Lucky Strike green, etc.

[Frank Abate]

Mike Salovesh commented:

>>
Before LSMFT, Lucky Strike's hyperpenetrating ad slogan was "Lucky Strike
green has gone to war", probably circa 1942. The ads were all over radio:
as an announcer read the slogan, each syllable was marked by a bong from a
kettledrum. The slogan marked a major change in the color of the Lucky
Strike package.

I remember asking parents, teachers, and a librarian how a change in the
color of a cigarette package had anything to do with the war effort.  I
never got an answer that satisfied me.  I tried to suppose that there was a
scarce ingredient in green ink that was needed as raw material for some
secret weapon -- but that sounded too ridiculous even for my wild 11 or 12
year old imagination.
<<

My parents, both of whom lived through WWII as adults (one in the Army "over
there", the other here), told me about this.  They said that the idea was
that the green (pre-1942) of the Lucky Strike package was changed to white
because the green was needed for Army uniforms, which then were "olive
drab".  I doubt that this was really a matter of the Army needing the dye,
but it was a nice bit of marketing anyway.  Lucky Strike stayed white after
the war and into recent years, at least -- I don't know if they are still on
the market.

On a related note, I worked on a book called "Slogans" (Gale, about 1986),
which I have somewhere and will unearth in time.  The book had a guest
foreword by a former NYC advertising executive who was a principal at one of
the big agencies going back to the 1930s.  He takes credit for "LSMFT" and
some other noted (and some forgotten) slogans of the 1930s and later in that
foreword, with some credible stories backing it up.  I will report on this
to the list when I find the book.

Frank

Frank Abate
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