Rothman’s Cigarette advertising

The postman was mighty relieved to drop off no fewer than six boxes from xxxxxxx all containing the packaging relating to tobacco products. This is a fantastic collection and contains cigarette packets, cigar tins and bands, rolling tobacco packaging and much more. There are British and foreign products in here, meaning this was a collection of a lifetime. 

It got us talking about how tobacco products were advertised – advertising of tobacco is, of course, banned now in any form. We started rifling through our product files and glossier magazines to find cigarette adverts and I have only just realised just how much the tobacco companies must have spent on their advertising in the 1960s – the adverts are almost always in colour, towards the front of the magazine where they are more prominent, and some are over a double-page spread. They are hardly ever in black and white.

We took a packet of twenty Rothman’s King Size from the collection and started to date it. I worked out that the packet, and therefore just about everything else in our collection, is pre-1972 as that was the year (correct me if I’m wrong) that a government health warning first appeared on the packaging. Our pack of Rothman’s doesn’t have a health warning. We then looked in the product files and found that the packaging for this product is unchanged in the spread of adverts we have, which runs from 1958 to 1968 (snaps shown here). So our packet of Rothman’s could be as early as the late 1950s. 

Cigarette advertising was often about lifestyle, glamour and taste. I can remember in the 1970s and 1980s when the likes of Silk Cut or Benson and Hedges had their iconic campaigns and those were the days when people could smoke in public places, and tobacco advertised in magazines, on billboards, and at sporting events such as Formula 1. Smoking was ‘normal’ then. Remember going on the upstairs of a bus where smoking was permitted  and coming home stinking of smoke? Or going to the pub with the same result? 

We thank xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx for taking the time and effort to send us the collection. We have accessioned the six boxes and very much hope a volunteer could help us catalogue the individual items. If this is something you’re interested in, contact us on volunteering@richardrobertsarchive.org.uk