Joined: 26 Aug 2010 Age: 69 Gender: Male Posts: 34,180 Location: temperate zone
16 Aug 2021, 8:11 pm
When I was a kid in the Sixties the metric system was very low profile in the US. Doesnt dominate even today, but it was even less used and less known about back then.
The first commerical product I remember being aware of...that was measured in metric units....that I was of it being that... was cigarettes.
Most American smokers were not aware that cigarettes made in millimeter units of length in the Sixties.
Regular non filter cigarettes are 70 mm long (like Camels, and Lucky Strikes), "King size"(which had become the normal size of most types of most brands) are 85 mm.
But in the late sixties Benson and Hedges came out with their "one hundreds" (100 millimeter cigarettes).
Their late Sixties ad blitz for their new "100's" was probably the first time not only my gradeschool self, but most American adults were forced to think about the Metric system!
Then there was a short lived brand called "101" that was just one "silly millimeter longer" than the B+H competition. That brand apparently died out (though their jingle lives on in my head:"silly millimeter longer, one-oh-ones", but the ladies' brand "Virginia Slims", which came later in the Seventies is still going strong, and it's all of 120 millimeters long.
Gosh. As a gradeschool kid back then I was unaware of the sexual innuendo in those TV ads!
Joined: 13 Jan 2018 Age: 60 Gender: Male Posts: 2,142 Location: California
18 Aug 2021, 4:05 pm
'I' for Information on 'Consumer Products Available in Metric Sizes.' LINK might add "grist to the mill" on specific products made to Metric standards.
16 Aug 2021, 4:44 pm
