For the younger ones here, this may be the first time they have ever seen a cigarette vending machine. I can remember when I was in Third Grade and my buddy was in Fourth Grade. He had already decided he was going to be a smoker. He would save up his quarters until haircut day. Then slip out of the barber shop to a diner next door to buy as many packs of cigarettes as he had quarters. He hid them in his jacket.
I even remember beer vending machines though not as ubiquitous as cigarette machines.
They still had some in some of the old barracks I visited during my stint. In early 2000’s. lol.
My wife and I spent 2 weeks in southwestern Germany (Bavaria/Austria) last fall.
Cigarette machines and beer vending machines were pretty common.
I remember these. They were always in motel lobbies, pool halls/bars and some restaurants.
My former crew chief told me stories of him smoking outside on the picnic tables at school between class periods. I don't personally remember kids smoking at school but kids I went to school with did smoke.
I grew up with a smoker in the house but never was interested in taking up the habit. Still, to this day, I have not smoked anything, ever.
Funny story though, I grew up hearing that tattoos were a dumb idea and anyone who got one was an idiot. My mom always said, "do what you want with your body but please don't smoke."
Jump forward quite a few years and I got my first tattoo. I borrowed an empty pack of cigarettes from my crew chief and decided to break the news of my first tattoo to my mom, at her work. I walked into her office, I can see it clearly in my mind today. I said, "I have something to tell you" and I tossed the empty pack of cigarettes on her desk and said "I smoke". She responded with "oh no". I said, "no, I don't smoke but I did get a tattoo".
She said, "but you don't smoke?" Haha
She then asked if she could see my tattoo and said my dad was going to hate it.
I think that they were effectively outlawed when laws about selling cigarettes to minors became a thing, or at least when they started to be enforced.
The other part is that cigarettes have become so expensive that you would have to feed an entire roll of quarters into them! Seriously, the quarters part could have been tackled, but the value of the smokes in the machine just made them too expensive to be left unattended.
I went to HS from '79-'83. We were allowed to smoke on the bleachers along the running track and they converted a bathroom into a smoking lounge for us students to use on rainy days.
I remember being 6 years old and given a couple bucks to go get a pack of cigarettes out of one of those machines in a bar. The bar was several blocks away from the house. Made that trek more than once. This was the early 80's
in my young hooligan days, I made a small mint off of the german version of these things. They were a little simpler with the pack basically just stacked on top of each other and usually mounted along the sidewalk. If the cost for a pack was something other than an even mark, the change was simply placed on top of the of the pack so it would drop with the smokes. My little band of young entrepreneurs discovered that if you shook the machine, the pfennigs would just fall out.
My other gig was to sell rationed US smokes to the locals. Man I miss the 70's cold war Germany.
