How to Tell Duty-Free IQOS Marlboro Tobacco Sticks from Local Versions

A friend asked me today how to tell duty-free Marlboro tobacco sticks from local Japanese versions. Here’s one simple way to identify them. In the past, the duty-free and local versions looked the same, so there was no easy way to tell them apart except by the taste. However, Marlboro changed the packaging sold in Japanese convenience stores in the first half of this year. The image below shows the packaging currently sold in local stores in Japan.



Duty-free shop products still use the old packaging, so this is an easy way to distinguish local versions from duty-free ones.