Twin Peaks Prop – Recreating Metropolitan Cigarettes

During my last viewing of Twin Peaks, I was really curious about what brand of cigarettes were being smoked by Donna Hayward as she chatted with Maddy Ferguson in the Double R Diner. Here’s a look at how I identified this prop and made replicas for my ever-growing prop collection.

RESEARCHING THE SMOKES

After zooming in on a screen shot, I noticed Donna’s cigarettes are from a red pack of Metropolitan brand cigarettes. I’ve never heard of such a brand.

I also noticed Audrey Horne was smoking the same brand when she discusses algebra with Donna in the ladies’ room of Twin Peaks High School.

Google searches came up empty (except for mentions of it in this blog), so figured they were made just for the world of Twin Peaks by the prop department. Working from blurry screen shots, I decided to recreate this brand of cigarettes to add to my collection of prop replicas.

TAKING A CLOSER LOOK

Discussing my mission with fellow Bookhouse Boy (and mayor of Twin Peaks) Karl Reinsch, I was provided better resolution screen shots and noticed some details that I hadn’t seen before.

Some things barely visible are the “RIPE TURKISH AND DOMESTIC TOBACCOOS” on the front of the pack and the slanted dashes along the top of the pack. Also one detail was the “FREE” on the tax tab that wraps over the inner foil wrapper.

I stared to digging through different fonts and found that Deutsch Gothic had many of the same characteristics of the Metropolitan logo seen on the sides of the packs. Using this as a starting point, I made a few changes and adjustments until I was happy with something close to what is seen on screen.

One interesting thing about the design is that there is a white stylized pack of cigarettes ON the pack of cigarettes. I searched vintage cigarette ads and found that vintage Chesterfield ads had many similarities to this design. I used this ad as a template to recreate the stylized pack and also used their logo as an inspiration for the font.

MAKING THE REPLICA PROPS

I bought a real pack of cigarettes to dissect and use as a template for my recreation. After scanning it and making measurements, I was ready to piece together all of the graphics. Once everything was to my liking I took my file down to the local print shop and had them print me up a few test prints of the outer packaging on a light glossy paper.

Now it was time to gather the materials to piece everything together. Since it was just before Christmas when I was making this, I found a roll of gold foil wrapping paper to use as the inner wrapper.

I measured out and cut up some scrap pieces of cardboard to use as the filler in place of real cigarettes.

Then I cut out the outer wrapper and bent it over the cardboard, but being careful not to create too sharp of creases.

Once everything was generally pieced together, I used a good old fashioned glue stick and few tiny pieces of masking tape to adhere everything together.

MENTHOL METROPOLITANS

I shared my creation with a few Twin Peaks prop enthusiasts and was pleased with the results. Fellow Bookhouse Boy Steven Miller pointed out that a green pack is seen next to Leo Johnson in the pilot. The details were blurry, but an agreed assumption was that they must be menthols.

Using my same template, I made a few modifications and made Leo’s green menthols that would go nicely with his straight from the bottle Crème de Menthe.

Yum!

BLACK METROPOLITANS

Continuing to keep an eye out for more details, I notice Bobby Briggs has a black pack of Metroplitans.  He pulls a pack out when he is kicked out of Ben Horne’s office.

Later Shelly Johnson is seen with a pack when she, Donna, and Audrey meet at the Roadhouse after Windom Earle’s invitation.  I used the same template as the red pack, but did notice that the tax tab was blue.

Now I have all three varieties of season 1 & 2 Metropolitan brand cigarettes in my collection. They are a simple, but important little Twin Peaks props.

VINTAGE ADVERTISEMENTS

Fellow Twin Peaks Blog contributor Jason McMahan suggested I make some vintage style ads for Metropolitans. I gladly accepted the challenge and created these just for fun:

ORIGINAL PROPS

Shortly after this article was published, Jerry Horne from Twin Peaks Archive shared images of the original props on Twitter.

Here is a another look at that packaging.