I think we all have an idea what the national joy smoke is today. It’s not Prince Albert, in the can or otherwise.
But a hundred years ago? I just encountered the ad below while fishing around for newspaper mentions, circa 1917, of one of my dad’s uncles. The ad here appeared in the Warren Sheaf, still published in Marshall County, Minnesota — just northeast of Grand Forks, North Dakota.
The ad copy (early “Mad Men,” transcribed below) is not to be missed.
Say, you’ll have a streak of smokeluck that’ll put pep-in-your-smokemotor, all right, if you’ll ring-in with a jimmy pipe or cigarette papers and nails some Prince Albert for packing.
Just between ourselves, you never will wise-up to high-spot-smoke-joy until you can call a pipe b its first name, then, to hit the peak-of-pleasure you land square on that two-fisted-man-tobacco, Prince Albert!
Well, sire, you’ll be so all-fired happy you’ll want to get a photograph of yourself breezing up the pike with your smokethrottle wide open! Talk about smoke-sport!
Quality makes Prince Albert so appealing all along the smoke line. Men who never before could smoke a pipe and men who’ve smoked pipes for years all testify to the delight it hands out! P.A. can’t bite or parch! Both are cut out by our exclusive patented process!
Right now while the going’s good you get out your old pipe or the papers and land on some P.A. for what ails your particular smoke appetite!
You buy Prince Albert everywhere tobacco is sold. Toppy red bags, tidy red zinc, handsome pound and half pound humidors—and—that classy, practical pound crystal humidor with sponge moistener took that keeps the tobacco in such perfect condition.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Winston-Salem, N.C.