Life — July 19, 1917 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Lucky Strike Cigarette Advertisement, Life Magazine (1917) This is a **cigarette advertisement**, not satire or political commentary. Lucky Strike marketed their "toasted" cigarettes by drawing a parallel to cooking: just as people prefer cooked food to raw, they should prefer toasted tobacco to untoasted. The ad claims toasting develops superior "Burley flavor" and appeals to consumer preference for processed foods. It uses straightforward marketing logic rather than humor or caricature. **Modern context**: This predates widespread knowledge of smoking's health dangers. The "toasting" claim was a genuine selling point in early-twentieth-century advertising. The ad's comparison of tobacco processing to food preparation was typical marketing strategy of the era.