Cigarette ad featuring smoking, bat-winged pegasus

They called 'em "Peacock cigarettes," but apparently the mascot was a bat-winged pegasus. Smoking a cigarette.

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Anonymous

This is the first ad I’ve seen that has actually made smoking look cool.
redesigned

that’s just silly…everyone knows bat winged pegasuses only smoke menthol lites!

(btw. this is way cooler then a phallic camel in a suit)
jackwilliambell

I see your cigarette smoking bat-winged Pegasus and raise you a cigarette smoking unicorn from the alleys of Melbourne. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackwilliambell/5024468964/
Anonymous

There is a silly pun of the word horse with tastiness. “Umai” written right to left on the horse is a pun on “uma” which is horse and “umai” which is tasty. (as in umami, a more familiar word to recent` fans of cookery)
Gilgongo

Japanese speakers: do you know roughly when Japanese stopped being written from right to left sometimes? Seems that posters and signs like this would usually have things written backwards quite often in the past. I was scratching my head for a bit trying to work out “kokkoupii” until I realised.

BTW I can’t believe the “umai” pun is really a pun on horse’s stomach. If it is, then the Japanese must have rivalled the Germans in their sense of humour back then!
Trent Hawkins

This would make sense if it was Marijuana cigarettes.
usbjiggerlighter

A revolutionary in cigarettes industry? Peacok and pegasus?
hmmm…by the way, what does the Japanese words of “ima” on pegasus mean here?
Peter O

This is a famous turn-of-the-century ad. Murai Bros was engaged in an advertising battle with competitor, Iwaya, which apparently led to increasingly outrageous imagery. Murai Bros marketed its cigarettes globally (thus the Chinese, English, and Japanese on the ad; this is pre-war so the Japanese is written out right to left).

My guess: a “night mare.” But if there were actually pegasi, they WOULD be more likely to have mammal (bat) wings than bird wings, no?
- MadMolecule
  
  Thanks, Peter O. I was wondering why the writing was right-to-left. What’s the leftmost katakana character? I’d expect ku, but it looks more like so to me.
  - Peter O
    
    I was confused at first too–I think it’s just a stylized KU.
IPFREELY

Joe Batequine.
Anonymous

Japanese speaker here. Japanese was written right to left before WW2. After WW2 they changed to the more common left to right.

More recent devotees of Japanese trash-culture would probably have written this pun as “Mayu” (if you know, you know).
Teller

The toothy grin is incomparable.
ZippySpincycle

As the comments on the livejournal entry note, it’s not merely a cigarette-smoking, bat-winged Pegasus…it’s a smiling, cigarette-smoking, bat-winged Pegasus!
michael holloway

I was smoking once, and for an instant I saw everything, all at once. Then the cigarette burnt my fingers and I forgot it all.

The duality of nature once again.

Then I got lung cancer.
ZippySpincycle

Also:

“We can’t stop here! This is BAT PEGASUS country!”
Nash Rambler

This is a product I can get behind far more easily than these wussie Unicorn Cigars I’ve been smoking.
Anonymous

Written on the horse’s stomach = “Umai” or “delicious”
Japanese for Horse = Uma
Japanese for Stomach = i

Just a theory, the bat wings rock their own sensibility
thequickbrownfox

Smoking a cigarette way up there in the stratosphere must be particularity injurious to the respiratory system.
Donald Petersen

F*ck unicorns. I’ve found my go-to chaser.

Thanks, Cory!
Anonymous

I do not even smoke but I want a box of these mothers to put up in my house.
knoxblox

Clearly, from the position of the pegasus against the world, it must be a post-coital cigarette.
voiceinthedistance

I’m a little disappointed that our smiling, smoking pegasus with Nicholas Cage forelock hair isn’t being ridden by a wild-eyed, bat out of hell peacock. The one on the package seems a little too sedate.

I also wonder how they managed, with such meticulous attention to detail, to spell cigarettes without an E on the side of the package?
Anonymous

When you sell cigarettes to horses, you don’t need to worry too much about spelling the word “cigarette” correctly on the box. Horses can’t read.
JIMWICh

I’d just like to say how honored I am to be here at the birth of a new internet meme. The anti-unicorn – the cigarette-smoking bat-winged horse!