Jump to full article: Jakarta Post (id), 2009-03-09
Intro: Hundreds of cigarette packs covered the surface of a 1-meter by half-meter display table, attracting visitors at a recent exhibition for hobbyists in Kemang, South Jakarta.
Visitors taking a closer look at the table raised their eyebrows after realizing there was something peculiar about some of cigarette packs.
"I thought it was a pack of Marlboros, but no, the brand reads *Malioboro'," a young woman giggled.
Malioboro, the name of a famous shopping arcade in Yogyakarta, had been stylized to mimic the world-famous Marlboro logo.
Other visitors who noticed the parody broke into laughter, after realizing there were other "misspelled" brands on other cigarette packs they had thought they were familiar with.
"Many visitors were tricked with the physical appearance of some of the cigarette packs in our collection," Andreas, one of the exhibitors, told The Jakarta Post. . . .
Among the tricky brands were Blank, imitating Djarum's Black cigarettes, Start Milik (a play on Bentoel's Star Mild), and Gudang Ganda (mimicking Gudang Garam).
These "imitation" cigarette packs were among the thousands collected by members of the Indonesian Cigarette Collectors' Community.
Established in August last year, the community brings together collectors from all over the country to share information about cigarettes, and allows members to offer, sell or barter their collections through the Internet and meetings.
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Quotes from this article:
Every cigarette pack I ever collected has a story behind it.
Emirza Irsan, the Indonesian Cigarette Collectors' Community chairman, in a remarkable story on the community's large collection of trademark-infringing "imitation" packs.
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