People have been placing advertisements and propaganda on packages of many items that we use in our daily life for a very long time. Of course, the army could not miss this good opportunity during the wartime too. Propaganda became straightforward those days, and abstract and quite generalized calls to save nature or drink healthy fruit juices were turned down.
Today there are many examples of this curious printed matter. For example, matchboxes and matchbooks. This form of the package was more suitable to place advertisements on it.
When it comes to the motives of the match agitation, they were similar to other such activities. Citizens were usually encouraged to buy war bonds and savings certificates, save waste materials and food, do not forget about enemy spies and venereal deceases etc. However, the advertising content placed on matchbooks includes some particularities that are typically only for this kind of printed advertising and propaganda. One of the curious kinds of printed propaganda were matchboxes dropped above occupied territories. For instance, French people were taught to make diversions using this method.
