Old cigarette brand

Author: Chief Editor: Feng Yiyou
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1998-06-01
Features: Cigarette cards, as the name suggests, are small pictures placed inside cigarette packs for the purpose of promoting cigarettes. In essence, they are cigarette advertising materials. The content of cigarette cards is rich and diverse, encompassing a wide range of themes, including: astronomy, geography, politics, economics, military, religion, engineering, transportation, agriculture, machinery, education, science, history, physics and chemistry, animals, flowers, music, famous paintings, entertainment, sports, drama, film, historical and modern celebrities, historical and modern clothing, ethnic groups from various countries, famous scenic spots and historical sites, etc. The names are numerous and too numerous to list.
The Origin of Cigarette Cards: At the beginning of the 20th century, cigarette cards were introduced into China from countries such as the UK, the US, Germany, and Japan. People called them "cigarette picture cards," or "paper cigarette cards," or "cigarette cards." In Shanghai and the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-An regionshui, they were referred to as "cigarette cards." In the north, people considered them foreign imports, hence they were called "foreign pictures," "foreign slides," or "foreign picture cards." In some places, they had very strange names, such as "wild heads" or "foreign devils." In Guangdong and Hong Kong, they were even more peculiarly referred to as "cigarette public paper."
The Earliest Cigarette Cards: Although cigarette cards have only been around for over a hundred years, their development history lacks detailed written records, and most information is passed down through the stories of the older generation. When cigarette cards first appeared, they were all soft-packed without hard boxes. Later, cigarette manufacturers found that carrying and storing them was inconvenient for smokers. Therefore, they added a thick piece of paper to make the cigarette packs stiffer, allowing smokers to place them in their pockets while keeping the cigarettes intact. This paper was the prototype of cigarette cards. Later, cigarette manufacturers printed figures, landscapes, animals, and plants on one side of the paper (the other side remained blank), thus creating the earliest cigarette cards. The world's earliest cigarette card was the "World Army" (Figure 1) produced by Wells in the UK in 1894, also known as "Infantry and Cavalry," consisting of 100 cards. The American Flag Company was the first foreign company to operate cigarette cards in China. The cigarette cards they printed for the Balmoral brand Western beauty cigarettes were very thick, making them the thickest among paper cigarette cards. In general, the thicker the card, the earlier it is. In 1886, the American Liggett & Myers Company commissioned Shanghai Jinlong Trading Company to distribute its cigarettes, branded as "Pineapple," also known as "Nail Head Brand" or "Old Brand," priced at 28 Wen per pack. Each pack of cigarettes came with an instruction leaflet (cigarette card), one side printed in Chinese and the other in English, stating, "If someone collects 50 empty Pineapple cigarette packs and sends them to the company or delivers them personally to Shanghai Jinlong Trading Company, they will be rewarded with a book of illustrations. It is also worth a look" (Figure 2). This booklet was the "Pineapple Small Book," including 12 pages of illustrations with text and pictures, accompanied by praise, with one illustration printed in each corner, colorful in hue, and depicting the entire cigarette-making process of the company. This action pioneered the practice of cigarette promotions.
Domestic Cigarette Cards: The earliest domestic cigarette cards were those produced by the Elephant Tobacco Company in Beijing, the Fu Kou Tobacco Company in Yingkou, and the Shanghai San Xing Cigarette Company before 1904. In 1904, the Shanghai San Xing Cigarette Company, to resist foreign cigarettes, established China's first tobacco company in Shanghai. The single-color 32-card set they printed, "Late Qing Beauty," contained no foreign text, which could be considered the ancestor of domestic cigarette cards. Soon after, the Northern Tobacco Company appeared in the north, and the Guangdong South China Tobacco Company was established in the south. Following this, small and large tobacco companies sprang up like mushrooms after rain, with Shanghai alone having about 400. At that time, fake cigarettes made from domestically produced hand-rolled cigarettes were common in rural areas, so many smokers only trusted cigarettes with cigarette cards as authentic products from major factories. As a result, cigarette cards emerged in large numbers with the development of tobacco companies and the preference of smokers.