There’s a five-minute collection of these advertisements on YouTube, and the first clip might be the worst. After an animated bit featuring Lucy furnishing Desi with a pillow on his easy chair before switching on the television (there’s nowhere for her to sit), we’re treated to the live-action sight of the duo firing up a couple of king-sized sticks in their living room. Desi notes that this is the last cig in the pack, and asks Lucy to get another one. Rather than throw on her coat and drive to the local grocery store, Lucy hops up, takes down a framed picture in the background and unlocks a wall safe that contains a whole carton of Philip Morris goodness. Evidently, the couple’s plans for the evening were to sit around the house and suck down darts until bedtime.
Upon retrieving the carton, Desi directly addresses the camera and marvels that they’re “smooth, mild, mellow and easy on your throat.” So smooth, you can’t feel the cancer metastasizing in your lungs! Lucy adds that there’s “no cigarette hangover.” So when you’re hacking up thick, yellowy phlegm in the morning, blame that on your nightcap or your toothpaste, not, god forbid, the pack-plus of coffin nails you inhaled the day before.