Copyright: W.Norris
My daughter decided to make this camel for the annual school Xmas tree competition. To her, at age 11, camels are “cuddly” and linked to the Three Wise Men, part of the Christmas Story. To me, whilst overseeing her sewing efforts, I’d made the link to the 2 empty packets sitting on my desk waiting for me to write a global health blog.
You can see them either side here...

They are cigarette packets but actually only one has ever contained tobacco...can you tell which? Of course you can: it's the one which says Smoking Kills. But that's a UK packet, you don't see that message dominating on packets sold elsewhere...And you have to be able to read.
And that’s the point.
Candy (sweets) that mimic tobacco products
This is marketing at its best... the package shape and silver foil construction, the same azure blue sky (it really is), the association of Camel or Sphinx with the romance of Egypt and the yellow desert: these link the two packets to each other & therefore their contents. But the packet with the Sphinx contained chocolate sticks covered in rice paper, accurate copies of adult cigarettes, and was purchased by my daughter from her favourite sweet shop. She loved them; I objected.
And I had to explain why, because she didn’t know. She had not made the connection.
But I had. When I was a child, pink-tipped white candy sticks were my favourite and I knew that they were a kids' version of adult cigarettes. Kids love to pretend to be adults. The reason I knew of course was that THEN many adults including my father smoked. I even used to buy him mini-cigars for Xmas, despite the fact that I loathed the smell (it made me feel sick). The white candy sticks are still on sale but they are poor imitations of cigarettes so the link to smoking is now so remote that I’ve not be too worried.
Sphinx candy sticks are a different matter. They operate on a much subtler level.
We are still trying to stop children and adolescents from taking up tobacco smoking, even though overall adult smoking is in decline and is reinforced by the ban on smoking in public places in many European countries (Although Belgium has just relaxed that!).