Much of the world is currently falling out of love with the cigarette but the industry’s advertising has produced some of the most iconic poster images of the last century. Omer Ali makes his pick
“Loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.” Not the latest public opinion of Paris Hilton but the words of England’s King James I 400 years ago on the then relatively new trend of smoking.
As every schoolboy knows, smoking was imported to Europe from the North American continent, where Native Americans used highly potent tobacco to induce trances. Since the 17th century, tobacco’s history has been inextricably linked with colonialism and even Civil War.
The latest battle lines to be drawn in the lengthy tobacco wars are in London where, since 1 July, smokers have to head outdoors and take their chances with the British weather if they want to satisfy their nicotine craving. Over the past decade, smoking has been banned everywhere from California, of course, through New York and Dublin, to its perceived last bastion – Paris.
But as the number of smokers in North America and Western Europe drops, it’s reported that tobacco companies are targeting the developing nations of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe to up their profits. Iran and India have struggled to enforce bans on public smoking, but Bahrain has already outlawed smoking in shopping malls while public departments in Dubai are similarly smoke-free.
Which may well be the only way we can all avoid what King James I went on to refer to as, “the horrible Stygian smoke of the bottomless pit”.
Chesterfield
Stars have long promoted products across the world – and long before he became the most powerful man on the planet, 40th president of the United States Ronald Reagan was of course a humble actor making his way in a series of pretty respectable Hollywood B-movies. As his fame grew, so did the lure of attaching him to Chesterfield cigarettes, which he promised to send to all his friends. We wonder if he continued to present them with packets of cigarettes when he rose to the White House.
Belga
This beautiful poster sums up the glamour many associate with smoking. A pretty girl and bold colours – the black, gold and red of the Belgian company’s national flag. Advertisers gave up any hint of a link between sex appeal and smoking long ago.
Turk Murad and Fatima
Some manufacturers aim to imbue their cigarettes with a sense of the “mystical East”. Cigarettes are said to have begun to replace the tobacco pipe in the English-speaking world following the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856 against Imperial Russia. The British soldiers saw their Turkish Ottoman comrades making their own cigarettes by rolling their smoking tobacco in newsprint. Highly aromatic Turkish – or “Oriental” – tobacco is often mixed with other blends, such as world-famous Virginia, for a milder cigarette.
Camel Lights
The outline of Brussels’ famous Mannekin Pis statue is said to feature on Camel packs, alongside various animals – but none so odd as Joe Camel. Launched in the ’80s, the cartoon was accused of making smoking attractive to children, and was retired a decade later.
Silk Cut
By the 1990s, tobacco advertising was banned on television in many countries and makers were severely restricted in what they could show on posters. So Silk Cut came up with a series of visual puns, swathed in its distinctive purple colour. Again, the Surrealists were co-opted for a picture of a household iron bearing sharp spikes poised to “cut” into silk. Elsewhere the images were more playful, inlcuding a family of tailor’s scissors poised like birds awaiting feeding and a Germanic officer whose helmet has punctured the presumably “silk” roof of his tiny car.
Player’s
Player’s was the original manly cigarette brand. In fact, there’s a sense that John Player was doing his customers a big favour packaging his macho tobacco in paper at all. Motor-racing fans will recall the company’s black-and-gold JPS livery of the 1970s and ’80s.
Craven A
Especially popular during the 1940s, Craven A aimed for a wholesome, feminine market. The brand’s tagline encouraged people to “smoke for your throat’s sake”. The stars of their advertisements were perfect middle-class homemakers who would hardly break into a sweat during tennis at the country club. The advertisers placed particular emphasis on how kind their product was to its user, which makes slogans like “Made especially to prevent sore throats” seem rather innocent now.
Marlboro
Frankly, we’re not sure that we ever wanted to visit “Marlboro Country”, but the phrase continues to pop up in conversation, sitcoms and films. The concept was invented in the 1960s to embody Marlboro’s rugged, cowboy image. Now Marlboro is more immediately recognisable for its trim red and white triangular packaging. Fact fans: the brand is named after central London’s Great Marlborough Street, where the company had a factory. |
