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Mustang

Mustang cigarette commercial.


This movie is part of the collection: UCSF Tobacco Industry Videos

Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: tobacco; cigarette; television; advertising; male

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Reviewer: OmnicronCeti - - September 29, 2010
Subject: Power of Suggestion Strongly at Play Here
Watched in conjunction with Marlboro commercials with the Marlboro Man as Cowboy wrangling wild horses this ad spot plays on the suggestion of wild horses and rugged men as portrayed by children's horse toys and workman's leather gloves. The toys are stylized muscular horses in action poses, shot in strange angles and a variety of settings in rapid sequence suggesting, in combination with the fast beat, punctuated music, untamable wild power.

No actual living horses are shown in this commercial. Several models of horses are shot in a action sequence where the horse busts out of a large ranch's horse stall, races down the road, through town, and back out into the wilderness. The voice over narrative is simple, punctuated and repetitive. The simple message is that like, wild horses, the flavor of MUSTANG cigarettes is so strong it can't be held back by the filter. In other words, it takes a real man to handle the horse's horse, a Mustang, and it takes a real man to handle Mustang cigarettes.

Filters were introduced prior to studies on health dangers of tar and nicotine from smoking tobacco, but became more prominent in the 1950s as more studies indicated lung cancer was strongly correlated with cigarette smoking. Tobacco industry advertising tended to promote the improvements in taste/flavor over health. This is emphasized in the voice over in this ad -- "flavor that comes on like....WILD HORSES."

From an advertising psychology perspective this ad is very successful. The psychological content works below the conscious mind, leaving the viewer perhaps puzzled by the obvious content, yet likely inclined to be moved at a subliminal level. Therefore, 5 stars. Well preserved visually and auditorly.

Reviewer: Zplomb - - August 30, 2009
Subject: You're ready for Mustangs!
I never even heard of this cigarette brand! Maybe it was a Marlburo knock-off. The commercial is kind of weird with close-ups of plastic toy horses. Still interesting for historical value.

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View more information at Legacy Tobacco Documents Library