Disneyland's Main Street Tobacco Shop (1955)

When Disneyland first opened in

1955

, the operation of the park was very different from how it looks and acts today and, as such, the early history there is peppered with many unusual and out-of-place offerings by today's standards. , but by far it is the only thing that definitely What stands out in the "They would never do that today" category has to be a small

tobacco

shop

that can be found near the front of the park, where visitors in the early days could buy Disneyland brand pipes, cigarettes, cigars and even loose

tobacco

. Right in the middle of Main Street now, obviously, the tobacco store was a true product of its time, not only in a time when many people still smoked, but also in one when it was so common to do so that not even there were designated smokers. sections at Disneyland still and everywhere except the attractions with clean rides to light up, which is always a little hard to imagine nowadays, just with Disney completely banning smoking in the parks a few years ago and introducing equally strict rules on their representation on screen even before that, but even for a seemingly anti-smoking company like Disney is and has historically been, they've definitely had a very interesting and storied relationship with tobacco, one that can perhaps be best told. through a smoky little store on Main Street. you C of life who did how they did it what in the world they did one of the first instances of the tobacco

shop

appearing anywhere actually comes from the first episode of the Disneyland TV show in 1954 this is a / 4 in up model Disneyland scale as you walk in the front door, past the train station, down the stairs, and past the band concert.

Park Straight Ahead is located in the heart of America, an old

main

street

that is a little hard to make out in the pictures, but you can barely see a sign that says tobacconist towards the front of Main Street and another with the word cigars on it. a few shops down, showing that some sort of smoking shop had been planned for that area of ​​the park practically from the beginning. If plans for where exactly it would be were still a bit up in the air, although the location further down the

street

was ultimately selected, plans for Main Street as a whole were completed a few months later and the store would quietly open with the rest of the park in

1955

as a small two-room store selling a variety of cigarettes and other smoking accessories such as pipes, ashtrays, and of course, complimentary Disneyland matchbooks with every purchase.

Now, the reason I say it opened quietly was because, unlike almost everything. Elsewhere on Main Street, the tobacco store didn't see any real Fan Fair, or even recognition from Disney at the time, and you'll be hard-pressed to find any mention of it in a TV ad, printed promotional material, anything that's part of it. . The reason the store is so obscure today is that there aren't many records of it and I think a big reason for that, besides the obvious, was the fact that it didn't have a major sponsor behind it to give it the same type of financing. and the prominence that the other things had because if you know anything about early Disneyland, the park was basically built on partnerships with these big companies, whether it was Timex Kodak Cocacola or something else, there were hardly any shops, restaurants or even attractions that they didn't do it.

I don't have any brands or companies attached to help finance it, which I find interesting because if ever there was an industry that has always been prolific when it comes to different and especially new forms of advertising, it was the tobacco companies that back in 1951 We are already investing millions of dollars in the relatively new realm of commercial television through various program promotions and sponsorships. How about a good night cigarette? Ricky, thanks Lucy H, nothing but the best, um, nothing but Philip Morris and as we mentioned before, in regards to the original sponsors of the park having the opportunity to partner with Disney or at least have their brand plastered on some place of a park that Walt Disney had been promoting on television for the past year was not something any marketing-savvy company was doing. pass up, especially if they had the money to spend like any of the big tobacco brands would have, so it's safe to assume it was a decision on Disney's part not to partner with one, probably for the obvious reason of at least not promoting so directly. smoking at a family theme park, you know you can get away with telling the kids to buy sugary sodas at the coke corner, but you might have a problem if Mickey tells you to go out and buy Lucky Strikes, it's light. up be happy be lucky it's time to light it up yeah it might be a little far they didn't they didn't want to do that quite interestingly although the tobacco shop actually had some fun external backgrounds behind it but not from any big company or brand.

I was doing some digging trying to figure out who actually operated the store originally, meaning who was literally stocking and managing it, since Disney wasn't the one who did that initially and the only name I could find was a c meerson which was mentioned as their Tobacco Nests in a 1956 Disneyland newsletter. Oh, and by the way, did you know that the store was originally called The Tobacco Nest for some reason before quickly becoming the Tobacco Nest? It is written normally. I had to look it up. Tobacco Nest is not a What I don't know is why they called it that.

