HOLY FUDGE!!!
I am surprised people bring up the Flintstones cigarette commercial
Because I was watching it and we just had a father threaten to and I quote "Whip the living daylights out of" his 6-8 year old son if he lost the baseball game.
The worst of it is that Winston is an awful, awful brand. It is thin, flaky and tastes like straw. If you go out in a fog, it turns into mush in seconds, and a slight breeze will rip it apart. It is not worth the purchase at all. I wish they could have advertised a better brand.
Of course, the thing to remember with those old cartoons is to remember that they are not quite intended as children entertainment. The Flintstones later did turn into an exclusively child-oriented franchise, but it was not from the start. With a mixed audience, it rather makes sense to run a tobacco advert, if they are willing to pay.
EDIT: Oh, and to contribute to the Lovecraft talk about the setting. One thing I find quite adorable about a lot of Lovecraft is how, because it is set in the New World, anything older than two hundred odd years or so is ancient and foreboding. The man did not have much to work with, but it is rather amusing, how an old stable from about 1690 is given the treatment of an ancient Egyptian temple ruin in Lovecraft's hands.
Naturally, the 18th century was fairly long ago, but not quite to the degree that Lovecraft seems to have in mind, as if it is a
primordial pre-historic age, lost in the stygian depths of Chronos, where not the argent rays of time and reflection itself may et cetera, et cetera.