The 1960s were a time of lies and child exploitation. They told us that by the time we grew up we would only be working three or four days a week and having longer weekends. They also led us to believe that we would have hovercars, voice operated computers, tiny personal communication devices and clean energy. It’s your choice whether you blame the government or Gerry Anderson for the lies (the two were interchangeable for me in the 1960s).
We do, to be fair, have voice operated computers (even if they don’t always recognise a regional accent) and the small personal communication devices (even if they are getting bigger). However, the diminution of my working week has been caused by economics rather than increasing leisure. And my car is firmly on the ground, driving through potholes, and is definitely not powered by clean energy.
But all that pales into insignificance compared to sweet cigarettes. Kids were encouraged to play at smoking (and, as you will note from the photos, Gerry Anderson was involved again). They seem innocent enough but research shows that there is a correlation between the use of sweet cigarettes as a child and smoking as an adult, with users of sweet cigarettes being more likely to smoke real cigarettes as adults.
It’s all very cynical when you look into it, even by the standards of people who peddle sugar and nicotine.
However, it’s now illegal to sell sweet cigarettes in many countries. Progress? Well, let’s just say that as sweet cigarettes were made illegal, a product known as candy sticks hit the market.
The pictures are, of course, the reason I am writing this. They are the slides from packets of 1960s and 70s sweet cigarettes. You don’t see them often, and several of them made over £20. Even the dull ones made £5. It makes you wish you’d saved more of your childhood detritus, doesn’t it.
Earlier than that, George Orwell only promised me my waist was likely to thicken and that that would signal bad things, and by gum he was right.
He often was . . .
I don’t remember what was on the cover of our candy cigarettes. But they had an advantage over the tobacco kind in that you could eat them. So much tech we were supposed to have by now. Alas…
Yes, so much tech, and in my case, so little brain to use it. 🙂
I remember crunching candy cigarettes, but we never had any with daleks on the cover of the packs. Not sure whether or not I should be jealous. On one hand, you had daleks. On the other hand, it was for candy cigarettes. Life is complicated.
Vaping, with the combination of cheap disposable units, flavours for kids and unscrupulous shop owners is aimed at getting young people hooked on the habit. Some things never change.
Alas!
Now we have sweet vaping. Those marketers of sweet cigarettes were far sighted
Yes – full circle.
The Daleks were actually on the cover of sweet cigarette packages? I remember both of those things. 🙂
And toy Daleks, Dalek suits, books and films. 🙂
I put a lot of things onto my computer using my voice. It makes mistakes but it doens’t endless rteverse letter piars whihc my gibgers od and it doesn’t miss keys and tyoe utter uvbbish..
My car runs on fairly clean energy.
But we were lied to.
There are certain words I always spell incorrectly because my fingers seem to run out of sequence.. However, to be fair, I am quite capable of spelling everything perfectly and still churning out utter rubbish.
If I was reading this on my computer I would be typing the answer but on my phone I am doing voice to text my civil is okay but it doesn’t understand the Australian accent all the time and make some real steaks
My brother in law is a technical wizard and was an early adopter of voice/computer software. He gave up because it could not understand his Suffolk accent. It is better now but as your experience shows, still not infallible.