Flavoured Cigarettes: Every Flavour Family and the Variants That Carry Them

A flavoured cigarette is one that carries a taste beyond cured tobacco, either blended into the leaf during processing or sealed in a capsule in the filter that you crush when you want it. Taste is what most smokers actually choose. Two packs can print the same tar and nicotine and smoke nothing alike, because what changes between them is the cooling, the sweetness, the spice and the finish, not the numbers on the side.

Five families cover almost everything sold. Menthol and mint cool the draw and leave a clean finish. Capsule variants stay plain tobacco until you crush the bead, then change to whatever it holds. Clove, sold as kretek, is spice-led and slightly numbing. Sweet, dessert and fruit arrive almost entirely by capsule, in apple, berry, citrus, cola and coffee. Classic and lightly flavoured tobacco carries no added flavour at all and is chosen on the strength of the leaf itself.

Each family gets its own section covering what it tastes like, who it tends to suit, the brands known for it and the variants that carry it. A comparison table then sets the five side by side, followed by a short guide to choosing between them and where to buy in Australia.

Menthol and Mint

Menthol tastes cool and clean, and it is the one flavour most smokers can name blind. The draw arrives cold rather than warm, the throat hit is softened and slightly numbed, and the finish is short and sharp with none of the heaviness that cured tobacco leaves behind. The mouthfeel is drier than a non-menthol of the same strength. Mint variants sit in the same family with a rounder, sweeter edge and less bite. The words that recur on these packs are cool, ice, fresh and crisp, and they describe the sensation accurately.

It suits smokers who find traditional tobacco too harsh on the throat, or who dislike the aftertaste of full-flavour cigarette leaves. Against a classic Virginia blend, a menthol reads lighter even at the same printed strength, because the cooling covers the harshness rather than removing it. That is also why it tends to be the choice of people who smoke slowly and want a cigarette that does not sit on the palate afterwards.

The sensation is not temperature. L-menthol, the isomer used in tobacco, acts on TRPM8, the cold receptor in the mouth and throat, raising the temperature at which that receptor fires, so the smoke feels cold without being cold.

Esse and Manchester are the two brands best known for it, and they sit at opposite ends of the family. Esse, made by KT&G in South Korea, is known for light, clean menthol. The cooling is steady rather than sharp, laid over a pale Virginia and Burley base in a super slim stick, and the tobacco stays quiet underneath. It is the menthol people move to when a full-strength one feels like too much. Manchester, made in the UAE, goes the other way. Menthol Green is the heaviest cooling of the two, worked into a full Virginia blend rather than a light one, so the tobacco pushes back against the mint instead of disappearing under it.

Capsule Cigarettes: How the Crush Ball Works

A capsule cigarette tastes like whatever you want it to, because it changes halfway through at a moment you choose. Before the crush it is ordinary tobacco, indistinguishable from the plain version of the same brand, and the flavour only arrives when you decide it should. Squeeze the filter, feel the bead give under your thumb, and the next draw carries menthol, apple, berry or citrus depending on the variant. The change is immediate and it holds to the end of the cigarette.

It suits smokers who want variety without carrying two packs, and anyone who likes tobacco first thing in the morning and something cooler later in the day. Against a blended menthol, the capsule gives you the choice rather than making it for you: leave the bead alone and you have smoked a plain cigarette.

The mechanics are simple. A small liquid-filled bead sits inside the filter, and pressure bursts the shell. Smokers call it a crush ball, a click, a pop, a switch or a flavour bead, all the same component.

Manchester and Esse are the two brands whose ranges are organised around it. Blue Crush and Green Crush put mint and hard menthol capsules over a light American blend, the difference between them being how much cold arrives when the bead goes. Esse Change holds an apple-mint capsule in a super slim, and the Change Double line carries two. Marlboro runs the Japanese-market capsules: Ice Blast and Ice Blast Mega 8 for cooling, Double Burst and Japan Purple Burst for berry-mint.

Single capsule, dual capsule and what changes

A single-capsule cigarette gives you one switch, from plain tobacco to the flavour in the bead. A dual-capsule variant carries two beads that can be crushed separately or together, which is why those packs are named “double”, and it gives you four states: plain, flavour one, flavour two, and both at once.

