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Thinking of the children — 19 Comments

  1. Yes, excellent stuff. An ideal replacement for those awful photoshopped images.

    I thought something like this might be rather apt:

    http://cloudnine.hillarymilesproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/smoking-kids1.jpeg

    or:

    http://johndgram.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Boy-smoking-cigar.jpg

    Or one for you, GD:

    http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr01/2013/2/4/14/enhanced-buzz-13884-1360006706-3.jpg

    I think SmokeScreenz is going to do brisk business next year – and good luck to him. I've been plugging his site whenever it seems appropriate for the last year. MJM (author of Dissecting Anti-Smoker's Brains), has had one of those packs for a year now, and it's apparently still going strong. When he starts doing pouches for tobacco I'll probably get one!

    • That first one is by far the best.  Not only is the picture a very attractive alternative, but it practically carries its own instructions. 

      I know they tried to make these covers illegal in Australia, so presumably they will attempt an equally daft move here in Europe.   Those covers are a bit like electrofags – a brilliant way of giving two fingers to the Tobacco Nazis.  They must be steaming at the ears.  Heh! 

  2.  

    I have just purchase a black leather tobacco pouch via amazon. Impossible to buy here in North Norway. I am fed up with the medico porn.. Photos of the mouths of crack cocaine users, people in hospital beds, babies with oxygen masks (may I suggest that parcel tape would be more effective) and corpses with toe tags have started to annoy me. We don't do toe tags in Scandinavia we do wrist ID just like the U,K. Speaking for myself I would be glad if they could the cadaver's identity right. Even if they can' t work out the cause of death.

    • We have had those images for a few years now, alternating with text messages, all of which I am completely immune to at this stage [not that I ever believed them in the first place].  It's a bit like showing a corpse with its throat cut as a warning about seat-belts – completely irrelevant.  I too bought a lovely calf-skin tobacco pouch on-line so my lurid images just go straight in the bin.

  3. My local jeweler is very happy about "propaganda packaging", he had a number of beautiful cigarette cases, sliver, gold, and enameled ones, that were gathering dust on his shelves, he has sold all of them, and is now ordering more. They are works of art, and can be engraved or designed to suit the owner. These lovely items had gone out of fashion, but have made a comeback since the silly propaganda packaging came in over here in Aus. 

    I remember my own Grandad having a very stylish cigarette case, beautifully made with engravings of galloping horses, it fascinated me as a child, which led me to be a bit of a collector of unusual boxes, of all types. 

     

    • My Dad had a silver cigarette case that he used on "high-days and special days"   (i.e. Weddings, Christenings, Funerals and Christmas).   He was a steam-train driver and it case had an image of "the Mullard" stream-line engine engraved on the front.  

      I was fascinated with it and loved it when my Dad used it.

      • Oh dear!  Do we at last have a real example of packaging encouraging smoking?  Heh!

    • I predict a booming trade in cigarette cases in the coming years.  If I had a few spare bob I would be more than happy to invest in a manufacturer.  At least someone is going to benefit from these stupid laws, apart from the counterfeiters.

  4. Here is a very simple and effective method:

    Almost all cigarette packets come wrapped in clear cellophane with a tag to tear the top part of the cellophane off. You can then open the packet without removing the bottom part of the cellophane if you so wish. You can cut out a picture from any source, preferably on cardboard, and slip the picture inside the cellophane, thus covering the disgusting TC doodlings, and of course, you can reuse the cardboard pic. I did that for a couple of months until I noticed that no one ever looks at a cigarette packet! 

     

    • Yes. Another answer.  You wouldn't want to use a prized photograph or anything sentimental though as I would imagine it would be too easy to chuck in the fire before remembering to remove it? 

      "no one ever looks at a cigarette packet"  No one ever even sees a packet here in Ireland.  The only time you will ever see one is when one is thrown in a bin.  People don't exactly wave them around when they are taking out a cigarette.

      • I don't see cigarette packets thrown in a bin in Ireland. I see them thrown everywhere except in bins.

    • I'm confused.  A picture of a pipe that isn't a pipe?  Unless my French is worse than I thought………

      • Seeing is believing? That's a myth capitalized on by oculists. Artists 'see' into the nature of things – they are not cameras taking surface photos. Except for the Dutch realist Vermeer, who used a Camera Obscura to paint some of his masterpiece interiors. Artists and art experts claim to have an 'eye', which is why a canvas sloshed with different buckets of paint and cycled over a few times by the artist before being framed and exhibited at the Met is reviewed in New York by art reviewers with an 'eye' that the rest of us puffing punters lack. Magritte saw through a deceptive image of a pipe that only he knew wasn't really a pipe. Google the word 'aesthetics' and you'll 'see' what I mean. Ceci n'est pas un blog post! Or put that in your pipe and smoke it.

        • Now you're trying to mess with my head.  You are saying that that is the picture of a pipe, or the essence of a pipe?  Or is it something completely different but I just see it as a pipe?  Is it the soul of a pipe, but not the pipe itself?  Or is it a cleverly disguised airplane? 

          • The point is that Magritte made lots of money selling copies of his paintings. If an art lover paid 10,000 Belgian francs for a painting Magritte banked the money and didn't say Ceci n'est pas dix mille francs.

            • The old story of paying for a name because the name is fashionable?  Emperor's new clothes and all that…..

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