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Cigarette advertising


Pete 75C
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This isn't entirely railway-related, so apologies if it's in the wrong section...

 

Does anyone have an approximate date that tobacco advertising in the form of roadside billboards and station advertising ceased?

I well remember JPS, Rothmanns etc in the world of motorsport and "Marlboro man" on billboards, so it must have existed in the late 70s. I'm going to guess at some point during the 1980s but happy to be corrected.

I have a "dead corner" to fill on a model and a couple of billboards would seem appropriate. It's easy enough to Google the adverts themselves, but I can't find anything related to the date they last appeared.

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The van on tobacco adverting was from 2003. A quick search finds this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-160614/Ban-smoking-advertising-launched.html that suggests in 2002 1.6 million uk people would have seen a billboard daily. This ties in with my own recollection of seeing them on family holidays but not since( my last family holiday was in 2001 ).

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I have a feeling that the allowable content was tightened-down some years before they were banned altogether.

 

The 'classic' adverts, which indicated that you would become a world-travelling airline pilot, with semi-naked young women draped all over you, and a couple of giant sports cars on the drive, rather than a haggard-looking bloke with a grey complexion and a worryingly persistent cough, if you smoked, were banned a bit earlier, I think.

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I seem to remember a series of somewhat cryptic ads for Silk Cut on billboards in what must have been about 1990.

 

Id take issue with some of the labelling on that graph. Although cigarette advertising may have gone from the TV in 1965 ads for cigars and pipe tobacco were around well into the 1980s at least.

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I seem to remember a series of somewhat cryptic ads for Silk Cut on billboards in what must have been about 1990.

 

Id take issue with some of the labelling on that graph. Although cigarette advertising may have gone from the TV in 1965 ads for cigars and pipe tobacco were around well into the 1980s at least.

 

Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't remember the tagline "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet" with accompanying music.

 

This article jumps around a bit but still fills in a few gaps and suggest how the screw was tightened

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/tobaccos-finest-blend-ban-advertising-tobacco-force/169025

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Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't remember the tagline "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet" with accompanying music.

 

This article jumps around a bit but still fills in a few gaps and suggest how the screw was tightened

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/tobaccos-finest-blend-ban-advertising-tobacco-force/169025

 

As far as I can tell, the Hamlet ad lasted on TV until 1991. The source (Wikipedia, so it may or may not be correct) says the ad was revived in cinemas between 1996 and 1999. Those dates are at odds with the campaignlive link (above) which says tobacco advertising in cinemas ended in 1986. There certainly do appear to be many gaps and contradictions.

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There was the TV advert for the lone smoker long before they were banished to the outside of buildings. Backfired somewhat.

 

You're never alone with Strand:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjBHUQEiTPw

 

(Hmm...why isn't YouTube embedding working for me today?  I blame the TSB...)

 

The TV ad was directed by Carol Reed, best known for The Third Man and Oliver!

Edited by ejstubbs
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Being a non-smoker, I don't take too much notice of cigarette advertising but the poster that has remained in my memory was this one:

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnoram/6189881950

 

At the time it was highly original and IIRC preceded all the surreal Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut ads. I could have sworn that I saw it in the mid-seventies though, not 1984 as noted by the photographer.

 

David

 

 

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Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't remember the tagline "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet" with accompanying music.

 

This article jumps around a bit but still fills in a few gaps and suggest how the screw was tightened

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/tobaccos-finest-blend-ban-advertising-tobacco-force/169025

 

"Be King of the road with Carlos Fandango super wide wheels!"

 

For a while we used the term 'Carlos Fandango'  to describe any pointless over the top car mod, e.g. a "Carlos Fandango" spoiler...

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As billboard advertising for tobacco is now illegal, is displaying a scale tobacco billboard at an exhibition illegal too?

 

Maybe it's only illegal for modern image but okay for a steam era layout!

 

WJC

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Back in the dark ages, before they invented, anything really!

There was an advert for smoking Craven A that went , sore throat? Smoke Craven A to ease the problem!

Probably not word for word but that was the gist.

Don't know if it worked......

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As billboard advertising for tobacco is now illegal, is displaying a scale tobacco billboard at an exhibition illegal too?

 

Maybe it's only illegal for modern image but okay for a steam era layout!

 

WJC

Never thought about the legality but I have had cigarette billboards on all of my exhibition layouts, I never had any negative comments over the years, in fact most were positive as they were a key part of the 1970s advertising scene:

 

post-7400-0-54951700-1524661543.jpg

post-7400-0-18067100-1524661548.jpg

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Yes, even my deliberately old-fashioned layout has such adverts, for a long-forgotten brand called BDV, which I think meant something like Blended Dark Virginia.

 

In the 1920s/30s, BDV ran a coupon scheme, which allowed people to save up and swap their coupons for, among other things, Bassett Lowke and other model railway equipment, with BL designing and making a special loco, the Duke of York 4-4-0, to underpin the scheme.

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