Player's introduced the Digger brand in 1917.
It was an all Empire-leaf baccy, stuff grown in Rhodesia, Nyasaland, India or Canada.
Empire or Commonwealth tobacco had a lower duty tax, so brands which were made with them sold at a lower cost.
Digger was mostly sold in foil packets and there was a whole spectrum of forms to choose from - shag, mixture, mixture coarse cut, cut plug, flake, flake ready rubbed, roll, pigtail, honey-dew brown or black cavendish cut.
1917 would have been a difficult year to bring out a new brand because of WW1, and many British tobo manufacturers supplied baccy for the troops via the War Office.
I found some available data about one company, the behemoth Wills, and in 1917 they supplied the War Office with 541,000lbs., in 1918 it was 819,876lbs., and that's just the pipe tobacco, not including cigarettes...
...needless to say, soldiers needed tobacco. As the US General Pershing once cabled to the govt - "Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration - we must have thousands of tons of it without delay."
The term "digger" had come to mean an Australian soldier, there were quite a few of them in England during those days, it derived back from the old Aussie gold rush days, but it particularly fit because of the trench warfare style of WW1 - the term is still in use today in Australia to denote a soldier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digger_%28soldier%29
I've never smoked Digger in any of its forms, but the 25g flake was available in the USA for quite some time, I'm unsure exactly when production ceased, but it could have been around as late as 2008?
Pipestud recently had a 25g packet up for grabs that was hand-dated 1999,
it sold for $33
PLAYER'S DIGGER FLAKE FULL AND FACTORY SEALED 25 GRAM BOX NOT TIN - PIPE STUD
The professor gives a review here:
http://pipes.priss.org/misc.php#digger
...and on TR it's said to have been somewhat similar to St. Bruno
http://pipes.priss.org/misc.php#digger
An internal document of analysis from the BAT archives compared it closely to Erinmore, with Digger having fruity, floral, and sour characteristics.
A 1986 magazine article talking about local tastes for specific tobaccos in England said that Digger had a particularly strong following in the Midlands.
It must have been very popular, it even had a television commercial,
http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/743077
Player's was always on top form with their advertising, and Digger is no exception, the large posters on buildings at the end of the pix must've been all over the place - as a sidenote I was recently watching the movie The Remains of the Day and noticed a Digger poster hanging on the wall in a short pub scene, I'm becoming a crazy trainspotter while watching period flicks! LOL
Well, that's all I got!
Very short indeed!
Any additional info is most welcomed and appreciated!!!
Digger had a strikingly iconic logo,
so off we go to the picture show...
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