Confectionery-Branded Cigarettes (1970s)

As part of its decade-long Cigaretiquette campaign (see here), Scarfolk council wanted children to start smoking cigarettes, cigars and pipes as young as possible.

The council's first attempt to sell candy cigarette sticks (sometimes in faux tobacco-branded packaging) hadn't appealed to Scarfolk children and the council was forced to revise its approach.

It did so by simply reversing the concept: Real cigarettes were now packaged as familiar, desirable confectionery (see right & below) and then mixed in among genuine chocolates, sweets and other products containing experimental, addictive, psychotropic temperament modifiers.

Additionally, the council funded a 1979 big-budget remake of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', renamed 'Toby and the Tobacco Factory'. As in the original, the hero, Toby Bucketkicker, eventually becomes the owner of the tobacco factory, though in the update only after the factory's owner dies of a respiratory illness. In the musical sequel, Toby also goes on to intimidate governments and falsify medical research to feed his own rapacity.

Confectionery companies didn't like children cutting down on chocolate. They strongly opposed the substitutions, particularly because, as was later revealed, they had invested heavily in the Cavalier Pharmaceutical Company, which had been stockpiling insulin for several years to raise its value.

By the end of the decade, the council's scheme paid off and juvenile smoking was up 68%, generating a huge tax revenue.