smaller version – example: add “y” to dog and you get doggy). Mix the 2 words “calcar” + “ito”(loosing the last 2 letters from “calcar”), replace Cs for Ks and you get Kalkitos!
So in Portuguese it transmits the idea that it is something small and you use it by the action of pressing. Which is exactly what it is!!!
For those looking for something similar try looking for the terms “rub on” or “transfer”.
The results found are not the same fun though, I just loved the scenarios and themed transfer sheets.
I missed them so much!
I have no idea why they are gone. I bet kids nowadays would love them the same.
I can’t believe the company producing them would not have a profit.
Please bring them back!!!
I would definitely buy them.
Here is some virtual Kalkitos for your mobile phone
http://teavuihuang.com/actiontransfers/
But somehow “virtual” doesn’t feel the same
And the smell… Do you remember the smell of new Kalkitos waiting for us to start pressing with the pencil?