Lucky Strike
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucky Strike is a brand of American cigarettes, often referred to as "Luckies".
[edit] History
The brand was introduced by R.A. Patterson of Richmond, Virginia in 1871 as a cut-plug chewing tobacco and later a cigarette. In 1905, the company was acquired by the American Tobacco Company (ATC), and Lucky Strike would later prove to be its answer to R.J. Reynolds' Camel. Matt Tellman is the founder of Lucky Strike.
In 1917, the brand started using the slogan "It's Toasted" to inform consumers about the manufacturing method in which the tobacco is toasted rather than sun-dried. Because of this different manufacturing process, Lucky Strike cigarettes are said to have a unique and distinctive flavour. The message "L.S.M.F.T." ("Lucky Strike means fine tobacco") was introduced on the package in the same year.
In 1935, ATC began to sponsor Your Hit Parade, featuring North Carolina tobacco auctioneer Speed Riggs. The weekly radio show's countdown catapulted the brand's success and would remain popular for 25 years. The shows capitalized on the tobacco auction theme and each ended with the signature phrase "Sold, American".
The brand's signature dark green pack was changed to white in 1942. In a famous advertising campaign that used the slogan "Lucky Strike Green has gone to war", the company claimed the change was made because the copper used in the green color was needed for World War II. American Tobacco actually used chromium to produce the green ink, and copper to produce the gold-colored trim. A limited supply of each was available, and substitute materials made the package look drab. However, many argue that the white package was introduced not to help the war effort but to lower costs and to increase the appeal of packaging among female smokers.[1]
In the early 1960s, Lucky Strike's television commercials featured the slogan "Lucky Strike separates the men from the boys....but not from the girls" set to music. When Luckies with filters were introduced in the mid-1960s, print and TV ads featured the slogan "Show me a filter cigarette that delivers the taste, and I'll eat my hat!" (usually sung to music on TV). Print ads showed smokers wearing hats from which a "bite" was supposedly taken, whereas TV commercials broke away from the smoker who issued that challenge, then came back to show the same smoker wearing a hat from which a "bite" was taken.
In 1978 and 1994, export rights and U.S. rights were purchased by Brown & Williamson. In 1996, filtered styles were launched in San Francisco, but it was not until 1999 that they were available all over the United States. This cigarette is made with Turkish tobaccos.
The Lucky Strike logo was created by famous industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who also created the logos for Exxon, Shell and Coca Cola. The logo later became a prominent fixture in Pop-era artist Ray Johnson's collages.
Lucky Strike was the sponsor of Jack Benny's television program in the 1950s on CBS. Lucky Strike was also the major sponsor of the BAR Honda team (partly owned by British American Tobacco current owners of the brand) as well as Honda Racing F1 during their maiden year in Formula One before BAT decided to pull out of F1 altogether in the face of increasing anti-tobacco advertising legislation. The cigarette brand is patronized in the anime Cowboy Bebop, where character Faye Valentine is often seen with one in her mouth. The logo also makes prominent background appearances in that show.
XM Satellite Radio & CBS/Free FM's Opie and Anthony take aim at Lucky Strike on a regular basis. In a Humphrey Bogart-style voice, Anthony (Cumia) makes fun of the 1940s/1950s era along with the product placement of Lucky Strike cigarettes and the brand's upper class appeal.
[edit] Trivia
An urban legend surrounding Lucky Strike is that one in every hundred cigarettes is actually a marijuana joint.[2] Another version is that this was true for the packs supplied to U.S. soldiers during World War II.
Another urban legend states that the reason why the packaging was changed during World War II, to white with a red circle, was to honor America's bombing of Japan, with the new packaging signifying the Japanese flag.
Some smokers used to believe that a pack of "Luckies" could bring them luck. A ritual emerged involving turning one cigarette upside-down in a fresh pack, followed by selecting one cigarette at random. Selecting the upside-down cigarette would indicate good luck. In the UK, the 'Lucky Cigarette' practice is followed with the first cigarette pulled out of the box turned upside down and replaced, and so will be the last one to be smoked out of the packet. This cigarette is then highly valued and not given away to friends, as it becomes the personal smoke of the owner of the packet. Another 'Lucky Cigarette' practice, from California, is to take the first two cigarettes removed from the package, and placing them back in upside down. These cigarettes were to be used only when a special occasion called for it, or when one was simply out of other cigarettes.
A Hindu man can be seen smoking lucky strikes in Rammstein's video for Amerika, as a sign of how America culture is corrupting the world.
A reference is made in the song "All You Can Ever Learn Is What You Already Know" by The Ataris. The line goes, "Trailer parks/neon signs/and an empty box of Lucky Strikes/all used up from the dashboard of America". Another musical reference is in the song "Kentucky Avenue" from the album Blue Valentines by Tom Waits: "I got a half pack of Lucky Strikes, man, come along with me." Still another can be found in Billy Joel's "Keeping the Faith": "Took a fresh pack of Luckies and a mint called Sen-Sen." In the song "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide", ZZ Top sing, "They sportin' short dresses, wearin' spike-heeled shoes, they smokin' Lucky Strikes, wearing nylon too."
Lucky Strike was made famous in India by Sunil the fictional investigative repoter, hero of the Sunil series novels of Surender Mohan Pathak. He loves his famous brand so much that he would rather abstain when, once common in the fictional town of Rajnagar, it becomes hard to come by at times. And due to rarity of its users in the city, it's thrown away stubs sometimes prove to be disastrous for him - they put the hostile police inspector Prabhudayal on his trail !
The cigarettes can also be spotted in artwork fronting the animated pop-rock band Gorillaz, although the name is changed to "Lucky 666". The pack design and label remain the same, but the title changed, to protect copyright issues. Lucky Strike is also Solid Snake's brand of cigarettes in the older Metal Gear games. This was however removed in the game from Metal Gear Solid 2 and onward. Lucky Strikes are the brand of cigarette's smoked by the characters Eeben Axelroot and Rachel Price in the book The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. The character of Henry Winter in Donna Tartt's The Secret History also smoked Lucky Strikes.
The Lucky Strike package design was copied on the cover of the 1972 Bob Seger album Smokin' O.P.'s.
