I’m starting to wonder if I had imagined these, but I’m sure I remember them.
They’re about the length of two lollipop sticks, and in fact they look just like one. I remember seeing a kid riding past me on his bicycle when I was about seven, smoking one. The flame on the end was as tiny as you please. I’m also sure I saw one on a television show, possibly The Wonder Years? I’m not sure.
I don’t THINK that there is anything other than tobacco used—certainly nothing illegal?
If he was 7 at the time he might have seen a Viginia Slim
Slim cigaretes, as you may have guessed, were market toward beautiful skinny wimmin, who we all know can’t handle a full strength hit off a filterless Camel. Steve Martin speculates the “cigarettes for women” have little breasts on them, which makes them special.
They still make them. I know nothing about the brand, but a girl friend of mine used to smoke them so her guy friends would stop bumming cigarettes off of her. They were too embarassed to smoke a little girly cigarette.
Depending on when this occurred, perhaps it was a bidi, a small hand-rolled cigarette made with flavored herbs (usually not tobacco) that originated in India. They can be very thin, and they’re usually brown in color. They wouldn’t have been around before 1990 at the earliest, but I remember hearing about them in the early-to-mid 90s as a new health concern. The idea is that some people might think they’re safe because they don’t contain tobacco, but they actually pose health risks very similar to smoking tobacco. They also tend to resemble joints – this is a concern for parents, who might see them and think their child is smoking marijuana, and a possible advantage for a teenager who might want to make people think they’re smoking marijuana but who can’t obtain it.
Actually they were. I bought bidis in the late 70s early 80s in New Jersey. I had completely quit smoking at some point in the 90s and certainly had lost my fascination for bidis long before then.
Benson & Hedges/Virginia Slims put out a brand to compete with Capri in the 80s called Superslims. They were identical in diameter to a capri and were only available in the 120 mm.
Silva Thins were big in the 60s and 70s and were a little skinnier than a regular Virginia Slim but thicker than a Capri and were only available in 100s. They haven’t been made since the early 90s. In the 60s they were marketed to men…the magazine ads that I’ve seen show a guy that looks like John Travolta in Grease wearing his white T-shirt and leather jacket and a Silva Thin hanging out of his mouth. They were marketed to Ladies in the 70s.
‘More’ is probably skinnier than Virginia Slims but they’re brown, other than their “White Lights” that they sold for a while in the 80s, which were white and they had a beige version for a little while too.
Max (by Kent) was a white cigarette that was about the thickness of a More…haven’t seen them since the early 90s.
I used to work in a Mom n Pop grocery in the very early '80’s (my daughter who just turned 24 was a baby), and there was one customer we special ordered a cigarette called Tall 120’s for. I saw him smoke one, once, and they were these really long, skinny things. When he took a drag, about 3/4 of an inch burned away. Maybe that was it.
