Coffinnails: Smoking Kills
“Coffinnails: Smoking Kills” playing cards highlighting the impact smoking has on life and health, 2004.
A no-holds barred pack of 52 cards and 3 jokers warning of the dire consequences of smoking. The copyright for this pack is attributed to Action Ideas Ltd., 2004, but the card box provides a web address for Coffinnails which states: “Warning slogans, and now images, are displayed on all cigarette, cigar and tobacco products in the UK. They are dull and unremarkable. So for Coffinnail we illustrated them ~ adding humour and bite ~ without holding back on the impact smoking has on life and health. Many of these slogans, such as "Protect children, do not make them breathe your smoke" will soon be embedded after only a few hours play using our cards. We have included the positives as well, such as the official help line for you to contact”. The cards have 4-corner indices with text running along all 4 edges and an image or cartoon in the centre. While the text and images are repeated on the court cards and pip cards of each suit, the aces have different messages. See the box►
Above: “Coffinnails: Smoking Kills” playing cards, ©Action Ideas Ltd, UK, 2004.
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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