This month’s measure is a cheaply made advertising or promotional key tag with additional functionally supplied by The Action Line. A company would have handed one out as a ‘thank you’ for custom or as an inexpensive advertisement gifted by salesmen to clients.

The Action Line was a US company based in Rhode Island. They produced plastic golf ball markers and a great many decorative keychains, most with a ‘# number’. The measure shown here is #199, which implies at least 198 other items preceding it, and certainly many products followed it. The Action Line trademark was first used in 1951.

What is it?

The measure is in the form of a ‘key tag’, also known as a keychain [key chain] and is intended to be attached to a key or keys. A keychain could also be a link between keys and keyring. Beyond its practical use, it also acts as either a souvenir or advertising item. If the chain were exchanged for a ring, it would be called a keyring. This measure could also be called a key fob, which is more properly a decorative or functional item that accompanied keys on a ring or chain. Note that the etymology of the word ‘fob’ is uncertain. I show another two examples of key tag produced by Action Line below.

Despite being a cheaply produced item, the two examples shown here indicate that steps were taken to reduce manufacturing cost still further. The Smith’s Service example has larger brass rivets and the words on the front side are not simply printed, they are embossed, then infilled with paint. The Arrow Service Company example has the words simply printed on the face and while these would wear more easily as a result, it will fractionally reduce a cost of bulk manufacture. This may indicate that the Smith’s Service measure is an earlier example than the Arrow Service key tag. The bead chain printing on the link also differs. Beyond the rivets and printing, the two examples appear to be otherwise identical

The manufacture of plastic items greatly improved in the 1950s and 1960s and such cheaply produced items became commonplace. These measures probably date from then, or possibly from the 1970s. Unit cost was probably just a few cents when purchased in bulk retail. Two examples are shown here, one for the Arrow Service Company, another for Smith’s Service Company. These may have alternatively been printed with the details of other company names, however while I have seen other examples also printed with the two names shown, I have never seen a third.

Both measures have identical measurements of 57mm x 42mm. The large measuring wheel has a diameter of 34mm, the small tracking wheel is 12.5mm. The opened bead chain some 90mm in length. Each measure weighs 5.5g

The instrument will record four tracked inches with each full rotation of the large wheel. These are shown on the large cogged wheel, with one-tenth increments. So if used with a one inch to one mile scale map, this could measure four miles in tenth of a mile increments. This can be scaled to fit the map being used. It is unlikely that many road maps would have such a large scale.

The cogged teeth on the smaller wheel not only rotate the large measuring wheel, but are also tracked along a road or line on a map. They are not an ideal design for this and can easily puncture paper if not used over a hard surface. The type of mistake that was presumably only done once by a frustrated motorist.

The slogan “Full Measure of Value” is an old one, used in advertising for many decades, certainly to the early part of the twentieth century. It obviously attempts to persuade a buying public of value for money and assures them of excellent service and receiving or attaining everything expected.

Often, but not always, the slogan is used with an object or instrument that incorporates measurement, or is intended to measure something. It then becomes a pun, a play on words. The ruler shown here is such an example, and by association the pint glass. This is also the case with the key tag map measure, also intended to be used to measure distances.

Book Club Measure

A very similar measure without the chain was given to members of a Book Club as a free gift. This measure does not have Action Line branding. Instead, it has a “PB” logo, and “HONG KONG” indicating where it was manufactured.

While the similarities in these measures is very obvious, with the same coloration, identical operation, brass pivot rivets and design influences, the ‘Book Club’ measure is actually very different, not least in its dimensions. The Book Club measure is 69mm x 40mm. Large measuring wheel has a diameter of 30mm, the small tracking wheel is 13mm. It weighs 5g.

Members of book clubs were frequently persuaded to remain subscribers by ‘special’ offers or small gifts. This might be a free book for every ‘x’ number purchased, or free bookshelves or, in this case, a map measure. I do not know if this ‘Book Club’ measure pre or post dates the key tag design but it was a slightly more expensive to manufacture product due to the better tracking wheel incorporated in its design.

These measures are neither high quality or particularly accurate. They are of limited practical use but perhaps sufficed as a cheap ‘give-away’. They are interesting little instruments, representative of the growing use of high quality plastics in cheaper products and may have been useful to their owners on a handful of occasions. Hopefully they acted as a gateway to motorists purchasing a more practical map measure of better quality. Three Points of the Compass has looked at a few higher quality and accurate Map Measurers in detail. Links to these can be found here.