The history of tobacco creativity.

Creativity and ingenuity have never been alien to tobacco marketers. Not only that, but tobacco marketers are the only ones who periodically feel the pressure of a whole bunch of different organizations wanting a piece of the “tobacco pie”. In previous reviews I have written about how some brands have marketed by improving tobacco content and how non-tobacco brands have used this same “tobacco pie” for their own advertising. Today, let’s look at other inventions of tobacco companies, which have always found a way out of almost any situation.

From time to time in the Internet there are angry notes about the so-called “candy-cigarettes”, they say were accustomed to tobacco children from childhood! Indeed, there was a time in the history of tobacco, but no one set a goal to accustom children to cigarettes. Just such candy and chewing gum were widely known in the 1950s-1960s, when tobacco was not so critical, and the form factor of the cigarette was commonplace.

In this case, it was more of a promotion of the candy makers, at the expense of the tobacco manufacturers, than the other way around. And the image of a child smoking, not possible now, was considered only a funny, cute joke, as evidenced by the many postcards of those days. But when one looks at it from the 21st century the verdict is one – the tobacco manufacturers “prepared the young generation” through sweets =)

Although it was in the middle of the 20th century that there were the most tobacco brands, which are now simply not possible. For example, few people know that even the famous Walt Disney Empire had its own tobacco brands. For example, Virginia Ovals cigarettes, with the logo of the “children’s empire”, were sold up until the 1980s and not at all as souvenir products. And that was okay, because children mostly went to the amusement park with adults.

And the founding father of the empire, Walt Disney, has always been an avid pipe smoker, as evidenced by a lot of evidence from his closest colleagues. Not only that, on the territory of Disney Park, practically from the moment of its construction, there was a branded tobacco store. And that was fine. It only looks wild now.

And speaking of “brand-name” cigarettes, they were even in prisons! It is true that they were more or less widespread only in U.S. penitentiaries.

But back to the ideas of the tobacco manufacturers themselves. One of the areas of promotion, of course, was the idea of improving the comfort of smoking. Although what could be invented here? Self-lighting cigarettes! This idea has been stirring minds since the 1880s and there were even patents for some inventions, but not many went into commercial production.

Only American brands SpotLight, Monolite and Autolite, and Italian Galilei Marconi cigarettes reached more or less mass production. The sulfur head in the cigarette, though it allowed us to do without matches, but it hardly added a pleasant taste to the smoke.

Human paranoia gave tobacco brands a much better chance to stand out among their competitors. Some of the trends of these pens are still at work today. And the first among them is the fire hazard of cigarettes. In fact, the responsibility for this factor is entirely on the smoker himself, but they are stubbornly trying to shift it to cigarette manufacturers. And they take advantage of it =) So probably few people know, but the famous cigarettes More were just self-extinguishing. If you leave a cigarette unextinguished in an ashtray, it will extinguish on its own after a while, not smoldering to the filter.

Sherman’s MCD is another brand of cigarettes that successfully exploited the theme of fire safety. The package of these cigarettes contained a long legend, which explained in detail why these cigarettes are safe. The fact that Sherman’s MCD cigarettes are premium and made without any additives, including saltpeter in the cigarette paper. Thanks to all this, cigarettes not only extinguished on their own, they also retained their original flavor. Unless, of course, bohemians were in the habit of smoking “cigarettes” =)

But the most popular topic was, of course, smokers’ fears about their own health and the possible harm of nicotine doses. Yes, for a long time it was believed that it was nicotine, not tar and lots of other substances, that caused harm to smokers. As a direct consequence, there have been periodically appeared just brands with reduced nicotine content. Such cigarettes were not in great demand among smokers, and their occasional appearance left a trace in tobacco history, but not a significant one.

Much more interesting were the “denicotyped” cigarette brands, such as Next De-Nic and Benson and Hedges De-Nic. The tobacco for these cigarettes was subjected to a process similar to the removal of caffeine from coffee beans in the manufacture of surrogate coffee. Back in the 1990’s, Philip Morris produced denatured Next De-Nic, and even provided the results of studies of the impact of such cigarettes on the human body. So, PM specialists stated that even when smoking these cigarettes for a long time, the smoker did not detect any changes in the ECG.

And the most popular topic of promotion, which remains to this day, was, of course, cigarette filters. Although is there much to think of there? Acetate fiber… Well, maybe in combination with charcoal chips. What else? But really, the topic of cigarette smoke filtration is very broad and interesting, deserving a separate topic. Besides, it has already been started in the post “History of Cigarette Filter” and will be continued in the very near future.