Goodbye to plain packs
I dropped down to the village on Saturday to get some smokes for Herself.
I asked the Sweet Young Thing who was serving for a couple of packs of Silk Cut Purple which is Herself’s favourite tipple, though I swear if she didn’t see the package she wouldn’t notice the difference.
“Do you want boxes?” says Sweet Young Thing.
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Was she offering a whole carton of packs? Were fag packets now enclosed in child-proof cases [nothing would surprise me these days]?
“Just packs of fags” says I.
“We have a special promotional thing” says SWT. “Same price. I’ll show you”.
And show me she did.
I was impressed! Nice little tins that were made of well…. tin. None of your cardboard or any of that shit – little tins the like of which I haven’t seen in donkey’s years.
Of course the very first thing that crossed my mind – just perfect for the glory days when they introduce the grizzly packaging. No need for a new cigarette case. No need to play the part of a brow beaten victim of Tobacco Control. Buy the dirty new packs and just decant into the nice little tins.
Of course the tins still have to have their sad little slogans on the front but their Photoshopping is discreetly placed on the bottom of the tin where you can’t see it. So there is only a very small modification needed and the tin is ready for years of hard use.
Or maybe something a little more soothing?
There are endless opportunities and each and every one of them is a resounding Fuck Off to Tobacco Control. Brilliant!
I’m going to buy a whole batch of them. Maybe I’ll paste pictures of the Grandkids on them [she’d like that], or pictures of SpongeBob so the younger Grandkids won’t be scared of photographs of people’s guts and entrails. I will create different batches – some for casual use and some for formal occasions.
They will suffer from wear and tear though in the future. I remember my Dad’s old tobacco tins that had the paint rubbed off the corners from constant friction, not to mention the odd scratch and dent or two.
I can see myself buying a whole load more fags in the coming weeks until stocks run out.
Nice one, Lads!
Love the tin with your pic of a bridge :>
Perhaps a little slogan to accompany? Maybe something like “Silk Cut – smooth as a lough on a summer’s day” 🙂
Cool as a mountain stream?
Back in 2005 I switched from buying packets in the shop to rolling my own. The rolled lads are shorter and thinner than the bought fags and took some getting used to. But I persisted, mainly for price reasons even back then. I had a fancy leather bag from Spain that could hold 100g of tobacco, a section for 400-500 filters, a zipped pocket for 10 or fifteen cigarette papers and a second zipped pocket for spare lighters etc. the bag then was too bulky and large to carry around so I got into the habit of rolling many at a time. The problem was what to store them in.
Today I have one small tin that holds exactly twenty, I have two other tins that hold fourteen in each and the Daddy of them all was a souvenir of the Beatles (tin) from Liverpool which holds fifty rolled fags neatly packed. Often all four tins are full and as my consumption is down to about ten-a-day, the leather bag only sees daylight a couple of times a week. As the tobacco is imported legally from the EU, I have worked out that each rolled fag costs me a cent and a half instead of 52c each in a pack from the shop!
Where do you buy your tobacco from, John? Because I was buying my rolling tobacco from Germany, and last time I went to the online shop to order, there was a banner across the top of the page saying that he was no longer allowed to sell to any EU country due to the TPD which recently came into force. There’s a link to the relevant ruling in the banner.
http://www.pipe-shop.net/Shop/cgi-bin/his-webshop.cgi?t=Cigarettes_1
I’m really pissed off, not only because the tobacco is cheaper in Germany (€4.60 for 30g as opposed to €7 for 30g here), but more because I can’t buy the tobacco I particularly like here (Pueblo Brown, Burley / Java blend, no additives). Fucking Tobacco Control and their obsession with taking the joy out of smoking. They really are the lowest of the low.
Re the tins, GD, I’m amazed that all the TobComs didn’t do the same, with peel-off sticker warnings. That would have really fucked the joyless ones. I would love to have heard the squeals of protest from the whiners in ‘Public Health’.
