Follies of the Madmen #609

Too much nicotine causes the user to hallucinate that the cigarette is talking to them.

Source of ad.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Oct 28, 2024 - Comments (4)
Category: Advertising, Smoking and Tobacco, 1930s, Mental Health and Insanity

1000 Cigarettes

Plexiglas book. Pages are laminated with collage elements embedded. Collage elements comprised of debris from smoking 50 packages, a total of 1000, of Camel cigarettes including cigarette butts, match-book covers, burnt matches, ashes, and smoke. Book is Coptic bound with various colored threads. The front cover of the book is laser-etched with the title; the back cover is laser-etched with the name of the press. Dimensions: Book 29 x 22.5 x 6 cm. Container/box 32 x 25.5 x 9 cm. Unique, one-of-a-kind.

The box cover and internal tray are made by Mark Wagner. The cover is collaged from 1/4-inch slivers cut from packages of Camel cigarettes. These cut slivers are reconstructed to form the image of the camel and desert landscape as they appear on the package of Camel cigarettes.

Source.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Oct 24, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Art, Fey, Twee, Whimsical, Naive and Sadsack, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Books, Smoking and Tobacco, Twenty-first Century

The Smoking Baby of Trenton

Winfield Doran gained famed as the "smoking baby of Trenton." He started smoking a pipe when he was seven months old. Because his parents were worried about the health effects of this, they eventually persuaded him to smoke cigars instead. But he refused to smoke cigarettes.

He died of diptheria when he was four years old.

Canton Independent Sentinel - Aug 14, 1890

Quincy Daily Ledger - Nov 11, 1890

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jul 11, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Babies and Toddlers, Children, Smoking and Tobacco, Nineteenth Century

Follies of the Madmen #592

Posted By: Paul - Mon Apr 15, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Television, Advertising, Smoking and Tobacco, 1950s

Tobacco Queen

Posted By: Paul - Sun Apr 14, 2024 - Comments (2)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Smoking and Tobacco, 1940s

Miss Gary Cigaret

In 1944, a newspaper in Gary, Indiana held a beauty contest to select a "Miss Gary Cigaret." The public were encouraged to vote, with each vote costing five cents. All the funds raised would be used to send cigarettes to American soldiers.

Over $15,000 was eventually raised, which was able to buy six million cigarettes (or 300,000 packs).

The contest winner, Irene Kuchta, got to model a bathing suit made of cigarettes.

Vidette-Messenger of Porter County - Sep 22, 1944

Windsor Star - Sep 9, 1944

Posted By: Alex - Fri Apr 05, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Fashion, Smoking and Tobacco, 1940s

Ornamental Ash Tray

The entire patent, figure and text, is given below. How I wish the inventor had gone on at length about his design.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 05, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Obscenity, Patents, Smoking and Tobacco, 1940s

Is it marijuana or alfalfa?

Peter Hlookoff had an unusual strategy to avoid being convicted for possession of marijuana — he always carried a container of alfalfa with him.

His reasoning was that alfalfa and marijuana smell similar (so he claimed). So if the police ever arrested him for possession of marijuana he could claim that it was actually alfalfa they had smelled (or seen him smoking).

This strategy was put to the test in Dec 1967 when the police raided his apartment and arrested him for smoking pot. During the subsequent court case his defense led to the magistrate arranging for a court employee to smoke marijuana so that its smell could be compared to alfalfa.

Victoria Times Colonist - May 10, 1968

Unfortunately the courtroom experiment was cancelled before it took place, and the magistrate ended up finding Hlookoff guilty. He didn't buy Hlookoff's follow-up argument that if, perhaps, it had been marijuana he was smoking then someone must have (without his knowledge) put marijuana in his alfalfa container.

The Vancouver Province - July 3, 1968

Hlookoff's roommate, Marcel Horne (a professional firebreather whose stage name was 'El Diablo'), later wrote an autobiography in which he revealed that, yeah, they were absolutely smoking pot when the police raided their apartment:

image source: Annals of the Firebreather (1973), by Marcel Horne

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 27, 2024 - Comments (2)
Category: Drugs, Smoking and Tobacco, Law, 1960s

Smoking Facts

Seemed odd to me that the ad would not only mention that they've got "a patent on flavor," but also give the patent number (3828800). So I had to look it up. Turned out to be a fairly boring patent for "an improved cigarette filter material... formed from the porous, granular salt of a weakly basic anion exchange resin."

Sports Illustrated - Nov 14, 1977

Coos Bay World - Nov 4, 1978

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 13, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Advertising, Patents, Smoking and Tobacco, 1970s, Billboards

Saddle Cigarette Lighter

Perhaps it prevented fires caused by burning matches, but what about the fires caused by cigarette butts?

Popular Science - Apr 1936

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 24, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Inventions, Firefighting, Arson, Wildfires, Infernos and Other Conflagrations, Smoking and Tobacco, 1930s