How supermarket brands, ‘dupes’, and good-old poverty are shifting shopping habits

There’s a captivating Australian mystery regarding an unknown man found dead on Somerton Beach in 1948. The Somerton Man, as he would imaginatively be known, had a number of items on his person, including an Army Club cigarette packet containing Kensitas brand cigarettes.

At the time, it was common for Australians with airs to buy cheap branded cigarettes and keep them in a more expensive packet. 

In this case, however, Kensitas was the expensive brand, and the Army Club packaging was seemingly being used to conceal the Somerton Man’s upper-class status. Was he a spy, mixing it undercover with the underclasses? When they found his luggage in a nearby railway locker, all the brand tags were cut out – but was it to hide his identity, or the brand of his high-class clobber?