America's Best Chew (formerly Red Man)
Stores / Businesses
America's Best Chew is the name, since 2022, of Red Man, a loose-leaf chewing tobacco introduced in 1904 by the Pinkerton Tobacco Company of Owensboro, Kentucky. Red Man was first sold in a few Midwestern states, reached the South in 1954, and went largely nationwide by 1963. Its marketing has long been tied to rural and outdoor sports. Early barn ads featured baseball star Nap Lajoie, and the company issued baseball cards from 1952 to 1955 and sponsored tractor pulls and the Red Man bass-fishing tournament trail. Pinkerton later became part of Swedish Match, which Philip Morris International acquired in 2023. In January 2022, Swedish Match renamed the product and dropped the Native American chief from its packaging.
In the newsletter
- No. 23 Spring/Summer 2000