Every Pall Mall Cigarette Type: A Guide

WARNING: Cigarettes are addictive.

Pall Mall is a 127-year-old brand that R.J. Reynolds sells in the United States as its main value-priced cigarette. The current US line is about 20 pack styles: three non-menthol colors, four menthol families, an unfiltered soft pack that dates to 1939, and a Select sub-line, in king and 100 mm lengths. This guide lists every current style by the name on the pack, explains what the colors mean, and covers the brand’s history, its price tier and the rules that affect its menthol packs.

Last verified September 11, 2026 against the New Jersey (June 2025) and Oregon (July 2026) state tobacco directories. A listing means the style is certified for sale, not that every store carries it. Sources at the end.

The brand

The lineup

Non-menthol

The colors distinguish blends and filter designs; they carry no disclosed nicotine or tar figure. The color names replaced the descriptors (Pall Mall Filter, Lights, Ultra Lights) that the FDA barred from packs in June 2010.

Menthol

Discontinued or withdrawn. Pall Mall Deep Set Recessed Filter and its menthol version were ordered off the market by the FDA on September 15, 2015, the first “not substantially equivalent” orders ever issued against a major brand’s products. Pall Mall Activate Blue and Green, menthol capsule cigarettes, no longer appear in state directories. The pre-2010 Lights and Ultra Lights names are gone; some retailer catalogs still list “Pall Mall Silver” or “Pall Mall Menthol Silver” as legacy names for current styles.

History

Pall Mall began in London in 1899 as a premium cigarette named for the street in St James’s, itself named for the lawn game played there in the 1600s. The American Tobacco Company bought the brand in 1907 and in 1939 introduced the king-size, 85 mm, unfiltered Pall Mall that made it a mass-market brand; by the early 1960s it was the largest-selling cigarette in the United States, a position it lost to Winston and then Marlboro as filtered cigarettes took over. The unfiltered soft pack in the current line is that product.

Brown & Williamson acquired American Tobacco’s US brands in 1994 and, around 2001, repositioned Pall Mall as a “savings” brand with a full range of filtered styles at a lower price. When Brown & Williamson merged with R.J. Reynolds in July 2004 to form Reynolds American, Pall Mall came with it, and from 2007 Reynolds designated it as its growth brand in the value segment alongside Camel and Kool in premium. The result was one of the fastest share gains in the modern industry: 4.8% of the US market in 2009, 7.4% in 2010 and 8.5% in 2011, passing Camel. A 2018 paper in Nicotine & Tobacco Research documented the gain as a response to the 2009 federal tax increase, which pushed price-sensitive smokers toward value brands. Share has since receded to 3.7% as of December 2023, and BAT reported the brand’s US volume down 7% in 2024.

Regulation

Pall Mall’s menthol styles are subject to the same rules as every menthol cigarette: banned in Massachusetts since June 2020 and California since December 2022, restricted in more than 170 localities, and unaffected by the federal menthol proposal that was withdrawn in January 2025. The 2015 FDA orders against the Deep Set filter styles are the brand’s other notable regulatory event; the FDA found Reynolds had not shown the redesigned filters were substantially equivalent to products already on the market. Texas, where Saucey delivers tobacco, has no menthol restriction.

FAQs

Why are they called Pall Mall, and how is it pronounced? After the London street. Americans generally say “pal mal”; Londoners say “pel mel” for the street.

Is Pall Mall a discount brand? In the US, yes. Reynolds classifies it as a value brand and prices it below Camel and Newport; the same name is a premium brand in some other countries under BAT.

Do they still sell unfiltered Pall Malls? Yes. Pall Mall Classic Non-Filter, king size in a soft pack, is in the current line; fewer stores stock it than the filtered boxes. Other unfiltered cigarettes still on sale are listed at Unfiltered Cigarettes.

What do they cost? Less than premium brands for the same pack, with the difference set by the manufacturer; taxes, which are most of the price, are the same on every brand. The breakdown by state is at How Much Does a Pack of Cigarettes Cost?

Sources

• Oregon Department of Justice, Tobacco Brand Directory, July 21, 2026; New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, Tobacco Directory, June 30, 2025
• Reynolds American, Our History and Form 10-K filings for 2007, 2011 and 2014 (SEC EDGAR)
• BAT, Annual Report 2024, combustibles
• Tobacco Reporter, Nielsen brand shares, December 2023
• Sharma et al., “Pall Mall gained significant brand share in the cigarette market between 2002 and 2013,” Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2018
• FDA, September 15, 2015 not-substantially-equivalent orders (Pall Mall Deep Set Recessed Filter)