Who would ever have figured that this practical joke would come back into fashion after 80 years? Be a big hit in your rich Manhattan co-op, as you sprinkle these liberally around!
We all know that ad campaigns have often created the disease or deficiency they wish to sell remedies for. "Halitosis" and "BO" were Madison Avenue inventions.
But perhaps no campaign dared quite as much as that for Cremo cigars, with its charge that all its competitors spit on their product.
During the 1920s, the cigar industry began to suffer from image problems. The rise of organized crime during Prohibition, and the image of the stogie-chomping gangster--developed in part by Hollywood, and personified by such actors as Edward G. Robinson--gave the cigar an aura of disrespect among the public. Later that decade, the cigar industry faced a second crisis, when American Tobacco began promoting new, machine-rolled cigars. Its advertising asked: "Why run the risk of cigars made by dirty yellowed fingers and tipped in spit?" The image proved disastrous for the cigar industry as a whole. Cigar makers rushed to convert their manufacturing from hand-rolled to machine-rolled products, but cigar sales plunged through the 1930s. During this same time period, the cigar industry was hit hard by the rise in cigarette use across the United States. Cigar consumption never recovered to its early 1920s peak.
One of the weirder Hollywood offerings, this film depicts an American President gone wild in office--and it turns out to be a good thing! I'm surprised the film hasn't figured in this year's politics.
Category: Hygiene, Insects, Johnson Smith Catalog, 1930's, Pranks