If you were born in a certain era — long before “helicopter parenting” — you probably thought smoking was disgusting, but figured you’d start at some point.
After all, the local dime store had packages of candy cigarettes and bubble gum cigars, and later “Big League Chew” (a chewing tobacco simulacrum made entirely out of dextrose and assorted sweeteners). All of these delights just waiting for you to pay your pennies, and crack open the package.
If your home environment had ashtrays on most horizontal surfaces — if your mom had a snap-top purse big enough for a pack of Newports and a matchbook — or your dad kept cigarettes in his shirt pocket — the likelihood of “young you” experimenting was almost 100%.
I have made up that statistic, because everyone I hung around with in high school (with one exception, our Valedictorian, who clearly knew better) was a smoker at one point or another. Plus, everyone’s parents’ had an “account” at the corner store, and no clerk would blink if you went in asking for a couple of packs of Lucky Strikes for your folks.
The glamour of exhaling
Plus — the movies! Especially the film noir of the late 1930s and 1940s. Black and white film, stark shadows, and thin-lipped men with turned-down fedoras lighting the cigs of knife-thin ladies up to no good. How could you not smoke!
Everyone smoked — J.D. Salinger’s Zooey Glass famously smokes cigarettes in the bathtub and brushes ashes off the script he’s reading; and so does his mother when she marches in the bathroom to antagonize him.
Smokes were given to soldiers in World War II, and new mothers. That man smoking in the waiting room of the delivery clinic would exchange his Camels for cigars wrapped in cellophane. Among my parents’ effects in one of the many trunks in the attic were two such artifacts, labelled “It’s A Girl,” and “It’s A Boy,” forever unsmoked.
My first “school” project was the glazed green ceramic ashtray. All of the little pre-schoolers at the Jewish Community Center — the only pre-school in the region in the 1960s — made ashtrays for their parents. I sat next to a little girl who made a fancy-schmancy ashtray by flattening a circle, and lifting up the sides. She created a Mid-century Modern “Flying Wing” style ashtray and I thought she was a genius.
And my mother, Janet Cragin was thrilled with the ashtray. She used it for years. But it wasn’t until the Surgeon General’s report in 1964, the same year that brought us the Beatles and the Mary Poppins movie, that finally a “discouraging word” was heard about America’s fifth biggest crop.
My mom’s story about the ground-breaking Surgeon General’s report — which dominated the radio, TV, and other media sources for days was that she first heard about the report by reading the story in the morning paper (we took the Boston Herald Traveler, where my father worked). And then she read it again, while she smoked every last butt in the house.
Of course, there was a “kid’s version” of cigarettes, and all of us in Lunenburg practiced smoking with a grass stem, or a twig, or dried cornsilk wrapped in a square of paper. Or if we had a dime, a chalky candy cigarette bought from “The Apothecary” in the center of town.
What could be more fun that pretending to “smoke” a candy cigarette, especially since they were dusted heavily with confectioner’s sugar so you could make a convincing puff of “smoke.”
The cardboard pack the candy ciggies came in was just about the same size as a real pack of cigs, even if the little sticks inside rattled around, versus the soft rustling real cigs made.
Plus, the candy companies had a grand time with the masquerade. Their graphic designers mimicked the colors, layout, and even the brand names. Would you walk a mile for a Camel? How about an Acmel — which is what Camels became. Viceroy turned into a partial anagram (Viceyo), and Marlboro dropped its “l” to become Marboro. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should — but a candy “Winstun” tastes even better.
Six years after the Surgeon General’s Report, the country considered a national ban on candy cigarettes (1970 and 1991) but these didn’t pass. However, after the 1970 bill was proposed, candy manufacturers replaced the word “Cigarettes” with the word “Sticks” on the package. But it didn’t matter. We all knew what was in the box.
While researching these topics, I came across the website for Blair Candy which proudly continues the tradition of bubblegum cigars — including bubblegum cigars to celebrate the birth of a baby. Blue for a boy, of course, and pink for a girl. Or, you can order a box of 3 dozen in banana, apple and fruit flavors.
‘Tough Choice’
With nearly 100 folks responding to several social media posts about candy cigarettes and cigars, the ciggies came out on top, nearly two to one, but the love for both candies was sincere. And so was the love for long-gone corner stores such as: Leins Market, West St. Variety, Crossman’s, Peterson’s Market, Dick’s Qwik Check, and many more in Leominster, Fitchburg, Lunenburg and beyond.
Michael Peck, co-founder of Cambridge and Boston’s legendary movie theatre, Off The Wall could not decide which was his favorite: “Tough choice! The cigars were big enough to last most of the afternoon, but you could blow the sugar off the cigarettes and look like you were smoking.”
Many respondents mentioned their joy at the confectioner’s sugar getting “puffed” out of the cigarettes, including former Boston Globe editor Vicki Hengen Little who wrote: “Oh cigs all the way! Then we started smoking real ones and had to quit. Which built character.”
Family Recipe Box Executive Board Member Mary C. Barclay noted: I “smoked” thousands of candy cigarettes in my youth. The cigars were for adults who didn’t smoke to give out after a child was born…. until girl and boy Hershey Bars were all the rage! (Girl bars were straight up milk chocolate; boys had nut.)
Candy Cigarettes and frosted cupcakes: Let your imagination soar — stick a ciggie in the middle of a cupcake so everyone at the birthday party can “blow” out the candle. Or stack Lifesavers on the ciggie for a colorful treat. Or, keep a pack of candy cigs on your dashboard and shock your children when you pick them up from school with a stick dangling from your lower lip, and the pack offered with a friendly query: “Gotta light?” (this gag is recommended for Middle School and older, as they generally have a fuller sense of irony developed).
Sally Cragin would love to read your family recipes and stories. Write to: sallycragin@gmail.com
