The brand was the first to connect smoking to weight loss with an advertising campaign targeted to women that advocated lighting up as the way to combat sugar cravings. American began manufacturing the Lucky Strike cigarette in 1917 to challenge Camel for its share of that market.Īlthough Lucky Strike lacks any connection to self-medicating with marijuana, at one time it was positioned as a diet aid. Blackwell & Company of Durham, North Carolina, and in 1905 it was acquired by the American Tobacco Company. Army - an explanation that was pure humbug.)
Early advertising campaigns proudly trumpeted “It’s toasted!” as if what was being proclaimed was a noteworthy aspect peculiar to that one brand when in fact all tobacco used in cigarettes was “toasted.” And in the 1940s when it altered the look of its cigarette pack to make the brand more popular with women, a growing segment of the smoking population, it positioned the redesign as part of the war effort: Consumers were told “Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War!” by doing away with its former green packaging and so preserving those verdant dyes for use by U.S. (Throughout its history, Lucky Strike drew upon similar marketing sleight-of-hand to build belief that it was superior to its competitors. Said to have made a “lucky strike.” By selecting this particular name for the product, its manufacturers implied consumers who chose this brand of tobacco were themselves making a “lucky strike” in the form of happening upon a fine product. Lucky Strike gained its name as a reference to the Gold Rush days, when prospectors who happened upon great riches were Yet no matter how many forms the belief takes, it is nothing but wishful thinking. When a pack was opened, the smoker would search the pack to find the “Lucky Strike”, then turn it over to save it for last. With regard to the practice of turning over a cigarette in the pack as a “lucky”, I was told this came from Lucky Strikes cigarettes as one of the cigarettes in the pack contained a mixture of tobacco and marijuana, thus the “Lucky Strike”. Some of them happening upon a “lucky strike” of the ganja variety by finding a joint or two among the customary fare.Īs to how often a marijuana cigarette is said to be included with regular Luckies, we’ve heard it as: “every so often,” “1 in every 1000 cartons,” “within each carton a single marijuana cigarette,” “1 in every 20 in a pack,” “contained 1 cannabis joint for every 20 or so packs,” and “every 1 in 100 was a spliff.” Some further heard that these ‘special’ cigarettes would be “marked with a stripe or strike mark.” The buzz has existed for many years that Lucky Strike smokers were engaged in a form of illegal substance lotto, with One such error-laden hypothesis exists about Lucky Strike, a brand of cigarette popular with American consumers in times past.Īccording to rumor, the brand’s name is a reflection of what was supposedly found in some packs or cartons of these cigarettes: marijuana. One piece of irony I learned that day was that very few people who operated cigarette production machinery smoked.Origins: At times the names of products prompt legends about their origins, with speculation as to their meanings giving rise to unusual beliefs. At certain intervals a set of razor-sharp knives would cut the mile-long cigarettes into three and a half inch pieces and bundle them into packages of twenty.
We watched as shredded tobacco was dumped, by the tons, into hampers that were somehow affixed to cam-shafts that would vibrate the tobacco down into dispensing nozzles that would lay constant streams of tightly-packed tobacco onto mile-long ribbons of narrow white cigarette paper. We joined a tour and I was mesmerized by the machinery. Those were the days when walking tours of manufacturing plants were commonplace. On the way home from a vacation trip to the hill-country of North Carolina our travels brought us to the very building you see in the postcard above. Any brand would be fine if you were bumming a smoke, but when I had to plunk-down my 35¢ (1962) to buy my own, it was always Lucky Strike. The smokers in my day were the most undiscriminating people I knew.
I know the answers, because I used the same words myself sixty years ago, but I still wonder! Today it is difficult to watch young people smoking and I wonder why they do it. I wanted to apologize to everyone who saw me smoke. To quit was a good decision, but I have often said, “I never smoked a cigarette I didn’t like.” In the first years that passed after I quit, I too, realized what an awful smell burning tobacco creates. My father-in-law quit smoking years before I did, and he tormented me with his “holier than thou” reformed smoker comments and fake coughing spells.