I am part of that last generation which grew up with cigarette cards.
These were those tiny picture cards which were given away in packets of cigarettes.
There were still plenty of them knocking around in the 1950s, but it turns out according to one source that their production and distribution had ceased in the early 1940s, because of wartime restrictions, and after the war, the practice was never resumed.
Instead, the cards reappeared in packets of tea, and bubblegum, which gave them a distinctive smell.
All of which explains why although there were still cigarette or “fag cards” about when I was growing up, they were tatty and in short supply, which was a mystery I have often pondered on.
And their demise also helps confirm the date of this particular card, which was produced by Wills’s Cigarettes and was part of a series on Air Raid Precautions, offering advice on “Rendering Your Room Gas Proof”.
The fear that the Germans might use poison gas was a real one, given its use in the Great War and by Mussolini during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1936.
Which led to the mass issue of gas masks and this chilling set of instructions.
The threat of such an attack receded during the course of the war, which again helps date the card, which I found in a copy of A Diary of World Affairs by Marcel Hoden.
The book is a round up of the events from July 1940 through till December 1941 when it was published.
Like the picture card Mr. Hoden’s book is a fascinating insight in to how the war was seen at the time.
But for now, it is the card that has caught my interest, not least because it was a perfect way of getting war time messages to the population.
Leaving me to ponder on whether eighty years on we can expect similar picture cards to reappear in packets of tea, and jars of coffee to help guide us through the Covid crisis, the forthcoming mass vaccination campaign and the disaster which awaits us with Brexit.
Location; 1939/1940
Pictures; “Rendering Your Room Gas Proof”, from Wills’s Cigarettes, circa 1939/1940 and the cover of Wills’s Cigarettes, 1941
*Cigarette Cards.co.uk, https://www.cigarettecards.co.uk/intro.htm
Sat in your gas proof room puffing away on your Woodbine.
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