Reality comes to the rescue of blogging again, even about advertising. So, first, if you didn’t share a huge guffaw over Disney’s application for a trademark on “Seal Team Six,” you missed a great chance to laugh at the company…again. And the company did this the day after the Abbottabad raid.
(Honestly, some days they’re worse than D Trump.)
Now you cigar smokers, current and reformed, will recognize the ad format here. It’s from the latest Thompson Cigar catalog and it’s touting Gurkha Special Operations Churchills. Since I’m certain that the catalog was in production before the US
The Gurkha Special Ops Gift Set takes Gurkha brand-owner K Hansotia’s support of our men and women in uniform to a whole new level. The Gurkha cigars are full bodied, but surprisingly sophisticated and employ a top-secret blend of well aged Dominican long fillers finished with a zesty Dominican wrapper.
On the one hand I’m charmed by the coincidence. On the other, Thompson (Since 1915) is presenting its own special blend of silliness, starting with the inclusion of a 12-inch long knife instead of the kukri, the traditional long knife of the Gurkhas and other Nepalese hill people.
Even considering the historical use of Gurkhas as a special unit of the British Army (to this day: the Royal Gurkha Rifles); and their fearsome fighting reputation; the last time I can recall any sort of special operations being undertaken by the Gurkhas was in Hollywood’s “King of the Khyber Rifles,” in 1953.
So it goes: marketing will find a way. This is what drives the creator-cartoonist of “Dilbert” nuts. Plus the cigars are good, insofar as I remember them. Anything is better than one more over-reaching Disney exploitation.
Remember what these monsters did to “Winnie the Pooh.”
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