Murad (cigarette)
Murad was a brand of cigarettes.
History[edit]
Turkish tobacco is sun-cured, which makes it more aromatic and, like flue-cured tobacco, more acidic than air- or smoke-cured tobacco, thus more suitable for cigarette production.[1]
In the early 1900s, manufactures of Turkish cigarettes tripled their sales and became legitimate competitors to leading brands.
The New York-based Greek tobacconist Soterios Anargyros produced the hand-rolled Murad cigarettes, made of pure Turkish tobacco.[2]
Lorillard acquired the Murad brand in 1911 through the dissolution of the Cigarette Trust, explaining the high quality of the Murad advertisements in the following years.[3]
Marketing[edit]
Murad referenced the Oriental roots of their Turkish tobacco blends through pack art and advertising images.[4] Surely one of the most gorgeously over-the-top ad campaigns for any cigarette was the long-running series for Murad brand made by Rea Irvin.
Collectible cards[edit]
Murad Cigarettes issued a series of cigarette cards featuring the university colors, pennants, and seals of various universities and colleges around 1910. Some cards also featured a vignette of a scene, some sporting like baseball, football, or golf, but others with just general scenes. Tobacco cards were often included in packs of cigarettes until the mid-twentieth century and served to stiffen the cigarette packages, advertise, and encourage product loyalty with the collectible cards.
Decline[edit]
Nevertheless, due to the rise of American cigarettes, cigarettes containing only Turkish tobacco, like Murad, Fatima, Helmar, Balkan Sobranie or those supplied by urban tobacconists like Fribourg & Treyer or Sullivan Powell in London, are no longer available.[5] Indeed, tastes in Europe and the United States shifted away from Turkish tobacco and towards Virginia tobacco, during and after the First World War.
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^ Jordan Goodman (1994). Tobacco in History. Taylor and Francis. p. 97. ISBN 9780203993651.
- ^ "The Age of Advertising: Murad Turkish Cigarettes (April 1, 1919) – History, at Random".
- ^ "Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising". tobacco.stanford.edu.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Murad Cigarette Box". Americanhistory.si.edu.
- ^ "Tobacco Timeline: The Twentieth Century 1900-1949--The Rise of the Cigarette". tobacco.org. Archived from the original on 29 May 2014. Retrieved 27 March 2014.