"Extra LENGTH, Extra Taste, Extra Pleasure" in a cigar.

The sexiest commercials in the 60s were for Muriel Cigars, with Edie Adams sexing it up as much as possible while remaining cool and classy (with Stan Getz on the musical phallic symbols in this one):



Yes, Edie has just died, but she was 81. Let's not dwell on death. Let's reminisce. Let's talk about smoking and sex, commercials and comedy.

I remember seeing those cigar commercials when I was a kid, and I think it was through those commercials that every Baby Boomer learned what a phallic symbol was. My parents loved the sexy pop culture women of the Edie Adams type -- a subject I've discussed many times on this blog -- but invariably, the sight of Edie Adams would set my parents to talking about Ernie Kovacs. Oh, how they loved Ernie Kovacs, whom they'd watched from his earliest days when he was on local TV in Philadelphia and how terrible it was when he died.

Here's Edie Adams in an interview, talking about Kovacs. Love at first sight:

I remember him standing there with a hat and a mustache and a cigar. He looked like something out of a B-movie, evil personified or something.... I never saw anything that looked like that... I thought: I don't know what that is, but I want one of those.

Ernie did cigar ads too:



RIP, Edie and Ernie.