How Television First Showed "the Big O" (There, That Got Your Attention)

Tchaikovsky Sounds Funny

“Have a smoke and reach the big O, have a smoke and reach the big O.”
Now, before you think that means what you think it means, let me reassure you, yes, that does mean what you think it means. Of course, it isn’t supposed to mean that, except that it really does. Got that?
That is an actual slogan (I may have the wording slightly off: due to memory loss and fear of copyright infringement) for one of the early cigarette commercials broadcast on television. Of course, the big O meant Oasis cigarettes. And, the insinuation was just enough so the television censors wouldn’t know what was meant, but the rest of the public did.
The subliminal message was clear: smoke a cigarette and have an orgasm.
See, that’s what’s wrong with young people today. You young ones smoke after sex. In the good old days, people smoked to have sex. Of course, if you smoked after having sex from smoking a cigarette, you were trapped in an endless stream of orgasms. “No more honey, I’ve already smoked six cigarettes this night alone.” That’s why the Sixties generation turned to drugs: to attempt to slow the endless chain of cigarette smoking.
I don’t smoke (wait, maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that at this point. Not cool looking.) Yet, I just wanted to let you know that, yes, the cigarette industry used sex to get people addicted to their product. They weren’t the first industry to do that, and they won’t be the last. Yet, after all those advertisements that cigarettes make you youthful, active, and sexy, find someone who has been smoking the fast 40 or 50 years, and ask them how youthful, active, and sexy cigarettes have made them feel.