The Evolution of Advertising

I once was a smoker.
Smoked over a pack a day, for like half a century.
My last cigarette was on November 26, 1984.
The full, in-depth, exciting as all hell story can be seen → HERE.
So I know what smoking is all about.
I do not speak of it in gest, whatsoever.
I know that quitting is difficult.
I tried to quit about 1800 times before something finally clicked.
The penny dropped.
This afternoon, at a whim, I just started clicking around on old old cigarette ads.
Googling.
It’s real neat to see the evolution of ads, in the cigarette world.
Smoking used to be this glamorous thing.
“She’d rather fight than switch!” [← Viceroy ad.] And all that jazz.
The Marlborough Man!
Like smoking is going to somehow help me rope a steer!

Check out that one retarded ad at the top of this blog, where some kind of “physicians” are sporting the cancer-sticks like they are candy!
Lucky Strikes are “toasted.”
Yeah!
Keep smoking them, and you will be “toast.”
It’s just funny, these ads.
And as with all things [even religion, friends] – there is an evolution. With science comes knowledge. Or maybe it’s the other way around?
With knowledge comes science?
Whatever.
The point is we now know that smoking is just plain stupid.
I am not saying that in any judgmental sense – don’t get me wrong.
I’m just saying that SUCKING SMOKE INTO YOUR LUNGS ON PURPOSE has got to be perhaps one of the stupidest activities that human beings have ever invented to do.
Think about it.
Your lungs.
Those things that want oxygen oxygen oxygen…. your blood cells, lying in wait for those precious molecules to arrive – and then you flick the lighter, or strike the match, and your lungs, down below, if they could speak… are just screaming, “Nooooooooo!”

So check out a few of these ads I have stumbled across.
Here’s a real doozy, again, from the fine folks at Lucky Strike©, circa 1940’s –

Yes.
Beware of that dangity irritation.
The irritation of rotting away on a hospital bed, the plastic oxygen thing over your shnozz, friends and family above this, as a horizon, but only during visiting hours.
Remember. You’ve got all night to see…. other things.
Things like – your past.

This next one actually cracks me up.

Raleigh©.
“COST NO MORE THAN OTHER POPULAR BRANDS.”
What the hell kind of an ad-campaign is that?
Please tell me that the guy that came up with this lovely slogan was fired the next day?
I mean, I could see if maybe these smokes were just as good as the next guy’s, and were CHEAPER or something [work with me here!] but -- the same price?
That’s the best you can do?
And again…. I am dying from the use of this product?
Sorry. You are not selling me.

Now see [oh, the power of science -- of knowledge -- of X-rays…] see, “Export A©”, [and almost every single other cigarette manufacturer out there] is finally having to put the blatant truth on their packaging.
And it’s high time.
Smoking is like sucking death into yourself, before you are ready for it.
And who is ever ready for it?

If you are a smoker, please quit, like I did.
Do it. QUIT!
It’s possible, I did it. Admit it, it’s literally killing you to not do it.
Secondly, if you know a smoker, and you like them, please forward this blog to them.

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