Feeling nostalgic for that morning hack? Ad Age has a video interview this morning with Dr. Robert Jackler, who put together the exhibition of cigarette advertising that's been at the Science, Industry and Business branch of the New York Library in Manhattan for several months and will run through Dec. 26. The professor at Stanford School of Medicine started collecting the old ads after his mother, a lifelong smoker, developed lung cancer. Jackler grudgingly gives his due to the copywriters from the golden age of cigarette marketing. "They were clever. They had great subtlety in their …

I've scoured the wires high and low for some good news of the quantifiable variety to leave you with as we enter the weekend. I finally found it: U.S. sales of video game hardware and software rose 10% in November from a year earlier, according to NPD. The industry "continues to set a blistering sales pace," NPD analyst Anita Frazier says, with hardware and software sales strong even though this November had seven fewer shopping days than last year's. Nintendo's Wii console sold over 2 million units in November, up from over 800,000 in the previous month, setting a …

Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld says that as the economy softens, more people eat at home. Ninety-nine percent of them have at least one Kraft product in the pantry -- Oreos, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Ritz crackers and Maxwell House coffee among them. "We're certainly seeing (strength in) products that provide obvious value: powdered beverages like Kool-Aid and Crystal Light, for example, in comparison to ready-to-drink alternatives. We're finding that people are eating grilled cheese a lot more," she tells USA Today's David Lieberman in an extensive and far-reaching "CEO Forum" interview. "We're seeing products like DiGiorno pizza, in contrast to pizzeria …

"Around the Net Rule # 17": Never turn down an opportunity to re-report a story with a dateline like Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee. That's where CNN talked to a woman named Kat Koonce the other day whose love affair with Saturn began before she was old enough to drive. Then her local dealer hired her as a sales rep because she was always hanging around the joint, and she met her husband, whose dream has been to own a dealership himself, at a Saturn sales event. But Koonce, of Dayton, Ohio, was in the minority of the folks who …

If I really, really, really want to be bad, I'll buy me a package of Hostess cupcakes. Maybe your weakness is Twinkies. Or a few slabs of Oscar Mayer bologna on Wonder Bread. They were the best comfort foods to be had in the decades before people called anything "comfort food." And I'll tell you what. I really did believe that Wonder Bread helped to "build strong bodies in 12 ways." Morning Edition's Laura Ziegler reports that Interstate Bakeries, which makes the brands, has emerged from bankruptcy after four years. But it faces a tough battle in convincing …

Headline in the New York Times this morning: "Trickledown Downsizing: With Their Employers Cutting Costs, Domestic Workers Suffer" (with an over-the-top illustration of a uniformed maid with tears streaming down her cheek). In the Journal: "When the Going Gets Tough, Some People Lay Off the Nanny" (with an over-the top discussion topic, "Have you started to do more household tasks yourself, in light of the economic downturn?" No comments were posted as of 8:21:42 EST). The Journal also reports that Costco is expected to indicate its upper-end customers are spending less when …