Collection: Times Square

As part of JUUL’s launch in 2015, brightly colored 12-unit billboard display flashed images of attractive and fashionably casual young models smiling, joyously jumping, and kissing while enthusiastically vaping. While striking in still pictures, their youthful emphasis is most vividly depicted in animated gifs. Animated tobacco billboards in Times Square have a long history. A block long Camel Cigarette billboards (1941-1966) puffed impressive “smoke rings” made of steam followed by an illuminated Joe Camel (1989-1994), Marlboro, Winston, Kool and others. JUUL’s Times Square video advertisement was an eerily reminiscent digital version of this earlier period style of dynamic billboard. In 1999, major American tobacco companies agreed to halt outdoor billboards.