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`Global' cigarette brands with local flavor
Hundreds of cigarette packs covered the surface of a 1-meter by half-meter display table, attracting visitors at a recent exhibition for hobbyists in Kemang, South Jakarta
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Hundreds of cigarette packs covered the surface of a 1-meter by half-meter display table, attracting visitors at a recent exhibition for hobbyists in Kemang, South Jakarta.
Visitors taking a closer look at the table raised their eyebrows after realizing there was something peculiar about some of cigarette packs.
"I thought it was a pack of Marlboros, but no, the brand reads *Malioboro'," a young woman giggled.
Malioboro, the name of a famous shopping arcade in Yogyakarta, had been stylized to mimic the world-famous Marlboro logo.
Other visitors who noticed the parody broke into laughter, after realizing there were other "misspelled" brands on other cigarette packs they had thought they were familiar with.
"Many visitors were tricked with the physical appearance of some of the cigarette packs in our collection," Andreas, one of the exhibitors, told The Jakarta Post.
"Those packs mimic the pack designs and font styles of the popular cigarettes, with only slight differences, especially in the spelling."
Among the tricky brands were Blank, imitating Djarum's Black cigarettes, Start Milik (a play on Bentoel's Star Mild), and Gudang Ganda (mimicking Gudang Garam).
These "imitation" cigarette packs were among the thousands collected by members of the Indonesian Cigarette Collectors' Community.
Established in August last year, the community brings together collectors from all over the country to share information about cigarettes, and allows members to offer, sell or barter their collections through the Internet and meetings.
The community boasts more than 40 members, mostly from Jakarta, running the professional gamut from lawyers and government officials, to artists and lecturers.
Handoko, a community member, said he began collecting such cigarette packs two years ago, after finding a unique cigarette brand during a business trip to Wonogiri, Central Java.
"I'd never heard of the cigarette, *Eztu Mild', before," the 33-year-old businessman said.
Eztu sounds similar to the Javanese word estu, meaning truly in English. It seemed the cigarette maker wanted to blend the Javanese and English words to show that the cigarette was truly mild.
"It was sold at Rp 1,500 *12 US cents* per pack, and had no stamp from the excise office," Handoko said.
With most major cigarette brands currently retailing for more than Rp 5,000 per pack, the presence of such homemade brands has given low-income smokers more choices to smoke. The market share of the cigarettes continues to grow due to the long-standing absence of government supervision on the violation of intellectual property rights.
Among the most imitated cigarettes was H.M. Sampoerna's Dji Sam Soe (234), which had spawned the imitators 327, 239, 168, 567 and many more, according to Andreas.
Emirza Irsan, the community chairman, said the group's members had collected thousands of homemade cigarettes from across the country.
Despite their passion for hunting down and collecting cigarettes, Emirza said most of the members were non smokers.
"It's funny, more than 80 percent of us don't smoke," the 33-year-old said.
"Every cigarette pack I ever collected has a story behind it." (hwa)
