The Flintstones kick back, with a nice cigarette

In the days of lesser health and safety, nicotine turned up in surprising places – Winston cigarettes (RJR Nabisco) used to back The Flintstones, and even had Fred and Barny sneaking out back for a crafty fag (‘taking a Winston break‘, as they called it) while their wives toiled at the grindstones. Bear in mind that The Flintstones, for all its kids channel ghettoisation today, was a primetime animation the first time around, and began in an 8.30 timeslot in 1960.

Especially in radio, this kind of apparently incongruous advertising can be very entertaining – because of the lack of visuals, they really have to sell other aspects of the products. Wine is swished longingly around glasses and savoured with a connoisseur’s delight, while cigarettes are languorously inhaled, all crackling tips and then slow, breathy exhalations… and possibly a ‘mmmmm’. It’s all about the experience.

There’s a series of extraordinary sci-fi plays called Atomic Tales that appear on iTunes (in Scifi Friday), that do exactly that. Full of jingoistic plots about evil aliens and social brainwashing, they occasionally break for a commercial interlude, in which one of the actors, ‘Monty Holmes’, recommends a brand of menthol cigarette called the Vapal Cool 100: ‘Menthol revives the mind, and invigorating chlorine makes breath swimming pool fresh all day.’ Says Monty, sounding for all the world like Boris Karloff. Sounds tempting, but as the crisp production quality may lead you to suspect, it’s a spoof. Kool, of course, is a real brand of menthol.

Back in the real world of vintage radio advertising, Jack Benny was a great hustler for Lucky Strikes. Mentions of the cigarette brand went far beyond the mere commercials, and were stitched right into the narrative – read more here – it’s hard to imagine a similar outcome from the recent British relaxation on product placement.