Chewing Tobacco Packaging

While foil lined, paper pouches was a convenient way to package it, it wasn’t exactly the most user friendly. One would have to take the pouch out of their pocket, open the bag, unfold the pouch and grab the tobacco leaves and reverse the process to get it back in the pocket. Early Chaw users wanted a more convenient way to get to their favorite chew so, a new form of tobacco was created, the Plug.

Plug tobacco is made the same way loose leaf tobacco is but with a few added steps at the end. The dried, smoked and flavored tobacco leaves are mixed with a syrup mixture made from mostly Molasses and a sweetener then laid out in a sheet about a half inch thick. A thin layer of un-smoked tobacco would be laid on the top and bottom of the sheet and cut into squares or “plugs” about 2” x 4” and sold. Now, instead of having to go thru the monotony of getting a couple of leaves of loose chew, all one had to do was take the plug out and bite off a bit!

There are two other forms of chewing tobacco and those are the Twist tobacco and tobacco bits. Both are made the same way that loose leaf and plug are made but in the twisted form, the leaves are braided instead of pressed into plugs or put in pouches and the bits are Twist tobacco cut into small pieces. Twist tobacco is pretty much no longer available but the bits are still available and are marketed under the Oliver Twists brand name.