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  • Old cigarettes

    This is my threatened thread , continued from 'School days : smoking teachers' thread I started and commented on earlier today.

    I gave up smoking cigarettes only this week after over 40 years and it put me in mind of how I started and made me remember some of the brands I used to smoke and those machines that used to dispense packets of ten outside corner shops.

    I can blame my late father for getting me started back in 1972 maybe 73. He used to smoke 'Guards' (Careeras ?). These interested me for two reasons. First was the fact they had a soldier on the packet (I was into soldiers/history in a big way as a boy) and secondly was THAT smell.

    I found that although I had no friends at all, cigarettes were a talking point/something in common with most of the other kids who used to hang around. Soon I realised that if you didn't have a packet of No.6 about your person (when asked) there was something wrong with you.

    In the previous thread in school days I mentioned how I used to pilfer money to buy cigarettes from the machine with only a few pence. I confess that one source of this income was from my mother's purse and coins found after the GPO guy had emptied the local telephone box. Later it came from a paper round.

    We shared cigarettes down at a place called 'the bog'. It was on the edge of the countryside where we lived and was ideal for lawless smoking. Half the thrill of smoking was the fact we were mostly under 16, which was the legal age to buy fags then.
    This brought on many a confrontation with my parents, particularly my father, who as I said, had, unwittingly got me started in the first place.

    My father was a Primary Headteacher which made my rebellion even worse. I still remember the smell in his School office to this day. Indeed I still have the ashtrays he used, just couldn't get rid of them.

    The most prized cigarette I smoked was 'Consulate'. For those that don't recall these were all white menthol flavoured fags that were advertised as 'as fresh as a mountain stream' in the days of billboards and tobacco adverts in magazines. The ultimate though were cigarettes called St Moritz. These, like Consulate, were menthol, but longer, in a flashy flat packet with two sets of ten fags in foil. They had gold bands round the middle. What a treat these were.

    The staple though was the ghastly No 6's by Players. These were short and very very strong. Number 10's were even shorter and nastier and so, so cheap at 9½ per pack of ten. We'd smoke any bloody thing though, whatever we could get our hands on. I remember Rothman's, Silk Cut, John Player Specials, Embassy and Benson and Hedges. Woodbines were horrible non-filter fags that you only bought in an emergency.

    I had to hide my fags from my parents. Some of the places were quite ingenious, like down the side of a stickle bricks box. Because my parents would kep smelling smoke on me, I made my own cigarette holder from an old fountain pen ! The idea was to stop my fingers smelling of tobacco smoke. It worked, too. A few years ago I even found said filter - aye THE one - in n old pencil box I'd had since I was a boy.

    When I eventually became 16, my parents had no grounds on which they could locate, search and destroy. my fags. The novelty was wearing off by then, but I continued to smoke cigarettes until recently, albeit in slowly decreasing numbers.

    Now in my 50's and as a prmise to my wife I've stopped the cigarettes and the pipe will have to go as well. Thankyou whoever invented the electronic cigarette !

  • #2
    Re: Old cigarettes

    I was lucky that hardly any of my family smoked so wasn't temped to start.

    One of my friends uses e-cigs after smoking cigarettes, & can't stand the smell of tobacco smoke now.
    The Trickster On The Roof

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    • #3
      Re: Old cigarettes

      The Black Country Living Museum has a mock-up smoke shop complete with packets of bygone brands of cigarettes and tobacco from the early 20th century. None of them have any health warnings printed on them.

      Retrowow has a pages on smoking in the 1960s and 70s.

      http://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_brit...cigarettes.php
      http://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_brit...oking_70s.html

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Old cigarettes

        The 'Turks Head' (or the "stuffed dog" if you live locally to Tynemouth) has an old Woodbine's machine on the wall that used to charge 2/6' . I've often thought about taking some old coins down and seeing if the mechanism still works but they've probably already thought about that tbh. It's got about 18 packs of old cigs in it. My mam has 2 tatty miniature boxes of woodbines about an inch in size with plastic white cigs in. She never smoked herself so I don't know if they were a horrendous 1950s dolls accessory or if they were some kind of advertising gimmick from her childhood? My nanna smoked capstains full strength then Berkeley greens when the gangrene set in. OMG! True story!

