I would never have believed these were actual cigarettes! At first I thought they were joke ads. SPUD? Really? They couldn't think of a better name for them than Spud? Then I thought, "Maybe they were made from potato leaves/peels but no...

Gotta love the pushy advertising of the 50s. "Even with a cold..." I don't know about you, but smoking is the last thing I want to do with a cold. And no, cigarettes don't taste like hay when I have a cold. I would tell you what they taste like, but children visit this site.

I have to add these to my collection! Thank you uploader!

Is this the best comedy collection of cigarette ads? If not, it must run a close second to the late-1950s Alpine collection (http://archive.org/details/tobacco_ujq74e00), which is possibly more sophisticated in its humour. Still, for putting a wide-smile on your face, and for inherent interest, the Spud ads are probably superior, with only one real dud, the football sequence.

Ten ads in nine minutes from “the Philip Morris people” starting with three animated sequences set to a foot-tapping jingle, sung by a foot-stomping potato:

“Oh listen to me lady
Listen to me bud,
If you want to be mouth happy
Then you want to smoke Spud”

Then Mr Spud takes us on a tour of the cigarette factory, followed by a short, then an ad in the shower. Smoking in the shower? It’s corny, the acting and inflections are lame, but it’s different and comes across okay.

The football sequence (06.30) is the dud in this collection.

The final ad is hypnotic. It’s hard not to keep staring at the guy trying to hypnotise you into buying Spuds. And when he says: “New Spud, by the makers of Marlboro” you realise that all these ads, coming out of the same production house as the Marlboro Man ads, are not wholly frivolous. Spuds are purposely being associated with Philip Morris’s premiere brand, Marlboro; and by using the cachet of Marlboro, they’re hoping to attract customers away from their competitor, Kool.

In the world of cigarette commercials, these ads are classic. I’m viewing them 45 years after they were made, and aside from the football dud, they still hold a viewer’s interest.

Unfortunately for them, no slogan could kill that deeply unpleasant name.

spud

I wonder if they meant KOOL which was the competition to Spud. If this ws the case then these ads must be the first to actually name your competition in their ads. Very rare in the 60s, more commonplace in the 80s but not very common today. Reason being..well who knows who would would own you tomorrow.

Example..7-up in the 80's with their "Never Had It..Never Will" anti-caffine campaign. Those ads back then really attacked Dr. Pepper for having caffine. However who owns 7-UP now? Dr. Pepper !!
No wonder those ads are hard to find now.

mouth-happy

These are (unintentionally) the funniest cigarette commercials in the collection. The show starts with Mr. Spud (a hulking, unpleasant figure) singing the Spud theme song, which sounds a lot like "Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, won't you please put a penny in the old man's hat". It's infectious though; you'll find yourself humming it for days. The pitch is crude and uncouth ("lissen to me lady, lissen to me bud..."); it's designed more to insult than motivate. We then see "a football player" endorse Spud by writing (in inexplicably feminine handwriting) that Spud freshens the taste "something wonderful". Finally, in the most hilarious commercial of all, a hypnotist orders the viewer to try Spud NOW! Watch this and try to imagine Marlon Brando smoking Spud. No self respecting person would have been seen with a Spud pack. Who bought this?