A weird way of advertising

EDIT: AS OF SEPTEMBER 8, 2008 – I got tired of a lot of my traffic coming from this post due to people searching for free cigarette coupons. Though this show is called Banter Over a Cigarette, I do not have any free coupons to give. If you have found yourself on this page for that reason then you’re at the wrong place, but I do encourage you to listen to my show anyway.

I decided to change the title of this post in hopes that it will keep this post from showing up on a web search for anything not related to the show.

Today The Girlfriend Lady and I received a package from Kool, the company that makes menthol cigarettes, and we don’t even smoke Kool’s. Inside the package was some coupons and one of the strangest free items I’ve yet to receive from the tobacco industry. What I recieved was this:

Xeos Micro Speakers. Now I’ve received a few things from tobacco companies over the last couple of years. Lighters, ash trays, cigarette cases, coupons, the usual stuff. But I’ve never recieved speakers. They work surprisingly well for micro speakers. They provide really good sound when plugged into my iPod. The sound quality from my laptop is ok. The speakers that come standard with the Laptop are better simply because the speakers I was sent dont have a bass control so the sound quality is a bit off when being used as computer speakers. But if I didnt have any speakers at all and needed external speakers, I’d use these before buying a set. The package came with three AAA batteries and all the necessary cables. and its all conveniently packaged inside the speakers, a button expands the speakers creating what the box calls an “acoustic chamber”, and within these chambers on the left and right speaker are slide-out compartments, one for the batteries, and one to hold the cables.

These are some very good speakers, I’ll put good use to them. I can’t say that I dont appreciate the free swag. But is it really necessary for the tobacco industry to send consumers, even when they dont consume their particular product, free speakers? Or any of the stuff they send as gifts for that matter?

When I was younger I remember my father saving the bottom of his Marlboro packs and trading them in for duffel bags, jackets, inflatable rafts, and whatever else Marlboro offered in their catalogue. And even up to a few years ago it was still an option. Even Camel had an online casino that you could use to redeem the “C-Notes” Included with every pack. I collected these as I smoked Camel at the time. I had one hell of a collection, saving them in a coffee can until I turned 21 so that I could send them in for my own duffel bag or inflatable raft.

But I began to notice that Camel stopped packaging their smokes with “C-Notes”, and Marlboro ceased to produce their packs with the “Marlboro Miles” stamp that you could tear off and save. I sadly discoverd that it was, for better lack of a word, outlawed to provide this service so as to not encourage non-smokers, and possibly children from smoking just so they could redeem their proofs of purchase for their own inflatable raft.

Is it right for the lawmakers to do that? To say that you can’t have your own bartering system with your consumers. Was it another ploy to get people to stop smoking, similar to the constant increase to the “sin tax”?

Who knows, I’m not necessarily posting to debate that decision. I want to know what your opinion is. Was it wrong for this practice of trading in collected portions of cigarette packs and trading them in for novelty items and ash trays with your brands logo stamped on it? How do you feel about it now that in lieu of the bartering system, companies now give items away for free with coupons as promotional items?