Friday, May 22, 2009
Cancer. With Soul
My kids laugh when I tell them smoking was glamorous and sophisticated when I was a kid in the 1970s. In movies, the line "May I offer you a light?" often led to romance--not a trip to a lung specialist. Being able to look cool holding a cigarette was a good thing. And stores stocked candy cigarettes for the young set.(I preferred Pall Malls.)
We close the week with an ode cancer stick advertising--with a little Soul. Here is a set of circa 1970 cigarette ads from Ebony Magazine.
Why does the woman have a black eye? The Tareyton cigarettes' ad campaign/tagline was "I would rather fight than switch" brands. Lung disease and a black eye. Nice. Dig the commercial.
Black folks and menthol cigarettes. I bet this is how it started.
This Winston ad makes fun of its own then-successful, but ungrammatical slogan, "Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should." The brother in the last quote balloon breaks it all down.
Oh come now. This ain't even subliminal.
And speaking of Pall Mall cigarettes. My father and all his friends pronounced it "Pell Mell" rather than the way it looks: "Paul Maul". All these years I thought they were wrong. Turns out they weren't.
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