But it was the Gay Nineties' internationalism and the World War I that firmly cemented combat to the promotion of cigarettes. Duke went so far as to include intricate depictions of famous battles on his cards. These stiffeners were traded like bubble gum cards, fitted with portraits of Indian chiefs, athletes, suggestively posed actresses, politicians and, not surprisingly, soldiers. The exoticism of such pack design reflected the romantic tradition of the South, and enhanced the "dreamy" aspects of smoking.īuck Duke, the industry's first tycoon, used package art to the hilt, popularizing the cigarette pack card, a card-board stiffener sandwiched between cigarettes for protection.
Victorian packs such as Duke's Cameo, Cross-Cut, Duke's Best and Richmond Club were Southern, suggestive of the product within and elaborately decorated with antebellum graphics, Southern belles and the like. The Union veteran wore his amokes as proudly as his European counterpart, and like him desired a leaf from vanquished soil. It wasn't until the 1870s that an American brand, Sweet Caporal, in a decidedly American pack, claimed a significant market and paved the way for a slew of brands and package designs reminiscent of the Southern front. Import houses tried to snag the trade with brand names suggestive of the East: Turkish Elegantes, Moscows, Sultanas. Union troops traded food for cigarettes while they campaigned in the South, and carried their smoking habit home to Northern cities. Just as the Crimea introduced cigarettes to middle-class Europeans, so did the Civil War first tickle the American middle class's taste for paper-rolled tobacco - as Robert Sobel has noted, in They Satisfy. The earliest brands were Turkish with names that evoked the Crimea: Xanthe and Kohinoor.Ĭigarette smokers were deemed tough, romantic and enamored of adventure - the brand names suggested as much. It was a tradition of folklore that smoke possessed the magic capacity to ward off misfortune, and the word "luck" would appear on cigarette packages long before the marketing of Lucky Strike.Ĭigarettes traveled home with Europeans after the Crimea, becoming a badge of overseas duty they were smoked as veterans reminisced about the front, or in clubs, quietly, where their use signified a world-weary internationalism. Legend has it that the first paper cigarette was rolled a few years earlier, by an Egyptian cannoneer at the siege of Acre in 1832.Ĭigarettes were a conventient and efficient means of conserving tobacco during wartime they were narcotic and helped ease stress, but they also were considered lucky talismans. In that Russo-Turkish fiasco of 1854, French and British troops were garrisoned with Turkish soldiers, who relished their smokes. But cigarettes did not become popular with the European middle class until the Crimean War. Spanish beggars fashioned cigarettes from cigar butts and pipe dottle picked up from the gutters of Seville during the 16th century. Most smokers sense at some level that the modern pack's cleanliness is calculated to counteract a malignancy within, but few realize that such concern with health is as old as the habit, and has its roots in wartime.Ĭolumbus is said to have found Indians rolling smokes in scraps of cornhusk. The most significant addition of the last 15 years to cigarette pack design was the surgeon general's caution, now a warning, hung like a scab from the light blues and vibrant greens of the contemporary package.
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