Page 21 - Exotic | November 2024

way because their butts had a little swastika on them, betraying their movements to the Allies. The Germans figured this out eventual- ly, and everyone started smoking backward.
and people will stop smoking!" This, how- ever, did not happen. The demographic of smokers is typically people of lower income, and as we all know, poor people will never be without beer and smokes, so you've just picked Average Working-Class Joe's pocket. I'm sure he loves paying ten bucks for some- thing that cost two dollars two decades ago; let the man smoke!
Famous Brands and Factoids
Lucky Strikes
Filtered cigarettes were still largely unpopu- lar until the 1950s, when ad campaigns started directing their sales at ladies, for reasons of not getting tobacco stuck in your teeth and dampening your nice smile. Sales of filters took off after that and were primar- ily thought of as a feminine thing, though why anyone would want brown shit on their teeth is beyond me. Eventually, they stopped gender-based marketing and started selling filtered smokes as "more healthy," which, of course, they were not, but filters had become the predominant style by the late '50s and early '60s. In 1965, all coffin nails were man- dated to have the Surgeon General's warning on them, but it didn't really stop people from smoking as much as the Surgeon General, Luther Terry, had hoped, as the attitude at the time was "Okay, it's bad for me. I guess I do not care."
On every pack of Luckys, there is the acronym L.S./M.F.T. This is their way of saying, "Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.". I'm not sure why there's a slash in there, but that is what it stands for. They used to have "It's Toasted" on their branding as well, which stemmed from an accident at the factory in 1917. There was a fire in the cigarette factory, but some of the tobacco was still good despite a little damage. They sorted through the crap and were going to call it a total loss, but a very clever person at the American Tobacco Com- pany decided, "Let's just say it's toasted." This caught on, people liked them, and eventually they started deliberately heat-curing their leaf. It remains toasted to this day, but the phrase no longer appears on the packaging of their individual cigarette packs.
Chesterfield
It is one of the most heavily advertised smokes in modern history and one of the most referenced in pop culture. Notable smokers of Chesterfields included Princess Margaret, Ronald Reagan, Humphrey Bogart, Lucille Ball, Rod Serling, and many others. In fact, while Lucille was a known chain smoker,
she preferred the Phillip Morris brand, but she was contractually obligated to not ever be seen smoking anything but Chesterfields on screen. There is some irony in that Phillip Mor- ris now owns the brand, and their own brand is defunct. However, she'd stick Phillip Morris fire sticks in a Chesterfield pack, and nobody knew the difference. During the original run of The Twilight Zone, ol' Rod Serling would sometimes advertise them at the end of an episode. They were referenced many times in many films, notably Grindhouse, where they were smoked by Kurt Russell's character, and of course, True Romance, where Dennis Hop- per's character takes one from Christopher Walken after insulting him and knowing he's gonna get blasted. They also appear in Reser- voir Dogs and in The Shawshank Redemption, as well as the Blues Brothers in several scenes. The most notable being when they state that it is 106 miles to Chicago, they have a full tank of gas and half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and they're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.
Fast forward to the modern day, the thought amongst government stooges is that "Hey, we’ll just raise the fuck out of cigarette taxes,
Parliaments
Known for its distinctive half-hollow, short
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