In addition to displaying images, Explore Our Cigarette Collection were often printed with informational text—which made them mini-encyclopedias in themselves. They encouraged viewers to collect, curate and trade card sets. With an ever-expanding selection of topics, cigarette companies designed card sets to appeal to all tastes and interests.

Even movie stars promoted smoking, like Spencer Tracy and Betty Grable in these undated ads for White Owl cigarettes. Both suffered from smoking-related illnesses, including Grable’s lung cancer and Tracy’s congestive heart disease. The Flintstones, meanwhile, also shilled Winston cigarettes in a series of Hanna-Barbera cartoon commercials in the 1960s, and cartoonist George Arents’s smoking character, Fred Flintstone, was even drawn in a smoking jacket for a Winston ad in the 1980s.

Indulge Your Senses: Exploring Our Diverse Cigarette Collection

Cigarette filters take years to degrade and break down into microplastics, creating a health hazard for marine life, Novotny testified. During beach cleanups, Cindy Zipf finds cigarette butts all the time—but recently, she’s been finding another kind of plastic item: e-cigarettes. Read the full article, “E-Cigarettes Are the New Cigarette Butts,” on our blog.