The chronicle of Eger Tobacco Factory

The chosen company

What good this does us is another question, “burst out Ferenc Huszti (known familiarly as Fluszti Pap”) in a newspaper article written after Mr. Thoma’s visit. “What good can it do us when we are stuck out here in limbo, debarred from the possibility of ever purchasing a licence from Philip Morris by the malevolent attitude of American imperialism which seeks to exclude our country from the advantages of their system?” Yet it was only to be a matter of four brief years before Marlboro burst onto the scene, and the Eger factory workers certainly didn’t spend these years twiddling their thumbs. While the factory’s 600 workers were spending a chilly November weekend out in the vineyards hastily harvesting 70,000 kilos of grapes in a bid to come to the rescue of the poor Production Co-operative which had been hit by never-ending rain, a new product was being developed in the factory’s laboratories, in collaboration with the Tobacco Research Institute. They were experimenting with a new cigarette, very light, containing less than 1% of nicotine, which they wanted to introduce onto the market under the brand name Helikon. This cigarette represented the embodiment of the factory’s developmental endeavours. It was a modern-looking product, in quality and price falling between Golden Smart and Fecske, light and with a modern-style filter. Helikon was launched in February 1976 as an 85 mm long, light cigarette, low in nicotine, with a 22 mm acetate and carbon combination filter, priced at ten forints. With hindsight it is possible to see that Helikon appeared at precisely the most opportune moment, a fact which we can really appreciate today: Helikon has proved to be a competitive domestic product in the Eger factory’s pantheon. In 1976, however, there was as yet no real significance in the notion of whose product was whose, and which products were registered in whose name in the national list of patents and trade marks. Any factory could produce any product according to the decision of the trust management, provided that their technological capability made it possible for them to do so. Thus it was that such a thing existed as Eger-made Symphonia cigarettes or Pécs-made Fecske-s. In 1976, the year of Helikon’s appearance, filter cigarette consumption represented about 57% of the national total, and half of this 57%