ostensibly this post was going to be a sort of (kind of) quasi standard one that i would do on the subject of cigarettes, look you see. well, yes, it more or less remains so, but not quite so how i had intended. things, as they are so prone to doing, change. but first the usual, standard disclaimer (or warning) in that smoking, in particular cigarettes, is really bad for you and you should either never ever start the habit or, if you are someone what does it (smokes) right now the jolly wise advice is to look at the ways and the help available to cease doing so.
so, to get to a vague point, not so long ago i happened to find a packet of what i quickly worked out as being a packet of cigarettes off of Iran. or Iranian cigarettes, if that is more better wording. as for the specifics of "find", they were literally sat on a street as i made my way through the world. this struck me as a rather happy result mostly for two (2) reasons. first would, of course, be the insanely high price of cigarettes in the UK, a matter which has been well documented here on this blog and elsewhere. second, and of likely more interest, the novelty factor of trying new cigarettes from a part of the world what i had never ever had them before. well, trying them was the intention.
for those of you who(m) are for whatever reason regulars here (thank you) and have an interest in my ongoing medical plight (much appreciated), it is so that the most recent appointment had the various medical professionals being quite insistent on smoking no longer being a thing for me. yes, i would say that one of them was quite cross about my abject lack of effort in this regard. i believe that they believe i have not taken onboard the whole "here is some new medication you need to take as we suspect your heart may be failing" statement (and subsequent prescription) they made. oh. so i have taken the decision to not actually try smoking there, because also the idea of just igniting and inhaling something i am not certain of the provenance of could be deemed very silly. doesn't prevent a look at them, mind, as such might be of (vague) interest to anyone fascinated by cigarettes of the world.
they are called, as you can likely ascertain in the unusually clear (as in "mode free") images what i have gone done used, Bahman. nope, no idea what that is in "Iranian", which some research suggests would be the Persian language. don't think you can make it out but along the side it does state that they are for sale within the Islamic Republic of Iran only, which likely means someone brought them all of this way and managed to drop them. unless one wishes to take a view that they were deliberately left for some hapless type (moi) to gather them up and give them a go.
generally i like to keep the tone here somewhat flippant, although the intention is humorous, light hearted and not to be taken too seriously. whimsical, i think, was the word that one of them "AI" things used to describe it, which was (inexplicably) quite flattering. now is not really the time to be such on the subject of Iran. yes, i (certainly) had some things in mind here to write as an attempt at being funny, but none of that seems (or feels) in any way appropriate. so no, no comments here beyond expressing a quasi hippy like idea that i really had thought by this point in human history we might have worked out away to just all get along.
moving a long and these are indeed a "soft pack" of cigarettes. can't really recall the last time i had a packet of this nature and i (irrationally) miss them. flimsy and of no discernible practical use would be the best way to describe soft pack, with a reality being one or two cigarettes in a packed of them are going to end up crushed if not snapped. yet they look really cool. perhaps, or maybe, this is all down to a consequence of how soft pack cigarettes were presented in American films and, when they could broadcast such, television shows. kind of interesting to observe such packaging is in use somewhere.
bit of a (genuine) sensitivity or "trigger" warning for some of you, as the next picture features a comparison of warning images and one of them is really quite graphic. not pleasant at all.
please look at the above warning thing before proceeding.
last warning, then. also a link to a set of links on my medical plight, somewhere in that post.
as you can see these Iranian cigarettes (or cigarettes from Iran) are most decidedly smaller than the standard size ones. it says that there are the usual 20 (twenty) in the packet, so they will be both shorter and thinner than the regulation "king size" ones.
regarding the obligatory warning image and they clearly taken a different approach to such things over in Iran. whilst i have (absolutely) no idea what the text says the image is clearly saying "stub it out", meaning quit rather than ensure cigarettes are extinguished when finished. substantially different from the "shock factor" on display for "western" cigarette warnings, with the dire (potential) medical consequences of smoking being given a stark showing.
i do (very much) appreciate that comparing one packet of cigarettes to another is not all that much use to some of you who are for some reason interested. further it is my understanding that "banana for scale" is something of a "thing" on the internet, but i just don't have access to as many of them as you might think. whereas i had absolutely no overt intention to write of U2 as often as i have thus far this year (2026), here you go with a range of "for scale" things.
going from (i think) left to right, that's the video (actual) of U2 live at red rocks (Under A Blood Red Sky) in a standard VHS box. then you have the first pressing CD of The Joshua Tree, which i have only now realised is a pre-barcode one so is likely a bit rare. rounding things out is the tape (actual) of the same album, just because. hopefully this lets you grasp, if you really wish to, the actual size of the packet of Iranian cigarettes i found. yes, true, i could have just got a ruler or tape measure out, but here we are, it's done this way now.
right, well, since i have declined the option of actually smoking one there is not (alas) all that much else i can tell you about these Iranian cigarettes. still, quite a nice (and unexpected) random find out there in the wild.
با هم خوب باشید!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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