So lastly we have a “racket”, here being shown as a cacophony of noise, but also being the item of equipment which strikes the shuttlecock back and forth across the net.
You may think that you can just get away with using a tennis racket to play badminton with, but it is, dare I say, a whole different ball game. Badminton rackets are much lighter and more flexible and they also come in lots of different types, depending on your ability.
The "head-light" style is usually the starting point. This gets players used to holding a racket, and it is easy to control, also they can develop their style before opting to buy a racket in a style to which they may not be suited.
They then move on to a "standard", or "even balance" racket, which is lighter, and because of that you can manipulate it with more dexterity, curving your strokes aloft with a rather satisfying swoosh.
Lastly, when mastery is attained, they may like to try what is known as a "head-heavy" style. This is what the professionals all seem to prefer, mainly because the extra weight gives greater power and therefore sends the shuttlecock all the further. However they can be unwieldy for younger or smaller players, leading to sore arms, and also to more mis-strikes, because the racket cannot be held as steadily.
Now of course this card is much more often seen issued by Ogden`s, and you ought to have been able to have told that from just the front alone, because in the top right hand corner of the picture it says “BOY SCOUTS” where it usually says “OGDEN`S CIGARETTES”.
Now that the reverse has been revealed you can see that there is another difference as well, for instead of the block at the bottom containing the Ogden`s wording, there is a line drawing of the Boy Scout emblem.
So here is that Ogden`s version so you can compare it all the more easily. And, by the way, as this worked much better than I thought, there will be a lot more comparison cards like this added to future, and past, newsletters...
Before I gallop onwards, this is not part of the long five-set combination issue of “Boy Scouts” that was issued by Ogden`s between 1911 and 1914, whch was also issued by Churchmans. This set was issued later, in 1929, and is a stand-alone set of fifty cards. And because we have a reference book to the Ogden issues (RB.15, first issued in 1949), we can also add a description of what is ostensibly the same as our featured card, which is :
46. 50. BOY SCOUTS (1929). Fronts printed by letterpress in colour. Backs in green, with descriptive text. Home issue, 1929. Similar series issued by B.A.T.
That is our set, and it is catalogued in original reference book to the issues of the British American Tobacco Company (RB.21, issued in 1952) as :
215-46. Boy Scouts (1929). This series was issued as follows :-
A. Ogden`s Home issue.
B. Anonymous issue, with letterpress on back.
The index at the front of RB.21 also tells us that it was issued in the “Channel Islands and Malaya”, but gives the date as 1930, not 1929.
In our World Tobacco Issues Indexes it appears at the back of the book amongst the “Z” numbers, catalogued as :
BOY SCOUTS. Sm. Nd. (50). See RB.21/215-46.B
This card explained something else to me, who was never a boy scout, though I was, very briefly, a brownie – and that is the fact that the old chestnut of “Dib,Dib,Dib - Dob,Dob,Dob” is not strictly correct. The first acronym is really “Dyb”, which stands for “Do Your Best” - whilst Dob, the reply, is for “[We Will] Do Our Best”.