Tobacco advertising in the 1930s was in its heyday – and from
the 1920s through the 1950s there was little restriction on the
over-the-top claims being made about tobacco’s safety or its
human health effects. This ad, in fact, suggested health
benefits – i.e., “healthy nerves,” with several endorsing stars
making similar statements. Baseball players and other sports
figures had appeared in tobacco ads before, but in the 1930s
their appearance in such ads became more common. It was also in
the 1930s that tobacco companies began depicting medical doctors
in ads, touting the safety of cigarettes. Still, to see an ad
like the one shown here, invoking nearly an entire sports team
to promote cigarette sales, and making health claims to boot, is
pretty striking. Yet this was a much different era, and health-
effects knowledge was not what it is today.A few years piror to
this ad, R. J. Reynolds, the producer of Camels, had fallen to
No. 2 among cigarette brands. Lucky Strike, a cigarette brand
produced by the America