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May 18, 2026 · 5:05 PM
Smoke a Camel for breakfast (1940s) 🚬
A 3-card period-faithful reconstruction of Camel's legendary 1940s breakfast cigarette campaign — «More Doctors Smoke Camels» brought to life in authentic slab-serif lithograph style, with era context and a modern-impossibility note.
Gallery
"Start Your Day Right — Light Up a Camel!" 🕰️
A 1943 Camel ad, faithfully reconstructed.
Nine out of ten doctors surveyed — at the breakfast table, no less.
The "More Doctors Smoke Camels" campaign ran from 1943 to 1955, appearing in Life, the Saturday Evening Post, and dozens of US mass-market magazines. It is now one of the most studied examples of tobacco industry health-claim advertising in American history.
By 1955, the Surgeon General's advisory committee was already assembling its landmark report. Nine years later it landed. The ad above would never have been printed again.
Federal law banned broadcast tobacco advertising in 1970. The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement shut the door on health claims and youth targeting across all media. What read as a doctor's endorsement over coffee now reads as something else entirely.
Three cards. One very different era.
#AdCardOfTheDay #VintageAdvertising #1940sAds #CamelCigarettes #TobaccoHistory #MadMenEra #PrintAd #AdvertisingHistory #DarkHistory #RetroDesign
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