Cigarettes that never existed
Or rather they were, but they existed only within the confines of movie scripts. I will tell you about some of them today.
The Imperial Balaji cigarettes smoked by Joan Mary Lambert, the navigator of the “USS Nostromo” in the 1979 film “Alien”, never really existed. It’s nothing more than an invention of the set designers.) The name, however, was not given to the mark by accident – it is a peculiar, humorous reference to the actor Bolaji Badejo, whose face was hidden by the xenomorph suit throughout the film. It is known that the prop pack had French Gitanes Vizire in it during filming.
In the second episode of the tenth and final season of the television series “Columbo”, journalist Budd Clark is killed with poisoned Victory Kings cigarettes. The much-experienced detective, of course, solves the crime! But this brand of cigarettes – pure fiction and in reality they did not exist. By the way, a similar move was used in the first episode of the third season. The same poisoned cigarette, only the killer is already a woman, and the brand of cigarettes, also non-existent, Valiant. Funnily enough, the design of both versions of the cigarettes is the same.
In the 1994 adventure film “Shadow”, one of the characters, Dr. Reinhardt, smokes filterless Llama cigarettes while contemplating a billboard advertising the brand. Of course, such cigarettes did not exist and it was a parody of Camel.
Moreover, tobacco history knows many parodies and imitations of Camel, but the “Llama” was a figment of imagination of the film’s writers.
Red Apple is perhaps the most popular cigarettes, of course, from the movies. Quentin Tarantino very often “light them up” in his movies. So Butch Coolidge buys a pack of Red Apple cigarettes from the bartender in the movie “Pulp Fiction”. In “Kill Bill”, in scenes at the Tokyo airport, you can see billboards with the brand. In “Disgusting Eight” it is revealed that the landlady of the inn, Minnie’s Garment Shop, smokes Red Apple tobacco cigarettes.
The gas station in “Death Proof” sells Red Apple cigarettes. By the way, the same film had another prop brand, Capitol W Lights, a personal invention of Michi Yukawa, one of the film’s producers.
In addition, other directors also have their own ghosts, but of Tarantino’s films. For instance, in “Romy and Michelle at the Reunion” by David Mirkin, there is a scene where the main character has a fresco with the same image of a wormy apple as the background.
Wilmington cigarettes are often smoked in the TV series “Breaking Bad”. In the case of this brand, it was a necessity of a lifetime, because no brand agreed to such advertising.
