Redwood Cigarettes



"Be a real man. Smoke Redwood."

- From the bottom of the company's website

Redwood Cigarettes is a tobacco-related company which is featured in GTA: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, GTA IV, The Lost and Damned, The Ballad of Gay Tony and Grand Theft Auto V. It has appeared in numerous billboards and advertisements throughout the radio. There are also numerous branches of the company, particularly in Vice City. The logo font and package design largely emulates the Marlboro brand. Their main headquarters is located in Downtown Vice City and it's the highest building in Vice City. The company is the official sponsor of the Los Santos City Marathon and the #86 Bati Custom motorcycle in The Lost and Damned and Ballad of Gay Tony. In Grand Theft Auto IV and its DLC's, there is a website for Redwood Cigarettes which can be accessed using any computer. On the website, a cowboy is featured on the top banner, a reference to the Marlboro Man.

Company Activities
Redwood Cigarettes is shown to have existed as far back as 1947, where they advertised smoking for children, as well as having used product placement in an episode of Gordon Moorehead Rides Again. Their vintage mascot appears to have been a stereotypical red-faced Indian (a nod to the use of Native Americans in vintage cigarette advertising). By 2013, they seem to be involved in corrupt political practices, hiring four corrupt jurors to defend the company at a hearing.

Just like its real-life counterpart, seems Redwood is also involved in sponsoring racing activities, lampshaded in the livery of some Bati Custom bikes and having its name in the Redwood Lights Track, a place popular for off-road races.

Redwood Juniors
In 1984, during the events of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, the company introduced Redwood Juniors, a brand of candy cigarettes intended to market the real product towards children. Each pack contains 20 candy cigarettes. There are many Redwood Juniors billboards and benches throughout Vice City, featuring the slogan "Junior's Gotta Start Sometime!". There is also a large replica of a Redwood Juniors box atop the Verdi Groceries store in Little Havana.

In the HD Universe, Redwood Juniors are still advertised in the company's webite.

GTA Online
When playing GTA Online, you may smoke Redwoods at any given time in the game. All the player needs to do is to buy a pack of them in any store. One package of ten cigarettes cost six dollars, and smoking will damage your health. However, the damage is so small, it's completely negligible.

Trivia

 * Besides the obvious parody of Marlboro cigarettes, Redwood Cigarettes is likely a play on Red Apple cigarettes, a fictitious tobacco brand that routinely appears in Quentin Tarantino movies.