Esse Change is the single-capsule version, a super slim with an apple-mint bead. The two Double variants, Apple Mint Wine and Apple Mint Orange, carry two beads each, pairing that apple-mint with a wine-berry note or an orange one, so you can run the cigarette tart, sweet, or both together. Manchester Double Drive is the king-size equivalent. On the Marlboro side, Double Burst Japanese and Japan Purple Burst pair mint with berry, and Ice Blast Mega 8 is the cooling-only version with the largest bead of the group.

An uncrushed capsule smokes exactly as an ordinary cigarette, so the flavour is optional until you use it.

Clove and Kretek

A kretek tastes of spice long before it tastes of tobacco, and no other family smokes anything like it. Clove is sweet, warm and peppery at the front, and eugenol, the oil that makes up most of clove’s character, numbs the lips and tongue slightly, so the finish is more anaesthetic than clean. The rod crackles and sparks as the clove burns, which is where the Indonesian name comes from, and the sidestream smoke carries further than any other family here.

It suits smokers who want something closer to a spice than a leaf, and who are not looking for a cigarette that disappears quietly. People tend to take to kretek immediately or not at all. There is very little middle ground, and it is not a step across from a conventional cigarette the way a menthol is.

Djarum is the brand the family rests on, an Indonesian maker whose Black and MLD lines run internationally, including flavoured versions such as Black Cappuccino and MLD Fresh Cola. Gudang Garam and Sampoerna are the other two houses that dominate the category at home. Clove is ground and blended into the rod rather than applied as a flavouring, so the proportion of spice to tobacco is set at manufacture and cannot be switched off. A smoker who wants that depth without the clove is looking at a full-strength Virginia or American blend instead, where the weight comes from the leaf rather than the spice.

Sweet, Dessert and Fruit Flavours

Sweet and fruit flavours taste closer to a soft drink than to tobacco once the capsule is crushed. The sweetness sits on top rather than through the smoke, the tobacco stays present underneath, and the finish is short and clean rather than lingering. They are the newest family, and almost all of them arrive by capsule.

The people they suit are smokers who find plain tobacco flat or harsh and want something that reads as lighter than it is, and anyone who wants a different cigarette in the evening from the one they smoke at work. Against menthol, the sweet flavours cool less and flavour more.

The reason for the capsule is chemical. A sweet flavouring blended into tobacco degrades with time and heat and tends to taste flat by the time the pack is opened, while a sealed bead holds the compound until the moment it is crushed. Dessert and fruit flavours were rare before capsule technology made them work.

Five flavour types cover what is sold, and they run from the sharpest to the softest.

• Apple and mint is the most common pairing and the cleanest of the five. The apple reads as crisp green fruit rather than sugar, the mint sits underneath it, and the finish clears quickly. Esse made its Change line around this combination, including the two Double variants that pair apple-mint with a wine-berry note or an orange one.
• Berry and grape is the heaviest of the sweets: dark, jammy and a little syrupy, with a cool edge behind it that stops it cloying. Marlboro Japan Purple Burst and Mevius Japanese Purple Menthol both work this way, the berry laid over a menthol base rather than beside it.
• Tropical and citrus are the brightest and the least like tobacco. Orange and pineapple dominate, the sweetness is thin rather than thick, and the smoke finishes almost sharp. The Marlboro Vista line runs several of these, from Summer Splash to Tropical Burst.
• Cola and coffee sit closest to the leaf. Caramel and roasted notes work with tobacco rather than covering it, which makes this family a classic smoker. Djarum MLD Fresh Cola and Djarum Black Cappuccino are the recognised versions.
• Yoghurt and cream is the softest of the five, milky and low in acid, with almost no bite at the finish. Raison French Yogo is the best known.

Sweet and fruit are among the first categories regulators restrict, on the reasoning that they are the flavours most closely linked to young people taking up smoking.

Classic Tobacco and Lightly Flavoured

Classic tobacco tastes of the leaf and nothing else: toasted, dry and slightly sweet in a flue-cured Virginia blend, rounder and nuttier where air-cured Burley is in the mix, with a finish that stays on the palate. The curing method, not the brand, is what sets those two apart. Nothing cools it and nothing covers it, so the strength of the blend is the whole of the taste. Every other family is measured against it.

It suits smokers who want the tobacco itself rather than something laid over it, and anyone coming off a flavoured variant who wants the closest equivalent. Within the family, strength does the work that flavour does elsewhere, and the range runs from heavy full-flavour blends down to cigarettes lighter than most menthols.

