Category Archives: History

As it happens, tobacco was a soldier’s best friend. And in all wars. I don’t know about now, but up until the 1980s, tobacco was considered a strategic raw material. That partnership is what this article will be about. Today I will look at the example of World War I as a key event in […]

So we talked about the events of 1911, when the U.S. government sued the American Tobacco Company tobacco Trust. Although the court found that despite the monopoly, Buchanan’s empire had not increased its prices, American Tobacco was accused of violating the Sherman Act. In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the trust should be […]

The Vanity Fair brand was founded back in 1895 by the Stephano family, but only by the early 1950s did the brand become exclusively for cigarettes. By that time, the descendants of the founders created the company Stephano Brothers Ltd. Vanity Fair was a ladies’ brand, it came in pastel pink and pastel blue packs, […]

Today it is hard to find someone who does not know what tobacco is and how it is used. True, few people know when tobacco appeared, and with it the addiction of tobacco smoking. There is no unequivocal opinion among historians about the emergence and beginning of tobacco smoking. If inhalation of smoke from burning […]

Benson & Hedges was founded on Old Bond Street, London, in 1873 by partners Richard Benson and William Hedges. In 1878 the company received the so-called Royal Warrant, which, however, was abolished in 1999. Benson & Hedges company was one of the first who started to sell tobacco in tin cans, not by the weight […]

The transition to cigarette smoking at the beginning of the twentieth century from traditional cigars and pipes was rather slow. A catalyst of sorts was World War I, where soldiers were supplied with cigarettes by various government organizations and commercial foundations. But it was not the ex-soldiers who gave cigarettes a really wide market, although […]

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 […]

The company was founded in 1890 by Louis Rothman as a small tobacco store on Fleet Street in London. Business was quite successful, in a dozen years a tobacco stall of Louis turned into a solid store in the famous Pall Mall, in the central part of London. The reputation was impeccable, both the company […]

From the history of cigarette brands: Dunhill.   The history of Dunhill as a cigarette brand begins in 1908. In the Dunhill stores there was a novelty — the first cigarettes in the world with a cotton filter. But they were not called Dunhill at all, but Absorbal and were positioned as “the most harmless” cigarettes.   Cigarettes […]