Hecate Cigarettes

Heavily damaged poster for a cigarettes advertisement, showing a woman with her back turned to the viewer holding a box of cigarettes behind her back and smoking another. Her face is missing due to the poster's damage, but her pointed nose and lips as well as short fluffy hair can be seen. She has pale skin and is wearing long gloves and a strapless dress. Next to her is text saying "Try your luck on a flavor you won't forget. Hecate's Cigarettes. 20 for 20 cents".

Although Miss Hecate appears in various pieces of art, we have been hard pressed to find details about her creation, what studio was responsible for her animations, and so on.

For a character with such a large body of work, she is frustratingly difficult to learn about. She is one of the reasons we founded the Pendog Creative Library, to figure out just what the story is behind this mysterious character. Accounts of her carry on well into the 30s, but at this time artistic depictions go no earlier than the 50s. Even then much work was done just for the scraps of a story we are determined to put together.

We are not certain whether Hecate started out as a cartoon character for entertainment or for advertising. This is the earliest surviving artistic rendition of her and as can be seen here it is horridly defaced. 

This archive item is dedicated to Ick@ck, we miss you so much.