To buy the tobacco cheap necessitates a visit to the country of your choice, in my case Spain. There I buy 1,500g of Samson from a shop making sure to get a VAT invoice or equivalent. The TPD only prevented internet sales but in the EU if you pay your tax in any member State then it is legal to bring your chosen amount for your own consumption. My individual 50g packs costs €6/ea.
See:
http://ec.europa.eu/health/tobacco/products_en
Yes, I know you can still buy and physically carry your stash cross border, but nipping up to Germany for a packet of fags isn’t really economically viable when you live in central Greece; and it’s not a holiday destination of choice for me either. I would, albeit begrudgingly, pay the additional taxes to be able to smoke my tobacco of choice, but even that avenue isn’t open to me. Same as all the menthol smokers have been royally fucked by the OCD finger-waggers. Because… well….because they can. I mean, heaven forbid that anyone should enjoy something the finger-waggers don’t like.
@ Vlad
The tobacco shipping is absolutely impossible to: all member state of the European Union, and Norway, USA, Turkey and Russia.
DIRECTIVE 2014/40/EU OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
On reason of the new tobacco directive, we can’t supply tobacco to the citizens of the European Union anymore.
The most important legislation you can read below, the complete text you can read here as PDF.
http://www.pipe-shop.net/Shop/cgi-bin/his-webshop.cgi?&t=tobacco_sending
Pipe tobacco/cigars can still be ordered from some German websites. Don’t know if it’s the EU directive or it’s country specific. For instance I noticed on a Belgian site that a Royal decree from last year banned internet tobacco sales. In Austria it doesn’t seem to be legal to sell tobacco online, on the other hand in their B&M shops pipe tobacco is cheaper than in Germany.
I love that Smoking causes Bad Science warning. Every tobacco selling shop should be provided with stickers to decorate the windows and cock a snook at Bad Science Government Regulations. Have you been to the printers lately Grandad?
That picture looks like a cigarette card…
http://ireland-calling.com/a-pint-of-plain-is-your-only-man/
Oh i wish you’d posted that a few days ago, cos the other day i purchased http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/122343143348
mainly for the tin although anything advertising itself as the ‘strongest in Europe’ has to be worth a try, i mean, doesn’t it? Actually i tried some papirosa years ago, decades even, and don’t recall thinking they particularly jammed pack with lovely Vitamin N. HARSH yes, ‘strong’ not so much…although somewhat stronger than those Silk Cut…quite a bit infact. I went through a period of smoking Silk Cut cos at 6th form they were the brand of girl’s choice…and boys who read John Constantine comics.
Thanks to a combination of the FDA conceding 1-2 cigars a day is harmless, yes it was in the deeming regs, and discovering there is no duty on full tobacco leaves, I have a new hobby. Rolling cigars!
@Mark, dunno where in the world you are but the chances are the moment you make that cigar or even just order the leaves with the intent to make a tobacco product then you become liable for duty. SO you might want to be a bit more careful about proclaiming it online. HMRC do actively monitor the internet.
As of April, here in the UK, you will have to register when purchasing leaves even.
http://nothing-2-declare.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/guide-for-registering-for-purchasing.html
Where can I buy these silk cut tins from? Thanks.
In my local shop? Sorry, Antonia but all I can suggest is that you try your local tobacconist. They’re marked as “Limited Edition” by the way.
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NTAwWDM2OA==/z/HI0AAOxy4dNSs9Sm/$_3.JPG?set_id=2
I got one of these for my other half
I’ve now discovered the true reason for those little silver inner-packs that you highlighted on here not so long ago, Gramps. It’s incredibly easy, with just a bit of manipulation (lightly glued front and back) to remove the whole thing and simply drop it into an old-style, branded box. I’ve been keeping plenty of them ever since plain packs were suggested and was proposing to transfer the cigarettes out of PP into the old packs, but these soft-pack inserts make life much easier! (I snip off the top “flap” section with scissors first, though, because they are a bit of a pain and just get in the way) Then the new plain packs can be gleefully fed into a shredder so that not even the bin men or the people in the recycling centre see them. I just wish now that I’d had the foresight to keep some REALLY old packs from way back when there were no health warnings at all!