Cigarettes for kids and other nonsense out there – 9/1/2023 – Cozinha Bruta

A total of zero people were surprised by the failure of the Pan chocolate factory auction. There was not a single bid. A brand indelibly linked to childhood smoking is not very successful.

Pan even had a more or less varied line of products, such as chocolate coins (stimulus to greed and usury) and cognac balls (gateway to cachacism).

It was, however, the chocolate cigarettes that stuck to the brand’s image. The sticks, wrapped in white and beige paper (the filter part), came in a box that simulated a cigarette case.

The package had a picture of a boy holding a cigarette between his index and middle fingers, a classic smoker’s pose. Depending on the batch of chocolate, the boy was either black or white.

It’s curious that in the 1970s, when chocolate cigarettes were still on sale, nobody gave a damn about them. I’ll go further: it was normal for children in environments saturated with smoke, and socially tolerated for them to give an occasional spit on cigarettes from adults.

The chocolate cigarettes were just another low-quality chocolate in a cute, even a little cute wrapper.

The fame of cigarettes –or infamy, according to the taste of the customer– would come in the 2000s. The internet became popular, as well as a nostalgic outbreak of the thirty-somethings of the time, who rescued pop culture from its own childhood.

Protobloggers and orkuteers took photos of little boys with cigarettes to the digital world. Already at that point in the story, images of an absurd and offensive situation.

I sit here thinking to myself and to myself: there are a lot of things that are normal today, but will soon be absurd.

Things that we see and don’t even think about, out of habit and inertia. That already bother, that already sound the alarm, but softly and not for everyone.

Just to stay on the subject of infant feeding, there are products and practices that clearly should be phased out.

It makes no sense to associate children’s characters with stuffed cookies, instant noodles and frozen chicken nuggets.

It should not be admissible to take bombs of sugar, sodium and fat to stamp the whole alphabet of vitamins on the packaging.

In this case, it is the parents who fall for the prank –deluded by a supposedly healthy purchase–, but the fate of the junk food is the children’s bodies.

The strategy of distributing toys with combos –always with potatoes and soda– at fast food restaurants is scandalously perverse. Even more diabolical when linked to a charity campaign.

I’m sure that in a few years we will look back on these things with amazement and some shame. For now, I’m waiting for the comments calling me boring, saying that the world is getting more and more boring.

Is life. Similar voices must have reacted when they banned preschool teachers from smoking on the job.

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