The renewed “watermelon”: smoking LD Breezy Compact cigarettes
This year, one of the flagships of the tobacco market, the LD brand, carried out a global re-branding of its products. It is unlikely that this has anything to do with the upcoming price increases, rather it is a planned process. But in LD has changed not only the design of packs, but also the attitude to the consumer. What has changed and how does it translate? Read below!
2020 in the tobacco world of progressive countries was marked by a widespread struggle with tobacco companies at a completely new level, namely the forcing to abandon the “flavor chemicals” in cigarettes. Domestic same fighters for HLS is only swing the flywheel “good intentions”, but we all know where the road they send =( While, of course, flavored cigarettes and cigarettes with a “button” in the people of the “young mind” in vogue and, it seems, in the next year or two that will change little.
But come on. That will be what will be. And now let’s look in all the details at the renewed LD Breezy cigarettes, the much-expanded Autograph family. Indeed, three or four years ago, the Autograph was rated by the manufacturer as head and shoulders above all other varieties. And the Autograph was, how to put it mildly, just a design element of the pack. Even the company with that name no longer exists! Originally, the Autograph series belonged only to compact cigarettes, but now almost all the LD varieties are marked with the “elite” label.
“The one-button Impulse series, once numerous, is now available in only four varieties. Moreover, a couple of them “come” in “compacts” and a couple of them in the new format “compact 100’s”. The pack of this review, if the labeling is to be believed, was produced this summer and the price is still reasonable at $4.7 per pack.
The updated design includes a kind of “consumer’s corner”, on the back of the pack is a number of icons, though with obscure captions for those who “studied German” at school, describing the merits of these particular cigarettes. Fortunately, there is a deciphering on the official. brand site. So, what was promised? “Charcoal filter with air chamber” – this is not a novelty, but almost a mandatory attribute of all modern cigarettes with “button”. “Less smoke odor?” That’s LSS technology in all JTI cigarettes. “Long sliced tobacco…” Hmmm… Let’s see below. “Double-layer foil”… Not sure where to look for it and how it affects the taste of the cigarettes.
By the way, LD is one of the few brands that still doesn’t shy away from stating what flavor the button tastes like, directly associating it with specific fruit and berry analogues. But you won’t find even a hint of this association on the pack itself. But it is worth going to the official site as soon everything falls into place. This particular variety tastes like “ice watermelon”!
The pack contains twenty filter combo cigarettes in a relatively new format compact 100’s, a logical extension of the “compacts”, but with an increased length of the cigarette. The design of cigarettes apparently no longer had enough imagination =( The new “target” capsule looks a little ominous – as if someone had a nosebleed and here … dripped some… Really twenty times.
The design of the filter did not undergo any changes. It is the former three sections of acetate fiber – with carbon chips, without it, but with a gelatin capsule, and the so-called “air filter” – a short acetate mouthpiece with a denser fiber weave.
The bag in the cigarettes also remained the same. At least visually it looks that way. The bulk of the contents of the cigarette are fractions of yellow, dark yellow and red-yellow. There are also light yellow particles, but they all come from a relatively small volume of vein slices. There is no “long cut of tobacco” to be seen here – it is exactly the same as in LD cigarettes before the re-branding. All the same various flakes, ribbons and vein slices, including the “blown” ones.
The taste of the cigarettes themselves has not changed. Well, or almost no change. The same papery tartness in the smoke, the absence of any even a hint of tobacco flavor, and a very slight hint of capsule flavor. That is, it siphons somewhat, but not obviously.
If you activate the button at once, the taste is transformed! I would not say that it is an ice watermelon, though. It tastes more like cheap lollipops and a pretty powerful menthol. The stated flavor was nowhere near the taste of these cigarettes! It doesn’t even taste like bong “watermelon”! Cheap chemistry and nothing more.
What’s the bottom line? I won’t say that these cigarettes are outright junk. No. It’s just a very budget version. 4$… well, Breezy is very close to its marginal price. Will this brand be able to gain a foothold after the New Year’s Day price increase? I highly doubt it. Although my pessimistic prediction applies to the whole brand, not just this particular series.
