[squiggleblaz]

They can include the brand name in Australia, but the format is precisely specified including valid fonts and sizes. Names are also regulated so they can't imply a health claim (like afaik "Mild").

It would be instructive to do an image search for "Australian cigarette packaging" if you want to see exactly what they look like. I gather a lot of smokers like to use boxes to put their cigarette boxes in so they don't have to see them, but I don't know any smokers so that's just hearsay.

[rmm]

As an Aussie smoker with friends who also smoke, the packaging makes absolutely no difference to us. It was an oddity when it happened, everyone spent time comparing which photos were the most disgusting and now its just background.

Also people buy smokes they like the taste of, the packaging/brand had/has no effect on what people buy.

[KozmoNau7]

But is that not simply the perspective of someone who has already smoked for a number of years, and who doesn't really care about the presentation?

As far as I understood, the point was to make the packaging less enticing to potential new customers?

[KozmoNau7]

I'd love to see plain packaging for everything. Sell your products on their actual merits, not just on whatever flashy colors you put on the packaging that gets discarded anyway.

[squiggleblaz]

Yes I think it's funny. Sometimes you'll see a new product on the shelf and then six months or a year later they'll've changed the packaging since the first one didn't work well enough. I guess those must be well funded products owned by big food companies.

And advertising that merely told you they have a product rather than showing unlikely circumstances - or at least had to depict the likely uses of the product. Car ads that sit in traffic rather than zooming through the city. Coke drinkers that struggle to stay awake in the office rather than take a ride in Santa's sleigh in a winter wonderland.

Fake news move over. You've already been outdone.