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See if I don't give Buck Duke hell." Doubtful Dromedary. Though cigarettes were still considered effeminate and had less than 10% of the market, Reynolds decided to bring out Camels in 1913 in a package decorated with a very sick-looking animal. Recalls former Director R. C. Haberkern: "He was atrocious. He had pointed ears, his head was bad, his feet looked like sweet potatoes." The problem was not solved until the Barnum & Bailey circus came to Winston-Salem, and the Camel people got a look at their first dromedary, Old Joe. Old Joe was promptly photographed, drawn for the package. (When Reynolds tried to change the package slightly in 1958, it got so many complaints that it had to switch back to the old one.) Camels, with their stronger blend, revolutionized the cigarette market before Dick Reynolds died in 1918. Camel sales jumped from $10 million in 1913 to $188 million in 1918, and the company took over from American as the industry's leader. During World War I, Reynolds made sure that soldiers in the trenches had plenty of Camels, reaped its reward when they came back home with a warm spot for the brand. American countered with its new Lucky Strike—and the battle lines between the two tobacco giants were drawn.
"Fun to Be Fooled." American's George Washington Hill, the brassiest to-baccoon of all time, dreamed up the slogan "It's toasted" for Lucky Strike—even though all tobacco went through the same toasting process. Reynolds struck back with "I'd walk a mile for a Camel," scoffed at Luckies' "toasted" claim with ads showing a magician sawing a girl in half and captioned, "It's fun to be fooled; it's more fun to know." George Washington Hill, the prototype of the dictatorial sponsor in The Hucksters, was not a man to be outshouted; he pushed into the industry lead once more in the early 19305 with such ads as "Reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet," "Nature in the Raw Is Seldom Mild," and "20,679 physicians say Luckies are less irritating." The FTC finally forced him to tone down some of his health claims.
The man who waged much of the battle against American was Bowman Gray's father, a hardworking, up-from-the-ranks salesman who became Reynolds' sales manager, moved on in 1924 to president.
Young "Red" Gray worshiped his father and followed in his steps. In 1918, at the age of eleven, he went to work as a leaf trimmer for Reynolds during summer vacations. (Another Reynolds employee, though less interested in it as a career: Bowman's younger brother, Gordon Gray, onetime Assistant Defense Secretary, former president of the University of North Carolina and now national security adviser to President Eisenhower.) At Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, Bo Gray persuaded fellow students to smoke Prince Albert after he discovered that cigarettes were forbidden. After graduating from Chapel Hill ('29) he went to work as a Reynolds salesman.