Anyway, I couldn't find anything else about that C Meerson name upon closer inspection and it wasn't until I searched a random online auction that I found one of the signs they used When standing at the front of the store, they were talking how it was actually being sold on the property of Henry Fennen Brock, who apparently was the original owner for the first 5 years of the store, so I started looking for a little more information on this guy and I ended up at a place called pentrace decom which seems to be some kind of website for pen enthusiasts and hey, listen, you guys know me, I'm not judging, okay, we like pens and I end up getting a whole bio, all this history.

Actually, from this guy's life story, you know how he grew up as an orphan in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1920s and made a living by going to all the pawn shops to buy repairs and then resell the old pens. broken fountain pens. and now traveled around the country doing this before finally opening a liquor store in Detroit at the end of Prohibition which was subsequently closed due to claims of bad liquor and then traveling to Chicago where he sells painted turtles as war souvenirs in 1933. In the World's Fair who calls himself the Turtle King, has quite a theme and everything before finally finding himself in Los Angeles in 1936 and opening his own pen store and finally striking a deal with Parker Pen Company in 1938 to become a direct distributor of their pens. instead of having to sell the old ones, which would also lead him to designing and selling desks for Parker in the following years, but anyway fast forward to 1954 and Henry is reading an article in the Wall Street Journal and learns that this Walt Disney guy is making a theme park in Anaheim and hiring companies to be a part of it, so he presents the offer to Parker hoping they'll come on board, but they eventually pass, so Henry does what anyone would do in that situation and he just does it himself and signs up. not only to operate the pen shop on Main Street, but also the bizaar and Adventure Land, the tobacco shop and all the cigarette vending machines in the park and right now you're wondering if there were cigarette vending machines at Disneyland, oh yeah Of course, yes.

Actually, we were a couple again, guys. I must emphasize that you can smoke almost anywhere you want in this very different time from Disneyland, but the whole time I read this story by Fen and Brock I just think: what local authenticity only in An inspiring story of Main Street in America to a guy who would now run what was definitely going to be Walt Disney's favorite store on Main Street. Yeah, we'll talk about that later, although it's really a little strange how Main Street is coming back. The early days of the park were basically like a large shopping center with retail space where almost anyone could shop and simply be a tenant.

This was long before it became Main Street today. I mean, this was when they had Prime. Starbucks real estate is being taken over by a fake butcher shop in a place that literally sells locks. Well, they didn't know what they were doing back then and it makes it interesting to look at some of the old maps, site plans and things like that. that back then and when you see Main Street divided into blocks you know they mean it, it's not just one big connected shopping center owned by Disney like it is today, some of the stores are divided unevenly, like the tobacco shop, which You actually get a little more. space because the entrance to the cinema next door narrows towards the front, which is actually the reason the store has two shop windows, one with steps and a fake door that doesn't open to the right and then the real one on the side and while we are already in front of the store.

I should also mention the old Indian cigar shop that was across the street as well, of course, you know we should call it a Native American Cigar Shop if we want to be precise, but since that's what these have been known as colloquially. I'm only going to call them that because statues like these actually have a much larger presence in actual history, plus, wood carved Indians were something that actually originated in England in the early 17th century when tobacco was just starting out. To import a lot there from North America, of course, tobacco and the practice of tobacco use and rituals among Native Americans had already been going on since before the 15th century and since that association already existed in people's minds, The representation of an Indian was what was commonly used to symbolize tobacco shops in England in the same way that things like red, white and blue poles were used to represent barber shops or three golden balls to let you know it was a pawn shop. , something external that is easily identifiable and that still works if you can't.

Read or don't speak English. I also discovered that the reason many of these statues exist is because there was a large influx of out-of-work wooden carburetors in the late 19th century, hundreds since the new steamboats appeared. Being made from iron and steel rather than wood, there wasn't the same demand for people who could carve those large figureheads you see on the front of old wooden ships and you can definitely see the similarities between the two, you can see. note that it is the same. There is a type of craftsmanship behind both, although statues also came to America around the 1850s and that's why you see one on Main Street to give it that authentic turn-of-the-century countryside.

Main Street USA is aligned on both. Furthermore, the real-life versions of these statues had basically already been banned since around 1910, when sidewalk obstruction laws began to be introduced in the United States and most of the carvings they were using were simply discarded or rotted away with time because even in the 1950s the Indians in the tobacco shops were already considered a novelty since they had been absent for so long. Another reason and they probably thought it would have been cool to have one at Disneyland It's actually kind of funny because I mentioned before that there isn't much documentation of the tobacco shop at Disneyland because obviously that's not something you want to draw attention to.

