Cocoa Cigarettes

Cocoa Cigarettes

Client: Orion Company
Country: Japan

"The design of the Cocoa Cigarette, sold since 1952 — was influenced by the redesign for the Peace cigarettes in 1946 by French-born American designer Raymond Loewy. 
The new design pictured doves with an olive branch, and is what you see now on the current packaging for Peace. What the designer received at the time for compensation amounted to 1.5 million yen, whilst the monthly salary of then prime minister was 110,000 yen, and became a popular topic of conversation. This was when there was still no TV. "Peace Navy" (the colour of the redesigned cigarette packaging) began being used as a design term, and sales for Peace tripled after the design renewal.
So just like that, the salary-men fathers at the time all began smoking Peace cigarettes. As the saying goes, 「地震雷火事親父」 ("Earthquakes, Thunder, Fires, Fathers", a phrase used to show how fearful the father is), post-war Japan was a time when everyone had a sense of dignity for their father, and as they watched the backs of their fathers, smoking a cigarette on the veranda, children then felt a sense of adoration towards adults. Noticing this, Orion took to a Peace Navy coloured box, with a design that arranged an image of three filtered cigarettes, one that would quickly recall the Peace package. Within contained stick shaped sweets; cocoa coloured in the middle, with the rest being white. When these were sold in "dagashiya", or candy shops, children happily purchased them, and like their fathers do with cigarettes, they held the sticked shaped sweets in their mouth and enjoyed the feeling of being an adult."