Lucky Strike

Cigarette packaging oddity

When viewed sideways, the Lucky Strike packaging can easily be described as resembling a Japanese flag, with its characteristic rising sun. On the Luckies pack the sun has a stylized shockwave surrounding it, giving associations to a nuclear blast. The sun has Lucky Strike - It's toasted written in it with large black letters.

On the top of the pack the title says Luckies: An American Original

LUCKY
STRIKE
"IT'S TOASTED"

My Dad has smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes for as long as I can remember.

Anyway, a typical pack of Lucky Strike contains "20 Class A Cigarettes." They're manufactured by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation out of Kentucky.

I have an interesting tidbit of info that not many people know about. On the bottom of every pack of Lucky Strike, you'll see this:

L.S./M.F.T.

This strange looking code stands for "Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco"

Surgeon General's Warning: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health. (Copied verbatim from the pack of Luckies I grabbed off my Dad's shelf.)

L.S./M.F.T.

In the film Blue in the Face, Harvey Keitel and Jim Jarmusch have (to my mind anyway) an extremely interesting conversation about smoking in general and about Lucky Strikes in particular.

In the course of that conversation, Harvey Keitel says when he was a kid the joke used to be that L.S./M.F.T. stood for "Loose Stomach Means Full Toilet."

Frankly, I'm not sure which version I like better.