North State, a brand of British American Tobacco, was founded in 1931 and is a cigarette which was equipped with a shorter filter compared to many other cigarette brands. The cigarette was mainly sold in Finland but was also sold in Denmark, the Netherlands, Nazi Germany, West Germany, Switzerland and the United States. Jokingly, the brand is usually called "Chauffeur Tobacco" (see the driver on the Split Window VW Beetle).
In the Netherlands, North State Cigarette, in the early 1950’s issued a yellow construction paper model of the Volkswagen Split Window Beetle for the tobacconists to display in their tobacco shop as advertisement material. The yellow colour and other design elements of the Split Window Beetle are the same as the colour and design of the cigarette packs. The tobacco dealer had to construct the paper display model themselves and they were not for sale for consumers. This makes them extremely difficult to find as these usually were used in the tobacco shop and then disposed of over time.
The North State paper VW model was a very simple design and should not to be compared with the more professional KdF Wagen pre-war construction paper models of SCHREIBER, SCHOLZ or RAPI, that are also listed on this site for reference as well.
The license plate GZ 15630 was a license plate only used in the province of North Holland (in the west of The Netherlands) and stopped being used in 1950.
The North State paper VW model did not come with instructions how to build or construct the model. It was quite straightforward; the only instruction was on the tabs of the paper parts “neerbuigen” (= Dutch for ‘fold here’).
