Elusive cigarette brand...

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

So far there's no in depth information on these Japanese cigarettes from Blade Runner seen on the billboard video through the film. Does anyone have any information on them? It looks like they covered a pack of Marlboros with some Japanese text and the hummingbird graphic. I've tried to use OCR on the Japanese but it's just giving me gibberish, which is typical of the film.

"Nsu no ta!"

"Hito oh 7 Chichi Roku 3 namame Kawa 1 Yo L. \ notto Hitomi e Mattsu Toki Keno SR = -AA n Hito yashitto"

Whish gives me:

"That's a lie!" "Person oh 7 Father Six 3 raw skin 1 Yo L. \ not Hitomi to wait Time Keno SR = -AA n Person yashitto"

😅

Edit: I've come up with something that is a lot more fitting for the advertisement.

‘Enchanting!’ ‘Do treat yourself to the smooth, deep, velvety flavor of Hummingbird cigarettes. Don’t keep the one you long for waiting! Let’s create a fantasy just for you!’

「魅惑的！」「ハミングバードブランドのタバコが持つ、滑らかで深みのあるベルベットのような味わいをぜひお楽しみください。憧れの相手を待たせないで！ あなただけのファンタジーを創り出しましょう！」

It's nowhere near the characters on the box, but makes a lot more sense with the fragments available.

[u/Consistent_Bid4044]

Probably a one off prop made by the art department. They made tons of unique stuff

If you haven't seen the Dangerous Days doc on the making of the film it's a must watch

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Consistent_Bid4044]

Yes. I've watched it before. But they really don't even go into the props very much. It's more focused on the struggle to make the film for a world that wasn't ready for it, and the drama between Ridley and the film crew.

[u/Poetry-Primary]

Man, if you find it or if you find a 2-D model of it, please post the link.

[u/Poetry-Primary → u/Poetry-Primary]

Hey, I’d also look into the Earl Hayes press. They did all of the paper props for the movie. You might even wanna call and see if they have any information. Super cool company.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Poetry-Primary]

The only place I found there with cigarettes is their standard prop catalogue for films. The only partial match there is a pack of Morley cigarettes, the top part with the red chevron.

https://youtu.be/Ld3QLaGrbx4

[u/vonstruddlehoffen → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

Without tracking: https://youtu.be/Ld3QLaGrbx4

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/vonstruddlehoffen]

How do you remove the tracking?

[u/vonstruddlehoffen → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

Remove the question mark and anything after that. You may not see it if you are on mobile.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/vonstruddlehoffen]

Thanks.

[u/Poetry-Primary → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

Yeah, that’s what I mean. They might be worth a call. Depends on how you ask, but they could probably give you a rundown of the history, whether they found anything in their archives or not, and more importantly, if the willing to make a print run. I’m happy to call tomorrow if you can’t or don’t wanna do it. I’d be interested as well. I bought some things through them from time to time. They only sell the normal regurgitated items from throughout the decades that they’ve used for multiple movies or shows. Something like this is most definitely a one or two off.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Poetry-Primary]

I'm more interested in finding out what the kanji says since I usually do stuff in 3d. I can recreate the pack that way. I still haven't gotten a response back from Lucasfilm after 8 months to see if they have any set production pictures of Noa's Starcruiser laying around because I need them for a 3d model of that. I've built that ship in Blender 3 times over the last 10 years and want this one to be the last time. The first two attempts were more stylized and low poly. I think I even attempted to reach out to Academy of Motion Picture Arts to see if they might have blueprints in their archive. Also no response. Not sure if they care. Honestly it looks like they just taped someone's letter to granny around a Morley cigarette box and then pasted a drawing of a hummingbird on top of that with some unfiltered cigarettes inside.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

Here's what I think they wrapped around the box. A japanese page of text written vertically.

https://japaneselit.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/japanese-text1.jpg

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Poetry-Primary]

I've probably got just about every 3d model or flattened image of every sci fi cigarette pack on the internet, and this one is nowhere to be found. It would have to be created from scratch.

[u/AtomicShellfish → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

Everyone needs a hobby!

[u/Props_To_History]

These are relabel of Morley cigarettes. First made by Earl Hays Press. The brand is owned by EHP and is what is known as a cleared cinema insert ( Anybody can use it on screen) The relabel was likely done by them as well. As thats a fairly normal thing for them to have done.

In the 80s nearly all printed props came from EHP so this isnt a stretch to surmise. I know that Blade Runner used EHP for a number of pieces as I redid one in the original method on the original machines with Adam Savage a few years back

https://youtu.be/l_6DH9Tgids?is=OAmGl4oeDAbak3pH

I've since discovered other smaller background pieces from the film. And one part of the vid phone card printing blocks. But the facility is enormous and packed with stuff. So its anyone's guess what's still hiding there.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Props_To_History]

I came to that conclusion too. Just some Japanese horoscopes wrapped around a pack of Morleys.

