Music Babble

Wow, Joe Camel lasted all the way until 1997. I could have sworn it was more like '93-'94. My clearest memories of the character was a tacky wall clock at the local 7-11 and... I dunno. It was a very 7-11-centric part of my life (one part I miss about quitting smoking after the actual smoking and the nicotine is that I don't go to 7-11 much at all when I used to go there daily and waste money on smokes and junk-food impulse buys.)

I looked a bit into it and found some bits of the "research" in the campaign against the character and the claim that Camels went from like 1% to 30% of the youth market after Joe Camel had been introduced is just wrong. Camel has always been a major brand and it's inconceivable that it would have a one-percent share, even if it had become more of an old-man cigarette by that point. A 3,000% jump in market share (check my math yo) would have been much noticed and remarked upon.

That surprises me that your mom was so cool about that. I always assumed you had a fairly conservative upbringing.