You know, they're not taking pictures or selling postcards from that store. but one of the only reasons we have so many photos of the store is because people love taking photos with the Indian, since it's basically one of the only things you can pose with on Main Street. I should also note that there was a second of these figures in Frontier land, also near the trading post that was added a couple of years after the park opened in 1959. It appears to be virtually identical, except for a different colored cape. and it looks like it came out of the same fiberglass mold as the original, so I'm guessing this was just to provide another location for that photo shoot, maybe create less traffic jams on Main Street, who knows, I mean, you hate say it, but the tobacco shop has to be pretty. high traffic store in the past because I'm telling you there will be hell to pay if dad runs out of cigarettes on the highway again, we can't have it, you just can't have it now if we could zoom.

Let's leave that aside for a moment because this is a lot of things related to smoking and tobacco toDisneyland because surely by now they must have known that cigarettes were not good for you. I mean, there were studies going back to the 1920s and 40s suggesting that there was a possible link between smoking and lung cancer and by 1957 it was a scientific fact that smoking led to a higher incidence of lung cancer according to scientists at the US Public Health Service and the Surgeon General and, really, anyone who is using their brain. I can tell it's not good for you even before science confirms it, cough and mucus.

I mean, you're literally inhaling smoke on a regular basis, even the firefighters back then knew not to do that, just because of the increase in smoking at the time. It was really the kind of thing that could only have happened at that specific point in American history where you simultaneously not only had the ability to suddenly industrialize the manufacturer of millions and millions of cigarettes for the first time in history, but also You had the new media of radio and television now marketing the same tobacco to a whole new generation of consumers through advertising and product placement and when you look at some of the statistics on smoking from back then you realize that that's exactly what it is. what happened, you know it's very easy to forget that cigarette smoking used to be everywhere in the early days of television, in the ad breaks the sponsorship segments of which it is belir.

Of course, the straight commercials they had released with the dozens of animated jingles. I mean, it's almost miraculous that with TV Centric in the early years of Disneyland there weren't more weird connections to smoking in some way, even the guys that showed up in the parks. The opening day broadcast has a whole history of cigarette advertising, the only things Walt Disney ever advertised that way in the past were cars, very good American cars, nothing bad there and especially with all the borderline propaganda that the tobacco companies were trying to push back. In the '50s, it's no wonder why smoking was still so normalized in American culture that they wouldn't think twice about having a smoke shop in Disneyland.

Have you ever thought about this before? Chesterfield is the only cigarette in the country that gives you proof of the highest quality, two proofs that there are no adverse effects on the nose, throat and sinuses. I guess you can't really get any scams regarding lung cancer facts if you never bother to check your lungs for function and they come from a doctor who has been examining a group of Chesterfield smokers, as part of a program supervised by a responsible independent research laboratory, that the ears, nose, throat and accessory organs of all participating subjects examined by me were not adversely affected in the 6-month period by cigarette smoking, provided that crazy because I would think that the introduction of tar into the human lung would count as an adverse effect but hey, I'm not the doctor here and if I were the doctor here I'm sure I'd be smoking camels, what cigarette are you smoking, doctor? the best known brand was Camel Yes, surveys show that more doctors smoke Camel than any other cigarette Well, if all your doctors were jumping Bridges, would you go smoke a cigarette with them?

No, I don't think so, so yes, all of this is to say that there was some public awareness about how bad smoking was in the '50s, but thanks to Big Tobacco doing everything it could to undermine that fact, a lot of people still was unaware of the real dangers until well into the 1960s, but you know who knew smoking was It's not good for you at first, it's pretty funny that Disney because they actually put out an animated short in 1951 called Don't Smoking years before it opened the tobacco store at Disneyland, so you know, I guess you have to plead ignorance with all this for them, but to be fair, I was actually surprised by how harsh the anti-smoking animation is with Goofy's depiction of a tobacco addiction.

