This foldout postcard, from the General Cigar Hall of Magic at the 1964-65 World’s Fair, originates from a bit outside our usual time frame here at Cladrite Radio, but we’re suckers for World’s Fairs:
What strikes us as odd about this postcard is how strongly it’s aimed at kids. We mean, sheesh, the tube against the hand trick? Is this hat taller or wider? That’s Weekly Reader or Highlights-level material.
Not that we’re knocking those publications, mind you. But honestly, was that the way to appeal to cigar smokers in the mid-1960s?
Unless it was true in those days, as is so often the case now, that tobacco companies were trying to rope in new smokers at an early age. It’s just hard to imagine a kid who was nine or ten years old in 1964 opting to take his first puff not from a pilfered Marlboro, but off a White Owl stogie.
Cough cough!
