The Styrous® Viewfinder: Leroy E. Burney & Camel Cigarettes ~ A youthful reminiscence

Sixty-five years ago, in July of 1957, The U.S. surgeon general, Leroy E. Burney, reported that there was a direct link between smoking and lung cancer.

Was anybody listening to him?

Leroy E. Burne

date & photographer unknown

Ten years later, fifty-five years ago, it was about this time of the year I did listen to what he had to say and indeed, quit smoking the dreadful cancer sticks.

I recall as far back to the forties hearing adults who smoked them saying, "These cigarettes are going to be the death of me!" A couple of slang terms for them was cancer sticks and "coffin nails." So, everybody knew WAY before 1957!

I started to smoke when I was 13. All the cool guys in school smoked; I wanted to be cool, so, I lit up with the rest of them.

Of course, I was not old enough to actually buy cigarettes so I stole what my father smoked. He smoked unfiltered Camels! When I remember that now I think to myself, "Yech!" This iconic style of Camel is the original unfiltered cigarette sold in a soft pack, known as "Camel Straights" or Regulars.

Camel cigarette package front

Camel cigarette package top & back

Camel is an American brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the United States and by Japan Tobacco outside the U.S. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the city where R. J. Reynolds was founded, is nicknamed "Camel City" because of the brand's popularity.

The photograph used for the Camel design was taken on September 29, 1913, by Andrew Jackson Farrell, a Winston-Salem based photographer. Farrell and Mr. R. C. Haberkern of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company went to the Barnum & Bailey Circus to photograph a camel and a dromedary to use in the design for a "brand of Turkish Cigrettes which we [Reynolds Tobacco] are about to put on the market." "The label's background of temples, minarets, an oasis, and pyramids was much like it is today, but the camel in the foreground was a pathetic, one-humped beast with short, pointed ears, two-pronged hoofs and a drooping neck.

Its popularity peaked through the brand's use by famous personalities such as news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, whose usage of them was so heavy and so public that the smoking of a Camel no-filter became his trademark. But there were many other celebrities who promoted the brand . . .

American professional baseball players . . .

Ernie Banks

Hank Aaron

. . . movie stars . . .

Joan Crawford

Maureen O'Sullivan

. . . singers . . .

Vaughn Monroe

. . . and even DOCTORS!

In 1946, Camel advertised their cigarettes as being the favorite choice among doctors "from every branch of medicine", making smokers believe it was safe to smoke them. The slogan "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette" became the mainstay of Camel advertising until 1952.

Ads featuring the slogan were seen in a range of media, including medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, television commercials, popular radio programs such as Abbott and Costello and magazines such as Life and Time. The slogan was claimed to be based on surveys by "three leading independent research organizations"; however, these surveys were conducted by RJ Reynolds's advertising agency, the William Esty Company, and included free cigarettes for the doctors who were interviewed.

In late 1987, RJ Reynolds created "Joe Camel", a totally sleazy character, as a brand mascot to attract a younger generation as the current one was dying off. "Joe Camel always had a sexy woman in the ad some where.

The New York Times reported:

Joe Camel was actually born in Europe. The caricatured camel was created in 1974 by a British artist, Nicholas Price, for a French advertising campaign that subsequently ran in other countries in the 1970s. Indeed, [advertising executive John E.] O'Toole recalled a visit to France many years ago during which he glimpsed Joe Camel wearing a Foreign Legion cap. The inspiration behind Mr. Price's cartoon was the camel, named Old Joe, that has appeared on all Camel packages since the brand's initial appearance in 1913.

But RJ Reynolds didn't ignore the ladies; the company used men in sensual and erotic situations in their ads to lure the fair creatures with the come-on, "One of a kind."

In 1991, the American Medical Association published a report stating that 5- and 6-year-olds could more easily recognize Joe Camel than Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone, Bugs Bunny, or even Barbie. This led the association to ask RJR to terminate the Joe Camel campaign. RJR declined, but further appeals followed in 1993 and 1994. On July 10, 1997, the Joe Camel campaign was retired and replaced with a more adult campaign which appealed to the desires of its mid-20s target market. Camel paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing them of using Joe Camel to market smoking to children.

Camel facts

In 1913, Richard Joshua "R. J." Reynolds, founder of the company, innovated packaged cigarettes. Prior cigarette smokers rolled their own, this tended to obscure the potential for a national market for a pre-packaged product. Reynolds worked to develop a more appealing flavor, creating the Camel cigarette, which he so named because it used Turkish tobacco in imitation of then-fashionable Egyptian cigarettes. Reynolds priced them below competitors, and within a year, he had sold 425 million packs.

Camel cigarettes contain a blend of Turkish tobacco and Virginia tobacco to have a milder taste than established brands. They were advance-promoted by a careful advertising campaign that included "teasers" simply stating "the Camels are coming", a play on the old Scottish folk song The Campbells Are Coming. Another promotion was "Old Joe", a circus camel driven through towns to attract attention and distribute free cigarettes. The brand's slogan, used for decades, was "I'd walk a mile for a Camel!"

The Reynolds marketing gave the impression all was homey, safe and sound when smoking cigarettes.

Natasha Lyonne, of Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll fame, and Chloe Fineman did a great send up about the dying art of smoking cigarettes on Saturday Night Live earlier this year (link below).

According to Harry Berkowitz of the Seattle Times, in the early nineties Nicolas Price, the British artist who created the tremendously successful Joe Camel caricature says he is "mortified" that the advertising campaign appears to have enticed youths into smoking, and he would stop the ad campaign if he could. "On one level it's flattering that the character has been effective," Price said. "But on a more personal level, because of the way it was used, I am mortified." (link below)

All aspects of life and the working condition were utilized for the ad promotions.

And there were urban legends that grew from the brand; such as the ones about the image of Mae West, a lion or a naked man sporting an erection that was supposedly secretly embedded in the image of the camel on the pack.