Back in the day, I started with Player’s. I liked the plain tips (no filter), but they weren’t often available, so I switched to Export A. Filter, but all the punch of Player’s Plain. In the rare case that the store had neither, I smoked Black Cat Number Sevens. Note that these are all Canadian brands, and pretty much all were straight Virginia tobacco, so there was little difference in flavour between them.
Of course, there were “light” and “mild” versions of all of the above, but I liked the flavour that the original “lungbusters” provided. At some point, I switched over to Cameo Menthol, then Black Cat Number Seven Menthol, but again, both were lungbusters. Medallion and Matinee Extra Mild were pretty much air. Flavour mattered, and the lungbusters delivered.
Nowadays, I still enjoy a smoke, but I pretty much only smoke my pipes and cigars. How I settled on my favourite pipe tobaccos and cigars is a whole other question.
My dad cooked one chicken on his Green Egg and I went out and bought one that same weekend. I’ve had it for over 20 years now and I’m really happy with it.
For the past 20 or so years, my regular brand has been whatever is cheapest. Currently, that’s Seneca, which isn’t available everywhere, but they are $1-2 cheaper than the budget brands (like Maverick, Pall Mall and Lucky Strike) and $3-5 cheaper than the major brands. My only requirement is that I will not smoke menthols under any circumstances, and to smoke 100s I have to be desperate (e.g. if they only have Seneca 100s I will pay the extra couple bucks for a pack of Luckies).
There’s less nicotine and tar in the tobacco and also the filters are perforated so you inhale more air into your mouth when you smoke, thus weakening the flavor/effect.
I tried a bunch and there were a few I liked more than others. Not really much more than that. I did not like Marlboro Lights (or whatever they call them now)–they always tasted stale to me. But Marlboro Mediums or Reds were fine. I was mostly a Lucky Strike Light or Camel Light smoker. For full strength, I prefer Marlboro Reds over Camels. In college, Dunhills were almost the same price as domestic cigarettes, so my favorite were Dunhill blues. I also enjoyed the Gauloises Blondes Yellow pack back when I lived in Europe. I think they were supposed to be ultra-light, but I can’t quite figure out from Googling if they were or not. I also absolutely hated menthol to the point that no matter how much I was jonesing for a nicotine fix, I would turn them down if offered.
That reminds me of a quote from Mystery ScienceTheater 3000, where a man is standing up against the wall, waiting for the firing squad, and is offered one final cigarette.
I, on the other hand, during the couple years in high school when I occasionally smoked to the extent of now and then actually buying a pack, was a dedicated Kool Menthol girl. I have no real idea why except I’ve pretty much never met a mint anything I didn’t like.
In the forty-plus years since high-school me decided this was a dumb and debilitating habit and I was through with it, I’ve smoked on average one cigarette a decade, when I’m hanging out with a smoking friend and they offer me a cancer stick to keep them company. In that situation I just smoke what I’m given, no favoritism.
I haven’t smoked in over 35 years, probably more. Sometimes my brand choice would be influenced by what my friends were smoking, sometimes by a quest for something mild. Brands that I recall (these are Canadian brands) are DuMaurier, Player’s, and Rothman’s.
An interesting sidebar here is that there’s a vast difference between American and Canadian cigarette tobacco. I never understood the reason, but the difference is unmistakable. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other (there’s nothing inherently good about burning leaves that give you cancer) but just so different. Canadian cigarettes produce a somewhat acrid smoke but with a lighter taste, whereas American cigarettes are more reminiscent of cigar or pipe tobacco with a deeper and stronger smell.
Ever since I quit smoking, to me both have an equally repulsive stench, though. It would be interesting to know if the health risks are different, but I suspect they are not. It’s almost unbelievable how long the list is of the horrible things that smoking cigarettes does to you, and as medical research continues, the list keeps growing longer.
Blending. Canadian cigarettes tend to use nothing but Virginia tobacco, the kind that grew so well and so much in southwestern Ontario. Virginia by itself provides a sweet taste; so much so that when I smoke a Virginia flake in my pipe, it has to be cut with bitter Syrian Latakia, just to take the sweetness off.
American cigarettes tend to be blends. Remember those Camel ads? “A blend of Turkish and Domestic tobaccos.” It wasn’t just Camels, though; there are a number of different kinds of tobacco grown in the US (in addition to Virginia, I can think of Burley and Perique, as two examples, and both are present in many pipe blends), and Americans blended them to produce different flavour profiles for each brand.
Started smoking in 1975, because everyone I worked and hung out with were smokers. Tried Marlboros, then some menthol (Salems, etc.) then tried Marlboro Menthol. I liked them best for some reason and stuck with them until I quit in 1984.
When I met my wife she was smoking one of those really long skinny brands (Virginia Slims maybe?). We occasionally tried each other’s cigs over the years, usually in desperation when one of us ran out. But we both stuck with our chosen brand.
We purged all pictures of smoking before having kids.
My son started smoking in his late teens, and I noticed he had chosen Marlboro Menthol as well. I asked him, and he had no idea it had been my brand back in the Malaise years.
FTR: We stayed quit when we tossed them in 1984, and my son has been smoke-free for several years now.