tobacco-land

 

"Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should!"

was a slogan in a television advertisement for this brand of "smokes."  

'90s-kids etc. might be disbelieving of the idea that cigarettes used to be advertised on TV, but they were:

"I'd rather fight than switch!"  

        Tareyton

"I'd walk a mile for a Camel."

        (Camel)

"You've come a long way, baby!"

        (Virginia Slims, working a little "women's lib" into the theme)

______________________________

There was a commercial for Salem cigarettes that I used to notice when I was in the early years of grade school -- seated around a long table, a bunch of adults sang boisterously,

♫ ♪ ♪♪

You can take Salem out of the country, but --

You can't take the country out of Salem!

They swayed back and forth as they sang -- it looked like they were having a fun party.

----------------------- The "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" slogan had hit a snag earlier, in 1954, when news anchor Walter Cronkite was supposed to do a live-read of a Winston ad, and he protested that the grammar was incorrect -- he said it should read, "Winston tastes good as a cigarette should."

        Winston ads later on, that I heard over the TV, built on that one-time controversy by saying the line correctly -- "as a cigarette should" but also throwing in a little back-and-forth where one character would say, "What-a-yah want, good grammar or good taste?"

The Tareyton ads showed an adult with a black eye, and he (or she) would say, "I'd rather fight than switch" -- that slogan was memorable, for some reason; my mother had an irritated antipathy to those ads.

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President Nixon signed legislation banning cigarette ads on TV and radio on April 1, 1970.

        ("Hello, R.J. Reynolds?  APRIL FOOL!!")

The last televised cigarette ad ran at 11:50 p.m. January 1, 1971, during Johnny Carson.

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