Nicks that really don't pull any punches or sugar coat it, it seems that the average man's smoking habit leaves its marks deeply imprinted on his environment with tobacco as a smoker. finds relaxation and contentment, well it's nice to see Goofy doing his best Walt Disney impression, he must have used it here as an animation reference like that deer in Bambi, ah, that cool inhale with coffee and toast, a quick exhale as he leaves to work, ah, the painkiller to face. the day job sorry, the calming thing the chain smoker has a strange desire to get rid of the habit and the goal of the short is basically to show how difficult it is to quit smoking once you start while we watch Goofy suffer.

Through all the cravings and inescapable withdrawals, trying to quit cold turkey will leave you with what I quit smoking for. I like to smoke. I'm not going to quit smoking. I really enjoy smoking. I love smoking. It is my hobby. I knew Goofy was going to relapse. I just saw it in the tobacconist the other day, the poor guy is never going to give up that substance in general, although the cartoon does a good job of showing what nicotine does once it gets you hooked and the whole thing works as a kind of Un midway anti-smoking PSA, which is actually a little ahead of its time since most of the famous anti-smoking stuff from that era didn't happen until the 1960s, but when you consider the fact that that the original voice actor of the fool Pinto Kig was himself a lifelong smoker who actually tried to promote awareness about the health risks of tobacco.

He even supported those early bills that would have required warning labels for cigarettes. Everything is starting to make a little more sense. This comes at a time when Congress was first pushing those old-fashioned cigarette smoking was perhaps dangerous for health labels in the early '60s, which, of course, you know the tobacco companies were pushing as hard as they did. They could and would not begin to see until 1965, the mid-1960s, it is also a very interesting era for the tobacco industry as a whole, as this was right when all the negative health implications of smoking began to become public. a much greater way.

For years, the biggest problem was the fact that science was not receiving the same publicity as propaganda. because when people publish studies and reports on how smoking kills you, that could, at best, end up in a magazine if it ever leaves academia, meanwhile you run all the tobacco companies out of the sun and fund tobacco programs. complete television only to continue smoking in your face. but once the Federal Trade Commission got involved after the surgeon general's report in 1964 and now there are various parts of the government calling attention to the situation, now it's suddenly on television on a massive scale and not only is it getting the information.

A glamorous representation of it here now is CBS News correspondent Harry Rezner. This is the showroom for the annual Convention of the National Tobacco Distributors Association and some of the products shown to these six thousand wholesalers last year in this country produced and distributed $8. billion dollars in tobacco products, there are something like a million and a half cigarette outlets and 150 million dollars in cigarette advertising, with the ethical and moral problems that this raises for all media outlets, especially television, this is the size of the economic building that would be threatened. for any substantial and permanent change in Americans' cigarette smoking habits meanwhile, at Disneyland, the original tobacco shop lease that was signed before the park's opening by Henry Fennen Brock would eventually expire after 5 years that the park was open in 1960 and with Disneyland now it is financially stable enough on its own to not need all those old small stops.

Disney decided not to renew, which was really for the best, I mean, considering that smoking was becoming more and more frowned upon by the public in this is really the perfect opportunity to retire the store and put an end to what was unfortunately considered a Kind of a necessity when regular smoking was so common and the tobacco shop at Disneyland would eventually close in 1960, wait a minute, guys. I've got something crossed out in my script here, let me double-check something, so it turns out the tobacco shop didn't close in the 1960s. I don't know why I thought I could have made as fair a guess as that.

We're talking about Disneyland, all bets are off and it looks like Disney took over the store after the initial lease expired because there are no other names coming up as owner or operator after Fenn and Brock, except maybe the elusive C meerson and I still have no idea who that guy is by the way look in fact the store was operating so hard in the late 60's that when they were putting together plans for Disney World in Florida they secured that Magic Kingdom It also has its own tobacco shop now located across Main Street, closer to the Park Castle rather than the

main

gate.

This version of the store somehow manages to be even darker than the original one at Disneyland because I don't think we have any photos of the inside of this one and only a few exist of the outside and the sign that was in front of it, but as you can probably Guess, we do have a photo of the Indian. People love taking a photo with these guys, which itself was another duplicate of the original that also had its own counterpart in the land of Park's Frontier. Now one of the most interesting differences between the two stores was the only thing they sold because it was the first tobacco store.

