Category:
Smoking and Tobacco
Smoking and Tobacco
The Sport-Briar Pipe
"Is that an Indian Club between your lips, or are you just glad to be smoking?"
No wonder this never caught on.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Oct 01, 2012 -
Comments (3)
Category: Inventions, Chindogu, Smoking and Tobacco, 1920s
Cremo and Spit-tipped Cigars
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.
Original text here.
Original ad here. (Scroll down.)
But although Cremo increased its market share, their scheme ultimately backfired.
As this history says:
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.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Apr 18, 2012 -
Comments (5)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Lies, Dishonesty and Cheating, Smoking and Tobacco, 1920s, 1930s
Smokin’
Posted By: Nethie - Thu May 27, 2010 -
Comments (13)
Category: Addictions, Health, Tobacco and Smoking, Smoking and Tobacco, More Things To Worry About
No Smoking in Bismarck, North Dakota
Posted By: Nethie - Wed May 20, 2009 -
Comments (6)
Category: Crime, Drugs, Smoking and Tobacco, Comedians
Follies of the Mad Men #21
The weirdest thing about this ad is the notion that an airline would give a customer something for free!
Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 02, 2008 -
Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Drugs, Smoking and Tobacco, Flight, Travel, 1950s
Young Rastafarians
Following up on my previous post about the Kuku-Kuku of Papua New Guinea, here's another image from The Circle of Life: Rituals from the human family album. It's my favorite image in the book. It's captioned, "Outside of Kingston, Jamaica, young Rastafarian church members smoke ganja."
The text goes on to explain that Rastafarians consider marijuana to be a sacred herb, and that the ritual of smoking it mirrors similar rituals in many other cultures: "Ritualistic smoking of tobacco is an expression of group bonding in numerous Native American ceremonies, and the use of incense, hallucinogens, or alcohol to alter the senses is a common initiatory practice worldwide."
Posted By: Alex - Fri Aug 29, 2008 -
Comments (2)
Category: Drugs, Smoking and Tobacco, Children
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |