Can anyone provide me with reasons why Marlboro Lights would contain
any markings other than corporate info, (e.g. brand name)?

I found some markings on a Marlboro Light cigarette purchased in New
Hampshire, USA, in 1999. I noticed these markings while putting out
one of the cigarettes. I called Phillip Morris once about it, and then
subsequently lost the pack and never followed up on it. I recently
found them, post September the 11th, and I began looking for a
correlation. I sent pictures to the company, and the FBI, and I
haven't been given any satisfaction as to the meaning of the markings.
 To me, they appear as three identical characters in two rows. They
are located on the paper part of the cigarette near the filter, but
not on the filter. On the top row is a K, an O with a base
(sort of like a skull) and either an 8 or a backwards B; so reading
from left to right on the top row is KO8, and on the bottom row is a
mirror image, is 8OK. One person told me that it was a marking to
designate
the end of the roll used in manufacturing (to indicate the roll is
near end, like pink ink on register receipts), but I find that hard to
believe.

Thank you for any guidance.



I have a scanned image of it, but I have no idea how to get that to
you.

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Request for Question Clarification by feilong-ga on 11 Dec 2002 10:43 PST

"I have a scanned image of it, but I have no idea how to get that to you."

You can simply post the image on the Internet and put the address here.

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Clarification of Question by nhtechwriter01-ga on 11 Dec 2002 11:26 PST

Clarification:

I am not sure if this is the best way; I don't have a web site to post
images to. So I created a Group at Yahoo. Sorry if this is
inconvenient.  The address is

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manufacturing_markings/?yguid=111800320

The image is on the first page, as well as under the Files directory.

Thanks,

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Request for Question Clarification by seedy-ga on 12 Dec 2002 01:43 PST

NHTechWriter:

Were the markings on all the cigs in the pack?? If so, it probably
rules out quality control markings since it is unlikely they could
control all the cigs in one pack....Did you buy these cigs near the
border with MA?? Nashua, Salem??

seedy

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Clarification of Question by nhtechwriter01-ga on 12 Dec 2002 04:42 PST

The marking were not on all the cigarettes. I would say it was on
about 14 of the 20. It had a tax stamp on NH, but was purchased near
the border, in Portsmouth, NH.

Thanks,

NHTechWriter

Hi,

Or, these markings might be to help with quality control.  When doing
manufacturing on a large scale, you have a lot of machines doing
identical tasks.  So, say you had one hundred machines producing
10,000 cigarettes each per day.  If each machine prints a code number
on every fiftieth item that designated which machine produced the
item, then you would be able to find that machine if there was a
problem.  You can see these quality control codes on enumerable
products.  Some plastic parts, which come from plastic injection
molding machines, have a code number on every item coming from that
particular molding machine if the code can be put in an inconspicuous
place.  An Inconspicuous place, because you don’t want a bunch of
numbers and letters all over the finished product.  Yet, for items
where you don’t have an inconspicuous place to put a code, you have to
put it right in plane site of the consumer.  So you compromise by
putting the codes on at intervals.  These codes can also designate the
date of manufacture location of the manufacturing plant etcetera.  The
mirror image of the KO8 that you saw is probably a method used to make
sure the code gets on there.  So if your printing aspect became
intermittent or incomplete, you could still read the code.  Being an
inventor, I’ve always been interested in manufacturing; however, I’m
also a fellow conspiracy theory theorist and would love to here more
about your 9/11 theories.  The explanations formed here are just
assumptions on my part, so the door is still open for speculation.

All the best,
James

While I couldn't rule out possible connections with Area 51 and/or
Roswell, I would (unfortunately) assume that it was a production 
code, identiying a machine, date & time, batch, location, or other
information for quality control or tracking.