Problem/Objective: Since the advent of commercial television, cigarette companies capitalized on the medium for selling cigarettes and the image of smoking. Since the advent of the web, there has been no publicly searchable repository highlighting a specific and substantial collection of cigarette advertisements until recently. Like the Richard Pollay Print Advertising Collection, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, in cooperation with Richard Pollay, has launched the Pollay TV ads collection features over 530 tobacco ads from the 1940s to the 1970s. This presentation will highlight this new online resource of tobacco commercials. The presentation will highlight a number of commercials that focused on health benefit claims of specific cigarette brands the brands that developed into the youth oriented brands, as well as the brand messages that failed.

Methods: This presentation will using several cigarette television commercials featured within the collection, as well as background information derived form the internal document collections of the tobacco industry as well as Professor Richard Pollay.

Results: From the ridiculous and the poorly conceived to blatant lies, these advertising messages were tragically vital to sale of cigarettes for decades. Most researchers and advocates are not aware of the value and impact that these commercials hold for the education of researchers and advocates to come.

Conclusions: This presentation will introduce tobacco control advocates to an accessible and free educational, entertaining, and motivational archive. The archive is free and commercials can be downloaded for presenations and other media.