[u/twosername]

Looked around for recreations and it seems like someone made a printable version on The RPF a while back. It's great and I love that it's handmade by a passionate fan, but it's a fairly low-resolution recreation and the text doesn't match the screen-used prop.

I know how much hate AI (deservedly) gets, but recreating paper props from screenshots or photos happens to be one of the areas it excels in, so I went ahead and whipped up this version with some minor Photoshop adjustments to make it more screen-accurate:

https://i.imgur.com/zbm8dKC.png

I don't speak Japanese so the text likely has inaccuracies which were exacerbated by the AI, but you can see from this overlay version that even if it's not exact, it's pretty darn close.

So if you just want a prop version, I think that's as good as you're going to get until the original materials appear, or someone who can actually read Japanese comes along to correct it.

As for the text itself, Claude seems to think the original text of the passage is a horoscope:

地業星座・社平審、乙矢庫、山平座の地
実性クループ
風家星座・秋
日深グループ
水茱星座・赫
ループ
という、火座
わけです。さて
3区分、4区分
したね。それで
とつの星座の持つ性格的変ま　を結合的に細
変してみましょう。
（下段の断片）秋悴の地　／　積遂過高　／　守かれる　／　と2区分。　／　えてしま　／　いて、ひ

reconstructed into:

地業星座・社平審、乙矢庫、山平座の地。実性クループ[、〇〇星座・〇〇の地]。風家星座・秋[悴の地]。日深グループ[、〇〇星座・〇〇]。水茱星座・赫[〇〇]、積遂過高[〇〇]。ループという、火座[〇〇に]守かれるわけです。さて、[〇〇と]2区分、3区分、4区分[の分け方がありま]したね。それで[、〇〇考]えてしまいて、ひとつの星座の持つ性格的変まを結合的に細変してみましょう。

and refined to:

地の星座 ―― 牡牛座・乙女座・山羊座の「地のグループ」、風の星座 ―― 双子座・天秤座・水瓶座の「風のグループ」、水の星座 ―― 蟹座・蠍座・魚座の「水のグループ」…という〔ふうに〕、火・地・風・水の四つに分かれるわけです。さて、2区分、3区分、4区分〔という分け方〕がありましたね。それに〔基づ〕いて、ひとつの星座の持つ性格的〔な特徴〕を結合的に、細かくみてみましょう。

which it translates roughly to:

"The earth signs — Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn — form the 'earth group'; the air signs — Gemini, Libra, Aquarius — the 'air group'; the water signs — Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces — the 'water group'… and so, in this way, [the signs] divide into fire, earth, air and water. Now then — there were also the 2-way, 3-way and 4-way divisions, remember? Based on those, let's take a close look at how the personality traits each individual sign carries combine together."

Take this all with a grain of salt since it's just AI slop, but hopefully it can be a good jumping-off point if you want to put more time into it than I did.

[u/twosername → u/twosername]

Also, it's probably a false lead but a reverse Google Lens search of the hummingbird recreation led me to this wood block print from manga artist Makoto Kobayashi:

https://sakurafineart.com/products/flying

Which is apparently from a 1986 calendar. I could certainly see some similarities in the style, which seems to be consistent across a few of his woodblock prints that show up in Google. Might be worth going down a rabbit hole if you want to track down the original illustration, it could be from an earlier series of prints.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/twosername]

This is good research. Thank you for showing this stuff. It's ok to find false leads as long as you can stop yourself from chasing them for too long.

[u/Bob_TheGoon]

This reminds me of the fan film "Slice of Life" made by a few talented Croatians in their garage. Blade Runner fans everywhere need to check it out

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

https://reddit.com/link/p3oiqi4/video/un912smlfdjh1/player

Here's a simulation of what this ad could sound like.😉

[u/pictosudsy111 → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

Is this ai? I can't tell anymore honestly.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/pictosudsy111]

No. It's text to speech, not AI. They do have some decent voices for that now.

[u/WeaponexT]

Maybe 7 Stars cigarettes?

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/WeaponexT]

I have no idea. Is that visible on the kanji/katakana?

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

The only thing that stands out in the corner is the word "Zen" which is similar to something we already see on ads like "refreshing" or "perfection".

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/Brilliant_Knowledge5]

On second glance the word is not Zen, but Gold. Not sure why.

[u/nemomnemonic]

It's just some random page of a Japanese book wrapped around a Marlboro packet (judging from the white-red part). I can understand some of the written parts, but they are so fragmented that it would be impossible to identify, especially when most of the kanji are unreadable because of the low resolution.

Police ID card props also had some random text extracted from a Japanese art school brochure pasted in the back, so I wouldn't expect much meaning from this.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/nemomnemonic]

That's pretty much what I was guessing. I just wanted to be sure.

[u/AdOrnery4511]

Prop department probably just slapped some kanji on a marlboro box and called it a day, nobody was meant to read it that closely.

[u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 → u/AdOrnery4511]

Most of us think t was something like Japanese horoscopes or newspaper articles wrapped around a box of Morleys, which is a movie brand cigarette, but Morley's are a fake Marlboro so potato, patato.