I was browsing a glossy illustrated book last night before sleep. It had sat on my shelves for a long while. The author was Francis (X.) King, who cropped up in the old Unexplained part-work as a specialist in sex-magic among other things. Anyway, the work in question was The Encyclopedia of Mind, Magic & Mysteries, a large-format work that was typical of the bright-eyed and busy visual style of Dorling Kindersley who always made use of every tool in the desktop-publishing cupboard to make everything look fit for an eight-year-old. Maybe it's the Kinder in the name that suggests it, but they are essentially not books for readers so much as products aimed at gift-buyers for non-readers. I digress.
Leafing idly through the pages - I think King was on auto-pilot too - I reached pages 114 - 15. In a chapter entitled Creatures of the Night, King deals with vampires. I doubt if the photo captions were part of his text, mosty likely editorial but much of the layout is summed up under a blurb entitled "Anti-Vampire Kit" The left hand page shows some silver bullets and a sprig of wolfbane; the right page juxtaposes a rope of garlic, a hand-mirror and a crucifix. More arty-crafty than wetty-panty.
The slightly skittish text does not suggest for a moment that such a kit existed or was known to the writer or editor. But I wonder if the term Anti Vampire Kit had ever been actually used before this? The date was 1991 and this was the first edition. Was there ever a second? Could this glossy volume have inspired someone to have a go at creating such a kit for real or can they be really be traced back into the eighties, as suggested above? 8)