Nobody in my family smoked when I was a kid, but I do remember a full set of drinkin' glasses, a set of mixing bowls, a "short set" of coffee mugs, and about half of an 8-place setting of "luncheon plates" that came in laundry soap boxes over a couple of years when my mom accumulated them, early to mid 1940s.

The tableware (knives, forks, & spoons) was from the corner grocery where each time you spent $10 you could buy one piece for a nickel. It was all pretty good stuff made out of that new-fangled "stainless steel." Some of the relatives (who couldn't get to a store that offered it) warned us that "that stuff'll kill ya if ya eat with it;" but apparently it didn't.

Some similar "bribeware" made out of the new "aloonyum" (the closest any of the older generation ever got to a pronunciation) didn't fare quite as well, and some of it actually was such poor quality it "mighta kilt ya." My mom wouldn't allow it in the kitchen, but we could use the pans to play in the dirt in the back yard. Quality did improve later, but then it wasn't offered a shopping "incentives."

And I remember when the "toys" in Cracker Jacks were real things you could actually play with; and I got to watch the steady decline in them over the few years before none of the kids were even interested in what was in the box. (And it never tasted quite as good in the later years.)

John