GQ first, as I’m thinking there might be a factual answer that I hadn’t considered.
Why would anyone want a soft pack of cigarettes over a hard pack? They’re the same price. A soft pack results in them all getting crushed more or less the minute they’re placed in a pocket / purse / etc. The hard pack offers much more protection. Plus it’s much simpler to open a new hard pack.
Even if you just wanted to remove them and put them someplace else, like a cigarette case, why not simply just use a hard pack? We’re not talking tons of extra waste here either - crush up two empty packs and you’ve got the same little ball of garbage.
Why would cigarette companies go to so much trouble to manufacture two different packages? Even if the soft packs are cheaper to produce, I can think of no brand that doesn’t offer a hard pack right next to the soft pack on the shelves. Certainly the cost of producing hard packs would be outweighed if they switched to hard pack only and shut down the machines that made soft packs.
I simply don’t understand the purpose of the soft pack, but there must be one, since there are tons of soft packs out there.
The only advantage I can think of to a soft pack is that you can ping the bottom of the pack in a misguided attempt to look cool and a cigarette or two will pop up, and you can offer one to a nice young lady.
Me, aged about 19, with some Marlboro Lights. No, it didn’t work.
Hard pack cigs are (or used to be) ever so slightly shorter than soft packs. The pack takes the same footprint so they have to be smaller to fit in the thicker packaging.
Ex-hard pack smoker, I loathed bent-up smokes more than I wanted that extra half puff.
Never let it be said that the tobacco companies don’t waste millions of dollars on R&D and manufacturing to create a solution to this obvious global problem.
Or, let’s try this: A soft pack in your shirt pocket will break every cigarette in half every time you bend over.
The soft pack is more handy or comfortable, being… well, soft. My favourites came in softpack, and as Donna Overdue said and Struan was sarcastic about, hard packs pokes you in the chest or otherwise. Also, hardpacks take up more space than the packet needs. Softpacks won’t. They’re just comfy and cool.
(Damn, I enjoyed being a smoker. Believe they have cigarettes in heaven?, at Rick’s Heavenly Bar?)
I am not a smoker, but back in the 70’s when I worked at 7-11, the only cigarettes to come in a hard pack were Marlboro. Everything else was in soft packs, and the hard pack was a fairly new innovation. I think the main answer to the OP is “tradition.”
Hard packs of cigarettes are a fairly recent invention. Far fewer soft packs are actually produced than hard packs, and soft-pack smokers tend to be older smokers who gre up on the soft packs – rolled up in a sleeve or transferred to a cigarette case.
There is no taste or manufacturing difference between the cigarettes from the factory. However, soft packs go stale faster, which gives them a subtly different flavor. They also tend to pack a little more during shipping and that also changes the flavor in small ways.
I’m only used to hard packs in the UK (only choice) but have sampled the soft-pack variety on trips abroad.
Long answer short its much easier to accidently crush a soft pack and never carry a hard pack in the top pocket of a shirt you like. It took only 2 months for a chrimbo gift to start fraying upper middle both sides of the pocket.
Wasn’t ever poked by it though.
I always carry my hardpacks in my jacket chest pocket as it is a much more rugged denim/courdroy material.
Occasionally when sans jacket I will put them in my slacks (soft chino style) and witness live poking of said trouser when I sit down. Which is when the pack gets shoved on the table. The alternative is the pack rolls around my thigh and the fags get compressed.
I haven’t smoked cigs for over 15 years now. But when I did, I never had any problems with them breaking in a pocket, not even a blue jeans front pocket.
Really? Hasn’t been my experience. In fact, I opened this thread b/c they ran out of hard packs and I had to get a soft pack, most of which broke in half in my jeans front pocket. There was certainly no difference in taste, though.
I didn’t smoke in the 70’s, being in grade school and all, so that’s news to me that there used to not be any hard packs. I’m thinking “tradition” is probably the winning answer so far.
I haven’t smoked since freshman year in college but this thread reminded me of the same question I once had. I was one of the last wave of high school students that could still legally buy cigarettes. I worked in a supermarket as well and some people were adamant about their soft packs and I never quite got it either. I noticed that they had some small rituals associated with hard packs that seemed important to them. One was carefully tearing just a perfect little square on one side of the top of the pack to get to the cigarettes. The second was tapping and finger play to make one come up stylishly. It sounds stupid and I always thought it was but that is what they did.
My dad buys soft packs. He also only ever wears/buys t-shirts with a pocket on the front. A pocket in which to keep his soft pack and lighter.
Me, being a woman and that I do not possess the same flat chest as him, I cannot carry my cigs this way - I buy hard packs and they go in my pocket. Although since I learned all about smoking from him, I would probably carry them this way if I could.
