Marlboro Bags

This post is part of the series about communist Bulgaria between 1979 and 1989. I already posted about my cat, ice cream, TV, and elections.

My kids go to school with backpacks. Their backpacks tend to be large and capable capable of carrying over 10kg of weight. The modern education system in Bulgaria relies on thick, glossy textbooks and lots of printed material, which makes them heavy. I also go everywhere with a large backpack, full of necessary items.

Back in the 80s, as true commies, we had another solution to the problem of how to bring all of our items to school, apart from not having much to carry. We used nylon bags like the one below (found for sale on a local marketplace site). The more colorful it was, the better. I had the exact same as the screenshot, and I’m pretty sure it lasted almost a year. Changed many while in school, and wasn’t picky.

Of course, they couldn’t carry 10 kg like modern backpacks, but they didn’t need to. We had far fewer schoolbooks and used light textbooks. We also didn’t need to carry everything to class. Books were usually only needed at home, for the brave ones who ever opened them. I don’t think many of my classmates did.

As for the images on the bags, foreign cigarette brands were the most popular. The more colorful and unfamiliar, the better. These bags were worth serious money and could be purchased from the flea market “Bitaka”. Getting a new one was a big event. I just don’t see any dopamine high in modern kids’ lives that’s similar to this experience, perhaps getting an iPhone.

Speaking of cigarette brands and why Marlboro of all things. We grew up with access to smoking. My classmates smoked since a very young age, probably under 10. However, the cigarettes available were local, and everyone wanted the foreign, which weren’t officially available anywhere. So, Marlboro, Camel, JPS and such were primarily imported by tourists, truck drivers, and visitors from the West. Even if you could get your hands on an empty pack, it still had value. I found 10-ish such packs thrown in the wild as trash and kept them in a glass display cabinet. You could trade them with other kids. And the packs were pretty, unlike the ugly things from the modern times, covered with photos of injuries and dying people.

So the true “socialist look” of the 80s was cheap, fake jeans top to bottom, white local leather sneakers, and a Marlboro bag in hand.