California mainly traded in pipes that were produced elsewhere and sold only at Disneyland and if you were looking for a souvenir to smoke specifically at the Disney park in the 1950s, you would really only end up with something basic, probably just a small ear of corn. pipe that says Disneyland maybe one of the bags or cans that also have the name on them or if you were really looking to splurge you could even get one of the park's official lighters for a shocking price and guys get ready you're going to I love this a dollar for dollar.

What am I made of money here? Whats Next? You are going to ask me more than 15 cents to buy an ice cream. I mean, come on, oh, Walt, you know we actually come on. to talk about you in a minute, stay calm, but when the Magic Kingdom Shop opened during Disney World's first run as a resort, you already knew the heyday of the entire Kingdom era of vacations, the concept of a Disney brand. Souvenir was already in full swing, meaning we have many different types of pipes with Walt Disney World stamped on them and cigar boxes with that logo printed on the wrappers, even custom Disney World cigarettes were on sale now and really no I don't know where I would be without, once again, internet hobbyists giving me so much information while researching a dark story like this, because thanks to online pipe collectors like these guys, we can now have a complete montage of items that you would never see in a million years.

It will be sold today, so thank you tobacco enthusiasts, this one's for you guys, come on, come on, we've got it all at the Magic Kingdom tobacco shop. We have Briwood pipes, Chartin pipes, French pipes, pipes that say Walt Disney World, pipes that just have little Mickey ears on them. those smooth pipes, sturdy pipes, even the pipes represent when you finally get tired of your pipe and you just have to put it down, but we also have handmade cigars from Disney World that were proudly made by Cuban artisans and wait a minute, these are legal? Cuban, is it legal if you get the seeds from Cuba and grow them in Tampa?

I don't know, but anyway it's a beautiful cigar box and I'm not just saying that because of the 70's artwork, oh my goodness, these cigars. Did you get them at Disney World? Oh no. I just directed my inquiry to the tobacconist on Main Street and he shipped it with no problems and don't forget this whole brand also spread to Disneyland where they started getting some of the newer 70's merchandise with a few different lighters and pipes for pair it with that classic special blend of loose tobacco and don't worry, it's only mildly aromatic, so you won't really bother anyone when you're standing in line to see Dumbo.

For the rest of the 1970s, though both the tobacco stores at Disneyland and Disney World continued to operate without any problems, meanwhile, back in the real world, the tobacco industry was taking its first big hit the same year. when Magic Kingdom first opened in 1971 when cigarette advertisements were finally completely banned from being shown on television.This is the last half hour that it is legal to sell cigarettes on radio or television in the United States. It marks, as we like to say, the end of an era that has been a long ERA. This, of course, is the result of a nearly decade-long battle between the federal government and Big Tobacco, the latter of which would probably have been completely fine continuing to misrepresent the truth about smoking for another 20 years had it not been instituted the ban and I could say that I would be close to 100% confident because once they were banned from advertising in the United States, they immediately started making commercials for foreign markets like Japan.

Ah yes, our two biggest American exports, Disneyland and cigarette commercials. I tell you we were that close. to not having cigarette ads from the 80s so close to being deprived of an entire tobacco-ridden vaporwave paradise and really, where would we be without it? Oh, and speaking of the Japanese, we can't forget that they also have their own version of Magic Kingdom. There in the early '80s, their version of Main Street is now designed a little differently than those in Florida or Anaheim and does not feature any of the old tobacco shops from either park and instead simply sold discreetly cigarettes that were hidden behind the counter at several other stores if you asked for them, probably just because pipe smoking historically didn't have the same cultural significance in Japan as it does in America, however, that didn't stop them from having their own, that's true .

You guessed it, this time it was an Indian cigar store with only one of them located in their version of the borderland called western land, but it wouldn't be long before parks in America ended up following Japan's lead because in 1985 the second tobacco store to open in Florida was permanently closed and the only place to get cigarettes in Magic Kingdom was across the street from the original location in the market where they were now sold in the same counter-less manner as the stores. in Japan and the wooden statue that stood in front of the old location was also moved to reflect that change, but eventually cigarette sales were removed entirely from the Magic Kingdom in the late 1980s and instead it was ordered to visitors to buy them at one of the resorts or some other off-property location, surprisingly, although the Disneyland one continued to operate without changing locations for the rest of the 1980s and you can even see it in some of the old planning videos. on vacation at that time.

