Cards for the troops in World War II

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co. Ltd (Metrovick) distributed a highly popular line of promotional playing cards featuring "Cosmos Lamps" advertisements to market their domestic lightbulbs. When World War II broke out in 1939, playing card production in the UK was heavily restricted due to paper rations, and printing facilities were largely diverted to support the war effort. Instead of printing brand new packs for their comfort funds, two prominent, historically linked regional newspapers based in Manchester - the Daily Despatch and Evening Chronicle - partnered with local corporations like Metrovick (which was a major employer in Manchester’s Trafford Park industrial estate). Metrovick donated their existing promotional stock of Cosmos Lamps playing cards to the newspaper's fund, which then overprinted the red text on the aces before packing them up to ship to the troops. The overprint reads “From a Daily Despatch and Evening Chronicle reader”.

Playing cards were among the most highly requested recreational items for soldiers facing long periods of boredom or convalescence. The overprint acted as a gift label. It showed the receiving service member that the pack had been personally donated or funded by an ordinary British citizen (or business) supporting them from the home front. Given the type of box and the one-colour back design, this was probably quite old stock by 1939 and of little use to the advertiser, Metrovick. By then multicoloured backs had replaced monochrome ones in their advertising campaigns.