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        • #5
          Re: Old cigarettes

          "more".....long thin brown cigarettes,,,,,very posh.

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          • #6
            Re: Old cigarettes

            Originally posted by fynger View Post
            "more".....long thin brown cigarettes,,,,,very posh.
            yep, remember them, a ldies cigarette if I recall rightly. Think you can still get 'em.

            Anyone who loves fancy fags check out these http://natshermancigarettes.com/home.cfm

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            • #7
              Re: Old cigarettes

              Went out with a girl once, she smoked More fags (long slim and brown they were) and drank Creme de menthe - Very classy ;-)

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              • #8
                Re: Old cigarettes

                Hope it's OK to bump this thread.

                I found a site recently that had a lot about cigarette brands, especially their marketing & image.

                I was also wondering when health warnings started to be put on packets, I'm guessing sometime in the mid 1970s.

                Around this time low tar cigs seemed to become more popular.
                The Trickster On The Roof

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Old cigarettes

                  Originally posted by Richard1978 View Post
                  Hope it's OK to bump this thread.

                  I found a site recently that had a lot about cigarette brands, especially their marketing & image.

                  I was also wondering when health warnings started to be put on packets, I'm guessing sometime in the mid 1970s.

                  Around this time low tar cigs seemed to become more popular.
                  I don't recall the health warnings coming in, but yes late 70's sounds about right.

                  As for the low tar fagsters, well I was smoking no 6 extra milds in a nice sky blue packet. Whatever would those yobs have thought of those eh?

                  I even remember something called 'NSM', New Smoking Material cigarettes that came out in the early 80's/late 70's. They were supposed to be a replacement for tobacco. They lasted literally two weeks on the market until it was realised they were just as poisonous as the real thing.

                  Bet no-one remembers them !

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Old cigarettes

                    In the 1980s Tomorrow's World had some odd cigarettes which only heated rather than burnt the tobacco, which I never saw or heard of again, though they remind me of an early e-cig.
                    The Trickster On The Roof

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                    • #11
                      Re: Old cigarettes

                      Kim cigarettes & Sobrani cocktail too
                      sigpic
                      Do you really believe the other side without provocation would launch so many ICBM's, subs and ships knowing that we would have no option to launch as well? It would break our MAD Treaty (Mutually Assured Destruction) not to mention the end of the world as we know it.

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                      • #12
                        Re: Old cigarettes

                        Also tubs of fags too for your party
                        sigpic
                        Do you really believe the other side without provocation would launch so many ICBM's, subs and ships knowing that we would have no option to launch as well? It would break our MAD Treaty (Mutually Assured Destruction) not to mention the end of the world as we know it.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Old cigarettes

                          At my Aunt's wedding there were wine glasses full of cigarettes at the reception. A little surprising for 1981, especially as hardly anyone in my family smokes.
                          The Trickster On The Roof

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                          • #14
                            Re: Old cigarettes

                            I remember the local shop always had a jar full of ciggies they use to sell as singles, even to school kids.

                            My Mum always smoked Silk Cut and my Dad smoked Benson and Hedges. They both no longer smoke and are in their 70s.
                            I remember as a kid it was always a treat when Dad let us roll him a ciggy with his rolling machine (the kind with two rollers and plastic sheet), stock Father's Day gifts from us kids was always a packet of small cigars (Henri Winterman's).

                            My parents had those ashtrays on a stick that were popular in the 70s and all the adults smoked, our lounge artex ceiling had to be repainted every few years because of this. My grandaprents had cool mechanical ashtrays that us kids also liked playing with.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Old cigarettes

                              In 1971 cigarette packets had "WARNING by H.M. Government SMOKING CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH" printed on them. When was this replaced by an EU Ministers health warning? When Britain leaves the EU will this result in a return of the H.M. Government health warning?

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