Quaint shops of all kinds could be found throughout Disneyland. It's fun to look for memories. No, no, no, no, honey, not those memories. a little mini toy or something, eventually the Disneyland tobacco shop closed its doors in 1990, where it subsequently became a store called Great American Pastime which, interestingly, actually sold real sports memorabilia, such as caps, baseball jerseys, a Lots of different collectible items. and even Muhammad Ali's boxing shorts at one point, oh man, these trunks are my favorite Disneyland souvenir before that replacement store finally closed in 1999, when it became the 20th Century Music company that primarily sold DVDs and Disney CDs and thus, the main one from Disneyland.

Street loses a little more of its character, you hate to see it in many cases like this, although I wish I could say that the Florida store suffered a better fate, but eventually became a Gibson-sponsored store that sold gift cards after the tobacco store moved. and then became a full bookstore under him in 1989 before it also became a sports store in 1995 selling sports clothing and with that all the tobacco shops in all the Disney parks disappeared, but this one was not the end of smoking. It's not far from that, because in 1999 the Park Institute adopted a new policy that, for the first time since its opening, visitors would now only be allowed to smoke in one of the few designated smoking areas, which have been moving a little bit over the years, but from what I've seen on old maps it looks like there was one towards the end of Main Street, one in Frontierland next to Big Thunder, one next to the Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square, and also one that was added a little later near mind and no, in case you were wondering, there is still no smoking allowed inside or on any of the attractions, which had actually already been the case since the park first opened in the days of Walt Disney, I guess, unless you're the king of Nepal, in which case it seems like it's okay to smoke.

I don't know, but you definitely can't smoke on the gondolas. Well, guys, even Obama had to learn that lesson the hard way. You could still hang out in the park, so I went into the gondolas and I'm embarrassed to say this so close to yours, young people, but some of us were smoking in the goddess, well, no, these were cigarettes. People are called Zaza, terrible thing, uh, they kill. I stop, wow, this shows that even a man kicked out of a Disney park for smoking on rides can one day be an attraction. I mean, this place is really magical, but you know, what I remember was at the end.

They said you'll have to leave sir for breaking the rules of the Magic Kingdom but you can come back at any time which I thought well it was nice of them anyway those are my memories of Disneyland and yes I could say it real quick , despite being a few years away from everything, still being able to smoke in the Parks, it's still pretty wild to see some of these old packs from the smoking sections they had, it has a kind of obvious feeling to it. For lack of a better word, things like this always seem to fade from public memory pretty quickly, so seeing people smoking at Disneyland in these photos, especially in the 2000s, can't help but feel pretty crazy. days, even the idea of ​​a themed sign at the Disney park saying you can smoke here, you know, a tobacco warning label, but at the Disney fountain, oh, tobacco smoke is known to cause cancer, birth defects yeah I know Disneyland okay you guys are known to cause Cancer for God's sake I don't want to hear it you have the exact same sign out front but stuff like that or even the iconic Disney trash can World, but with an ashtray on it, that's the kind of thing that just doesn't work.

They don't really exist anymore and it's very strange to see it at least in the US parks because all the different smoking cultures around the world come into play heavily with Disney as well. A good example of that was back in 2008, when they first tried adding smoking. sections to Disneyland Paris in an attempt to curb some of the rampant cigarette use that had been going on there since it opened and the reason I say I tried was because most people just didn't follow the rule and continued smoking as if It was 1955 or something like that. I actually made a really funny video in 2009 called Disneyland Paris, finding the smoking section and it's just a compilation of people blatantly smoking everywhere, they don't give a damn, okay, these guys, although I will say that in more recent years it seems There has been an effort to enforce that rule a little more, since even there smoking has become a little more unfashionable, but that's nothing compared to Tokyo.

Yes, I mentioned earlier about the men who don't actually display cigarettes in any of the stores. or even sell them openly unless you request it, but they take that kind of thinking even further by having almost all of their smoking areas very far away from other visitors on these long secluded roads or even go as far as to hide all their smoking areas. in these special indoor smoking rooms, where everyone stays inside thinking about these things, which is actually something else, and in true Tokyo Disneyland style, they all have some level of theme or decor and hey , you can say what you want. about Japan, but I'll tell you this right now, none of our smoking sections have Mickeys hidden in them.

