Lucky Strike: 30 facts about the cigarettes!

Lucky Strike is an American brand of cigarettes owned by the British American Tobacco groups. Let’s see some awesome facts about the cigarettes!

1. Often referred to as “Luckies”, Lucky Strike was the top-selling cigarette brand in the United States during the 1930s.

2. Lucky Strike brand was introduced in 1871 by the company R.A. Patterson in the USA as chewing tobacco.

3. Many sources mention Matt Tellman as the founder of Luckies, but significant information about him does not exist.

4. According to rumor, the brand’s name is a reflection of what was supposedly found in some packs or cartons of these cigarettes: m/juana. The buzz has existed for many years that Lucky Strike smokers were engaged in a form of illegal substance lotto, with some of them happening upon a “lucky strike” of the ganja variety by finding a joint or two among the customary fare.

5. The truth is that the founder of Luckies was inspired by the era’s rush for gold searching. Only some of the gold diggers (about four out of 1000) were fortunate enough to find gold and this was often referred to as a lucky strike. By choosing this expression as the product’s name, it meant consumers who were choosing the brand were lucky, as they were choosing a top-quality blend. Lucky Strike was a brand of chewing tobacco, and by the early 1900s, it had evolved into a cigarette.

6. The brand was first introduced by R.A. Patterson of Richmond, Virginia, in 1871 as cut-plug chewing tobacco and later a cigarette. In 1905, the company was acquired by the American Tobacco Company.

7. In 1917, the brand started using the slogan, “It’s Toasted”, to inform consumers about the manufacturing method in which the tobacco is toasted rather than sun-dried, a process touted as making the cigarettes taste delicious

8. The brand was the first to connect smoking to weight loss with an advertising campaign targeted to women that advocated lighting up as the way to combat sugar cravings. In the 1920s and 1930s, ads for the cigarette told women “When tempted, reach for a Lucky instead; you will thus avoid overindulgence in things that cause excess weight.”

9. That campaign worked: “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet” was associated with a 200 percent increase in market share.

10. The company’s advertising campaigns generally featured a theme that stressed the quality of the tobacco purchased at auction for use in making Lucky Strike cigarettes and claimed that the higher quality tobacco resulted in a cigarette with better flavor. American engaged in a series of advertisements using Hollywood actors as endorsers of Lucky Strike, including testimonials from Douglas Fairbanks, concerning the cigarette’s flavor, often described as delicious due to the tobacco being toasted.

11. The brand’s signature dark-green pack was changed to white in 1942. In a famous advertising campaign that used the slogan “Lucky Strike Green has gone to war”, the company claimed the change was made because the copper used in the green color was needed for World War II. American Tobacco actually used chromium to produce the green ink, and copper to produce the gold-colored trim. A limited supply of each was available, and substitute materials made the package look drab.

12. The white package actually was introduced to modernize theand to increase the appeal of the package among female smokers; market studies showed that the green package was not found attractive to women, who had become important consumers of tobacco products.

13. The war effort became a convenient way to make the product more marketable while appearing patriotic at the same time.

14. The message “L.S.M.F.T.” (“Lucky Strike means fine tobacco”) was introduced on the package in 1945.

15. Lucky Strike was one of the brands included in the C rations provided to US combat troops during the Second World War. Each C ration of the time included, among other items, 9 cigarettes of varying brands because at the time, top military brass thought that tobacco was essential to the morale of soldiers fighting on the front lines.

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16. The practice of including cigarettes in field rations continued during the Korean and Vietnam wars, ending around 1975 or 1976 with the growing knowledge that smoking caused various kinds of health problems.

17. In 2007, a new packaging of Lucky Strikes was released, with a two-way opening which split seven cigarettes from the rest. In the same year, the company used the world’s smallest man, He Pingping, in their ad campaigns.

18. In 2009, Lucky Strike Silver (the brand marketed as lighter) changed their UK packs from the quintessential red design to blue, albeit with a red teaser outer covering the packet.

19. Jazz saxophonist Lucky Thompson’s 1964 album Lucky Strikes depicted the logo from the cigarette pack on its cover.

20. Billy Joel’s 1983 song “Keeping the Faith”, from the album An Innocent Man, mentions the brand in the lyric: “I took a fresh pack of Luckies and a mint called Sen-Sen. My old man’s Trojans and his Old Spice aftershave.”

21. In Dropkick Murphys’s song “Sunday Hardcore Matinee”, there is a line mentioning a “Pack of Luckies” among the possessions of those en route to the show.

22. In the acclaimed AMC television series Mad Men, Lucky Strike is a major client for the fictional advertising agency Sterling Cooper. A fictitious plot is also presented for the birth of the legendary slogan “It’s Toasted”The main character, Donald Draper, is often seen smoking Lucky Strikes.

Read here some awesome facts about Mad Men! 

23. In the season premiere of American Horror Story: Freak Show, Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) smokes a cigarette at a hospital and says; “It’s fine. It’s Lucky Strike. It’s good for you”.

24. In the film GoodFellas, young Tommy and Henry are selling cigarettes out of a truck, and Henry is heard selling “2 Luckies” to a customer.

25. Filtered and unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes are smoked by Johnny Depp’s character in The Ninth Gate.

26. In the film Misery, based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King, James Caan’s character, Paul Sheldon, smokes one unfiltered Lucky Strike upon the completion of every novel he writes.

27. In the 2014 film Fury, Brad Pitt and the three other smokers in the tank crew appear to smoke unfiltered Lucky Strikes throughout the film. They share a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes just before the film’s climactic battle.

Did you know that Tim Burton wanted Brad Pitt for the lead role at the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”?  Read more awesome facts about Brat Pitt here.

28. Brian M Viveros usually paints women smoking luckies.

29.  Lucky Strike was also a sponsor of comedian Jack Benny’s radio and TV show, The Jack Benny Program, which was also introduced as The Lucky Strike Program.

30. Lucky Strikes now have developed a “cult” following, with many people who smoked Lucky Strikes in their youth continuing to seek them out.