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Banning good times — 15 Comments

  1. In my childhood days we ate lots of sweets and enjoyed red lemonade and other fizzy delights. We sucked gobstoppers; we chewed liquorice sticks; we devoured mouse-shaped marshmallows (which we could buy two a penny); we devoured twopenny sherbet fizzbags; we bought packs of cigarette-shaped mallows. We had a whale of a time and dentists weren't emigrating to Australia. And I was never fatty. In fact I was tempted by the keep fit advertisements placed in teen comics by Charles Atlas – his famous biodynamic method for building the biceps with the slogan YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE and photos of a Tarzan-like Charles taken twenty years earlier before an admiring Jane hooked him into holy matrimony and good old fashioned cooking. The health freaks and guidance counsellors are messing up children's lives today.

    • Ah sweet memories!  Cough-no-more bars, Penny Lucky Bags, Peggy's Legs and white little cylinders with red tips that looked like cigarettes.  The latter were lovely, gave me a real taste for them, never made me want to smoke, and in fact nearly put me off the real thing when it didn't taste as nice!

  2. These health fascists are increasingly disgusting and annoying me. And I'm German – I know all about fascism.

    I think I'd like to leave the planet.

  3. I remember those sweet cigarettes with the little red tips, they were nice.

    From long before Tobacco Control was even thought of.

     

    [Re: Use of AVALON Brand Name for Candy Cigarettes] 1939

    "Letter from Vice-President of Consolidated Lithographing Corporation to W. R. Hendrichs requesting permission to use Avalon cigarettes' brand name and label for candy cigarettes. Cites prior permission for use of Wings, Raleigh and Kool brands. Includes sample labels and package recommendations"

    "If you will recall, you granted us this permission on your WINGS, RALEIGH and KOOL cigarette brands, the labels of which we made as per samples enclosed.

    It will indeed be a favor to me if we can have your letter of permission on the AVALON brand.
    Thanking you in advance for past favors, and awaiting your further advice, we remain."
    https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=qpnx0045

    60 years later , the world has been turned on it's head.

    Study reveals tobacco worked with makers of candy cigarettes
    August 12, 2000

    "LONDON — Internal tobacco industry documents recently made public confirm that tobacco companies cooperated with the makers of candy cigarettes in designing snacks that promoted smoking to children, according to new research".

    "The study of the documents by researchers at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York found that some tobacco companies tolerated trademark infringement and granted confectioners permission to sell candy that used cigarette pack designs"

    "Industry documents made public in 1998 as part of a lawsuit settlement with the state of Minnesota form the basis of three reports published this week in the British Medical Journal.

    "Experts say the studies confirm common knowledge and long-held suspicions among some organizations working to curtail smoking."
    http://onlineathens.com/stories/081200/hea_0812000015.shtml#.V3vcmjWHgdU

     

    Thank heavens the Antismokers were daft enough to put the tobacco company documents online, a person could get entirely the wrong impression.

    • "tobacco companies tolerated trademark infringement"  For fucks sake – they tolerated it.  They didn't condone or encourage it.  There is a world of difference.

      In other words, if you want to use our name then go ahead, NOT please will you use our branding on your packs of sweets.

       

  4. Christ, I think I'm going to scream, GD. Why can't someone shut these miserable doomsaying bastards up? What I don't get is how they somehow think they have a right to pontificate publicly on stuff that is none of their damn business. And worse, to call (often successfully) for legislation banning and restricting those things that they don't like.

    Fucking unbelievable.

    I have four kids. All of them watched the telly, all of them saw all the adverts for all that stuff. None of them got fat, or even close to fat. In fact, as adults, they are all slim and fit. There is a word in the English language, and the same word exists in different form in every language. And that word is "No". I think most parents are familiar with its meaning.

    And yes, I indulged in all those things that you and Ger mentioned, and I was never fat either. Not even close to.

    Honestly, I sometimes think that what's needed is a vigilante group targeting all the grey, joyless finger-waggers that seem to infest the periphery of governments. It doesn't have to be physical (although I'd be tempted), but I bet that the majority of the purse-lipped puritans have a good few skeletons rattling around in their cupboards which could be exposed to the light of day with good effect. Oh, how I would love to destroy their worthless careers….

    • They really are the dullest, joyless, grey people in the world.  I can't imaging any of them having any fun whatsoever.  Can you even imaging having one at a party?  Hah!

      If you do want to resort to the physical, just let me know.  I'm in.

      • I wouldn't say that about them GD, in fact they're pissing themselves and having parties every time government enacts their petty rules, plus massive grants for 'further research'. It means they carry on in their lavish lifestyle at the expense of ordinary people's freedom. There is no limit as to how low they will sink to keep the gravy train on its tracks. Now, if you were one of them, would you be joyless, dull and grey?

        Despicable is the word I would use. If a cure for cancer was found tomorrow CRUK would cease to exist. So do you think that they have been doing much 'research'? They have been much quicker to use those who have lost loved ones to cancer as useful idiots, organising 'race for life' and the like to swell their coffers, whilst at the same time giving these people false hope. Scum.

        They are not nannies. They are con artists.

        • I'm sorry but I just cannot conjure up an image of them laughing and joking, even when they manage to get some other snide law pushed through.  I see them as thoroughly devoted to misery and greed.

  5. Can you remember those confectionery shops – row upon row upon row of HUGE jars containing sweet treats of every colour, size and flavour.  Rhubarb & custard sweets, bright pink sweet shrimps (why shrimps? I always wondered), milk gums, cola cubes, pineapple chunks, fruit salads and black jacks (a bargain, those – four for just one old penny!)  And those odd red-and-white striped ones which always looked just soooo lovely, but which tasted absolutely vile!  That jar, curiously, always seemed to be full …

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