Clearly we are the ones doing something wrong, actually as far as America is concerned these days we don't even have smoking sections. of the Disney parks since they implemented the total ban in May 2019, some major changes are coming to Disneyland related to smoking and strollers starting May 1 smoking will be banned inside Disneyland Disney California Adventure and Downtown Disney this new gang Every single smoking section inside the parks was officially removed, now they are all being relocated right outside the main gates of each of them and practically overnight all those old smoking area signs from Disney disappeared and new no-smoking signs were put up in their place, the band also spread to Disney World, of course, where it definitely felt a lot more than on the other coast and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a Policy like that works much better in much smaller, walkable areas.

Disneyland park and it does it in a place like Epcot where you could easily be 15 or 20 minutes away from leaving there at any point. I mean, just look at the smoking sections on the map before and after the band, do you have any ideas? How far will I have to walk now that I'm at the snack stand here and I'm craving a refreshing smoke to go with my refreshing Coca-Cola? I mean, it's a long walk for someone who's already pretty short of breath. It's disgusting that a park would make me smoke when they were the ones used to sell tobacco products.

Oh yes, that's right, Epcot. I know you're still weird. You won't get away with this, your honor, don't make me laugh, but. Really, a full band like this has been a long time coming, considering the fact that modern Disney as a company has been publicly anti-smoking since the mid-2000s, when CEO Bob Iger officially announced that smoking would no longer be depicted in the movies. Disney brands. movies, something that has since been expanded to also include movies produced by them since 2015 and actually speaks to where the parks are as a priority for Disney in general because there are still notable attractions that feature smoking in some form today and others.

That existed fine until a few years ago despite its seemingly tough stance on the issue, but the company is definitely doing its best to get rid of it everywhere in its history whether you want it or not, because you can go to YouTube right now . and I find many examples of them working to edit or cover up any depiction of smoking in reissues of their older material - even that silly short about smoking we were watching earlier is basically non-existent outside of internet reloads nowadays and subtle drafts like that It's a very common thing in their history that unfortunately still happens today, even in the age of streaming and digital media, and even Uncle Walt himself isn't sure that Disney was caught a few years ago Photoshopping the cigarettes he I had in my hands and photos of them. around the park, which caused quite a stir online at the time, since removing a real man from a photo isn't exactly the same as simply removing it from a fool in a cartoon, you're now leaning more into the realm of historical revisionism. and regardless of the actual intention, make it look like you have something to hide, which was definitely the way most people took it because if there's one thing we should all know about Walt Disney it's that he definitely smoked cigarettes and if there's anything What I know about Walt Disney is that he definitely smokes cigarettes at Disneyland.

I mean, if we can quickly address the elephant in the room, who do you think was the cigar shop for Roy CV Wood? No, this guy loved that place, he was there the whole time. time and I'm sorry guys, but there isn't enough airbrush tool in the world to try to cover up all the cigarettes in this guy's old photos, it's going to take a lot more than some xacto knives and a Sharpie to try to cover all of this up. the record is fine, but if I could be serious for a second, you know, end this with an actual point instead of just laughing about cigarettes at Disneyland trying to hide or leave out any piece of History like this that might being a little nasty is exactly the wrong approach for a company like Disney to take, especially if they claim to be as anti-smoking as they are, because I seriously ask you what would be the most effective message you would send as Disney if you were trying to keep Young. quit smoking, would it really be taking the time to acknowledge the fact that your company's beloved founder died years early due to something that even he admitted was a bad habit and actually remembering the senselessness of that loss by imagining all the things thathe specifically could use that extra time, is it better to do it or is it better to just cover up all the evidence of everything smoking related that he and the company have ever done and never talk about it to the point that some guy on YouTube now knows more about the company's own history with tobacco than the CEO probably knows oh early Bob, you really knew about the Magic Kingdom tobacconist, you really knew about that before my video, okay, right, I believe it and it's the same with Disneyland's tobacco shop.

In itself, the fact that this actually exists just gives you a general idea of ​​how different smoking was viewed in American culture back then and now, the widespread normalization of something that was literally carcinogenic could still be so widespread that it is slipped. road to Disneyland and left behind a whole messy legacy that we're really only now beginning to clean up let alone talk about, but I think we can all be glad to be away from the days and social circumstances that spawned the tobacconist. For starters, even if life is a little less complicated without those old cigarettes, thank you, thank you, it's always a pleasure to help a friend in need, Jackson, bye.