Would you let your kid have candy cigarettes or a bubble pipe?

No no no no no no no. It makes me sick to see it. No offense if any of you have let your kids have it, but I hate hate hate hate hate to see it.

Have you see the bubble gum cigarettes that have powdered sugar in them, so when you blow into them a cloud that looks like smoke comes out? i love those ones…..
But as a parent i probably wouldnt let my son play with them, because i remember playing with them when i was a kid and ive been smoking since i was 13 also…

Fuck no I wouldn’t. If they want to play with something long and round they can play with a toy gun.

@jp- lmfao that sounded funny in a few different ways

My mother went nuts when I came home with candy cigarettes and forbade me to have them. It was some sort of huge horror for her. I liked the taste of them and would gladly have had the same candy in some other form. (I have no idea what they taste like now. This was the 1950s. They had the bubble gum cigarettes then, too, but they were inferior bubble gum, and I was particular about my bubble gum.)

Somewhere in my head I wondered if she were confused and didn’t understand that they were only candy. I knew the difference, of course: to me, pretending to puff on a minty white candy stick with a pink tip was no different from pretending to shoot a toy cowboy gun or pretending to swordfight with an old curtain rod. All I was able to say at the time was “They’re not real,” thinking that if she got it, she wouldn’t mind. The fact that she did still mind was evidence that she didn’t get it.

So I did what any kid would do. I sneaked them. Felt guilty but sneaked them anyway. And what I learned from that is that it is possible to put up with guilty feelings and not let them interfere with what I wanted to do.

After a while I lost my taste for them and moved on.

I don’t think they had any effect whatsoever on my decision to smoke (in college), or, later, to quit.

With my own kids, the question never came up. If they’d brought home candy cigarettes, I think I would have asked for one with some sort of nostalgic comment, snapped it in two, and munched on it as the candy it was, emphasizing by my behavior that it was just molded sugar and no big deal, certainly not grounds for a major moral battle.

Do the candy cigs have a warning on the side of the pack? Maybe, “Caution: use of this item may lead to destructive habits in youth and adulthood.”

I agree with Jeruba. I used to love those candy cigarettes! They were fun to munch on and pretend with. And I have never smoked nor do I intend to. Some things are just kids being kids, I feel people over analyze everything these days.

I’m with Jeruba and PnL, I loved eating these things as a kid. I also loved the ones made of bubble gum, and yes I did pretend to smoke them. I would not buy them for my boys but if they got a hold of them somehow I probably wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. As for bubble pipes, they are one of the coolest inventions EVER, I would totally let them use one of those. There are so few pipe smokers around that I’m pretty sure my kids wouldn’t make the connection.

Ha! I remember this very vividly – it was really fun to “blow smoke” and pretend like we were movie stars, and my mother freaked out and absolutely forbade us ever getting them again, because she said they encouraged smoking in young kids and that was just disgusting. She was very anti-smoking, our whole childhood, so it was very ironic to me when I found out from her sister that she used to love smoking, would smoke up in her room for hours and blow smoke rings…and then she met my dad, who loathed it, so she quit and he (and I) never knew….

What about the shredded gum passed off as chewing tobacco? Big League Chew was great in that we’d always try to cram as much of it in our mouths as we could, to the point that your jaw hurt trying to chew. Man, we did some dumb things as kids…

I’ve even seen shredded beef jerky in little plastic containers which look exactly like a deal of snuff. Stuff was called “jerky dip”

@SuperMouse, thanks for the link. The ones we used to get resembled Lucky Strike and Old Gold. Back then there were only about six brands of cigarettes anyway. Anybody know if these things taste the same as they used to? Maybe I’ll just go buy a pack of candy cigarettes and see if my kids give me hell.

Candy Cigarettes——candy sticks? probaly not, right? My mom LOVES those so I have those a lot.

They’re just for fun; I’d let my daughter have them. :)

Spend enough time talking to your kids about actual smoking; don’t deny them something harmless.

I didn’t even know either of those things still existed! I would not let them have them…wouldn’t let them have toy guns either (not even water guns!). I know, I’m a bit of a freak.

I remember the candy cigs very well. They tasted like wintergreen mint. I wouldn’t let my kids have them now, but I don’t have any problem with bubble pipes. There’s so many things out on the market where they can blow bubbles.

No. No toy guns, toy cigarettes, nor toy syringes. Damn it!

What about virgin daiquiri’s for the kiddies?

I LOVE virgin daquiries ever since I first tried it from the waitress’s request in Aruba…LOVE them!

My son had a bubble pipe…he got a little too excited about playing and wound up sucking in some of the bubbles…my husband and I laughed and said, “SEE! That is why you don’t smoke and you don’t inhale!”

We are both non-smokers – we didn’t go crazy when he received one as part of a gift set, but have been clear, since day one about the dangers of smoking.

I didn’t like the candy cigarettes when I was young, and we’ve never bought them for our children. Not for any true statement, more or less we aren’t big on candy. I generally don’t like things that represent smoking, but do see it as more of my responsibility to educate them on the perils of smoking and don’t just flat out ban candies for it.

We were NEVER allowed to have the Big League Chew Bubblegum! EVER! Of course you know that is what I wanted!!

Can you even find candy cigarettes anymore? All i ever see is those candy sticks and they dont have the red tip anymore.

Rather than forbidding the child to have those types of candies, teach them how real smoking can affect their health. For younger children, make it into a game – every time you finish one candy, cough like you’re going to die. That’ll get the message across.

And please, banning things just because they look like something else? Sounds like unnecessary censoring to me.