Look, I don't smoke. It smells terrible, it's bad for you, and if you need me to tell you, you're probably too young for this website. Even so, I will readily admit that lighters have lost some sauce recently. What happened to all the sick lighters shaped like bullets or mermaids or weird steampunk contraptions?
Vintage lighter collector Jad, who operates the Histoire d'une Flamme project on YouTube, doesn't exactly answer this question, but he does make me ask it much more insistently. The early 20th century lighters he shows off look horribly inefficient, difficult to use, and probably dangerous in some cases (he does wear flameproof gloves for a reason), but as ever, the rule of cool reigns supreme.
If nothing else, it's an excellent time capsule of one specific part of society. The decline of lighters is probably indicative of a decline in smoking, which is pretty clearly and unambiguously a good thing, but sometimes I yearn to carry around a spontaneously combusting billiard ball-shaped lighter in my pocket all the same.
Previously: Zippo lighter always drying out? I found three solutions.
