but I remember lots of cigarette commercials, such as this one:

I am fairly certain that the dirt around here is more than 52 years old.

I'd walk a mile for a Camel.
Not a cough in a carload.
(Chesterfields?)

More doctors recommend...
Winstons taste good, like a cigarette should.

Was that B & H? Can't remember.

trying to outdo Benson and Hedges.

"A silly millimeter longer, 101..."

It's been so long!

And its slogan was "You've come a long way, baby"

You've come a long way, baby
To get where you've got to today
You've got your own cigarette now, baby
You've come a long, long way

The answer is Chesterfield.

I had to google it.

I used to smoke Chesterfields (the regular ones) until I found out they were Reagan's cigarette.

-- Mal

Younger than a Black Hole...

Anyone here old enough to remember listening to "cartoons" on the radio on Saturday morning?

but I don't remember exactly what it was except that it was kind of spooky.

I seem to remember sounds of creaky doors.

Better to be older than dirt, than dirt-napping.

-- Mal

dirt has been around longer than me. But hell, I remember when TV came on.

The test pattern started at 5:45, normal broadcast resumed at 6:00

Can't believe someone made a YT of that. Many is the night I was awakened by that tone, having fallen asleep watching TV.

"About to pounce" kitty.

or how about Winston it's what up front that counts.

It was the mockery of cigarette commercials in Woody Allen's film "Bananas."

A Catholic priest tells a man during communion (or whatever it is he's doing on his knees before the priest): "New Testament Cigarettes. I smoke them." And then, pointing to the heavens: "He smokes them."

on edit--I found a youtube link!

My dad was a four pack a day smoker of unfiltered Camels until he quit in the mid 70s. I remember many of these commercials.

Pall Mall: Outstanding, AND they are mild.

Salem: "Take a breath. It's springtime."

Lucky Strike: "LSMFT. Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco."

Kent: (musical jingle) "Kent with the micronized filter, refines away harsh flavor, refines away hot taste. It makes the taste of a cigarette mild, like a sunny day in the month of May."

Winston: (musical jingle) "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should."

Camel: "I'd walk a mile for a camel."

Tareyton: "I'd rather fight than switch."

Yeah, I watched far too much TV when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s.

And I never stopped. I had a chest X-ray two weeks ago as part of a pre-op examination for cataract surgery, and my lungs are clean. Can you believe that? I am 75 and have smoking since I was 16. Guess I have beat the odds--for now at least.

Good luck on your surgery.

But I've cut my smoking back to about 10 a day.

Great to know that you haven't paid a price for your enjoyment of smoking all these years. I smoked cigarettes when I was 15 and spent a year going to school in France. I remember that the teachers would smoke in class during lectures but that was back in the 60s. The cigarettes tended to be strong and cured much differently than in the U.S. and were made of dark tobacco (Gitanes, Celtiques, Boyards, Gauloises).

I'm curious as to how you chose a brand to smoke when you started. My dad smoked unfiltered Camels I think because they were supposed to be the strongest and with the highest nicotine content and were marketed as the most macho smoke. Some brands like Camels and Marlboro were marketed to rugged manly men. Some like Virginia Slims were marketed to women. Parliament, Pall Mall, and Viceroy were marketed to sophisticates. Some like Old Gold and Chesterfields were supposed to appeal to an older crowd while ads for True and Merit went after young adults. But weren't almost all brands available in the U.S. back then made from the same blonde Virginia tobacco and cured about the same way? Except for light or menthol versions of regular cigarettes, was there a difference between Winston, Marlboro, Raleigh, Viceroy, Kent, Pall Mall, Virginia Slims, Tareyton, Old Gold, Chesterfield, Parliament, Merit, Saratoga, Philip Morris, Picayune, True, Vantage, or the myriad other brands I can't remember? I remember working in a 7-11 in the 70s and if we ran out of Marlboro, some customers went apoplectic and refused to consider any other brand. I suspect the same tobaccos were being used from cigarette brand to cigarette brand but the mystique over certain names is what appealed to people. Maybe I'm wrong and there is an enormous difference between, say a Marlboro and a Parliament but I have my doubts.

The only significant differences among American cigarettes was filtered/unfiltered or menthol/regular. Everybody smoked Marlboros for the same reason everybody drank Budweiser, they had the heaviest marketing. Pretty much still that way.

I wound up smoking English cigarettes, then quit them altogether and just stayed with my pipe until tobacco became too expensive to buy.

-- Mal

Reciting a cigarette advertising slogan just before being tagged kept you from being "it."
That's how prevalent the commercials were back then.

Last edited Wed Feb 19, 2014, 08:40 AM - Edit history (1)

"Winston tastes bad like the one I just had
Its filter, its flavor, are worse than toilet paper"

"Us Taryton smokers would rather cough than stop"

We played "Movie tag." Same principle, but with movie titles.

-- Mal

"Taryton. We'd rather fight than switch!"

"Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should" (still remember the melody)
Which was followed by a DU-like outpouring of criticism of their grammar.

"AS" a cigarette should" they complained.

The whole string of Marlboro Man ads.

Oh yeah, I remember TV ads for smokes alright.

"...you can't take the country out of Salem."

at least when I think back to them now. They often showed a young man and woman under a spreading tree in the countryside puffing away on Salems and proclaiming that smoking a Salem was even better than breathing fresh country air ("Take a breath; it's springtime&quot , with the approach that these menthol cigs were somehow healthier and more invigorating.

And the Marleboro man was hot!

There is some dirt that's older than me, but not much.

There was a whole gestural vocabulary that was quite lovely, everything from the way she'd wait for a light to the way the smoke would mysteriously veil her face. I used to practice these movements (minus cigarettes) when I was a little girl.

Candy cigarettes -- definitely remember those. They helped with the practice.

I ended up a non-smoker, and remember at some point thinking it was kind of sad I wouldn't really get to pose like that. Still, when it tried them out in college I truly hated the smell, feel, taste, burning eyes... yikes. Yet my parents and nearly all my friends smoked back then.

Yes, from watching old movies it's apparent that the act of smoking carried with it a host of ritualistic behavior, from the feminine way a woman would hold her cigarette between two fingers with an upwardly bent wrist to the way a man would light a match on the bottom of his shoe to show he was one of the guys. Lighting a lady's cigarette was an important gesture of chivalry and an entree into starting a conversation with her.

Hedges & Benson 100's!

Lucky Strike means fine tobacco.

Yes, older than dirt.

My mom told me she used to say that to a friend of hers that was a huge Sinatra fan, just to piss her off!!

Lol.

Hated that one.

Well, hated all of 'em, really.

antinostalgically,
Bright

Winston was supposedly the brand with bad grammar, but Tareyton was worse:
It was "*Us* Tareyton Smokers Would Rather Fight Than Switch", with the objective pronoun *us* used as a subjective pronoun

Someone in a shower smoking Spud Cigarettes and my dad said he'd never smoke anything birdbrained people like that were smoking. The "I Have a Secret show with people who said their names in the following order: Winston, Tace, Gould, Lika, Tsigarette, Schultz!! God, they must be all in their eighties now!

Chesterfield!