Past paper, part 1

The apartment reorganizing that Flo and I have been undertaking is turning up lots of paper ephemera, some of which I'd forgotten I even owned.

I'm going to be sharing some of it with you here in the weeks to come.

Here's the first offering, a foldout postcard from the General Cigar Hall of Magic at the 1964-65 World's Fair:

What strikes me as odd about this postcard is how strongly it's aimed at kids. I mean, sheesh, the tube against the hand trick? Is this hat taller or wider? That's Weekly Reader or Highlights-level material.

Not that I'm knocking those publications, mind you. But honestly, was that the way to appeal to cigar smokers in the mid-1960s?

Unless back then, as is so often the case now, tobacco companies were trying to rope in new smokers at an early age. It's just hard to imagine a kid who was nine or ten years old in 1964 opting to take his first puff not from a pilfered Marlboro, but off a White Owl stogie. Cough cough! Posted by brett at 05:34 PM | TrackBack