Full flavour. Marlboro Red is the reference: a Virginia, Burley and Oriental blend with the toasted character the brand is known for, heavy on the palate and slow to clear. Manchester Red matches it for weight on a straight Virginia blend, but reads balanced rather than sharp, which is why it works as an everyday cigarette. Double Happiness Gold is the rich, mellow one of the group, its Hard Pack counterpart bolder and earthier, both Chinese blends with a sweetness the Western brands do not have. Dunhill Red England and Benson & Hedges Gold Plain sit in the same weight class with a drier, more formal finish.

Mid strength. Manchester Classic Gold is the rounder end of the Manchester range, the same blend character with the edges taken off. Mevius Japanese Blue brings the clean, dry profile Japanese blends are known for: less sweetness, a shorter finish, and noticeably less smell on the hands and clothes.

Light. Dunhill Blue England is refined rather than weak, and it holds its shape where light cigarettes often go papery. Manchester Light is the everyday version of the same idea. Dunhill Grey England is the mildest of them, and it is the closest the classic family comes to a super slim menthol, without the cooling.

Lightly flavoured means something else again. Some classic blends carry a small amount of casing and top dressing, sugars or cocoa applied during processing to round the tobacco, without producing a flavour you could name. That is why two cigarettes of the same strength can read quite differently, one dry and one faintly sweet.

How to Choose a Flavour: Strength, Format and Market

Choosing between flavoured variants comes down to four checks you can make before buying: whether you want the flavour always on or on demand, how strong the tobacco underneath is, what stick format it comes in, and which market the pack was made for.

Always on, or on demand. A blended flavouring is present from the first draw and holds steady to the last, so the cigarette tastes the same every time. A capsule stays inactive until you crush it, which gives you a plain cigarette and a flavoured one in the same pack. A blended variant suits anyone who always wants the flavour and does not want to think about it. A capsule suits anyone whose preference moves through the day, or who wants one pack to cover two moods.

Strength underneath. The flavour sits on top of the tobacco and does not change it. Judge the two separately, because a hard cooling can disguise a full-strength blend and a sweet capsule can make a strong cigarette read as mild. Inside a single family the range is wide enough that two variants of the same flavour can sit at opposite ends of it. The safest approach when you move between variants is to check the printed yields on the product page rather than trusting the flavour name, especially if you are switching to something that reads lighter than it is.

Format. Flavoured variants appear in two stick formats, king size at 84 mm and super slim at 100 mm, against the regular and 100s lengths that carry most unflavoured lines. Several of the lighter flavour lines exist only as super slims. A super slim holds roughly half the tobacco of a king size, about 0.4 grams against 0.8 to 0.9, so the same printed figure behaves differently in the hand: the cigarette lasts a similar time but delivers less per draw, and the mouthfeel is noticeably thinner. Anyone coming from a king size should expect a super slim to feel lighter than its figures suggest, and anyone coming the other way should expect the opposite. The super slim cigarettes guide covers the format in detail.

Market of origin. The same brand name carries different blends in different markets, so a pack made for Japan and a pack made for Europe can share a name and taste distinctly different. This matters most with capsule variants, where the flavour compound is set for local taste. Read the market on the pack or the listing before assuming a variant matches one you smoked somewhere else.

Where Can You Buy Cigarettes in Australia?

Aussie Smokes sells cigarettes online across Australia, in the standard packet of 20 and the carton of 10 packets, with age verification on every order, plain unbranded packaging and tracked delivery to every state and territory, metro and regional alike.

Orders placed before 1:00 pm AEST are typically dispatched the same business day. Metro delivery runs 1 to 3 business days and regional 3 to 7, parcels are plain and unbranded, and payment is by bank transfer or PayID.

Most of the brands named here are carried in unflavoured form, so the brand you know is usually still available even when the flavoured variant is not. Marlboro, Manchester, Dunhill, Esse, Mevius and Double Happiness all run classic lines alongside their flavoured variants. The cartons of cigarettes collection lists the printed tar and nicotine on most product pages, which is the figure to compare when you are matching a classic blend to a flavoured one you used to smoke.

FAQ: Cigarette Flavours

What is the most popular cigarette flavour?

Menthol, by a long way. It is the largest flavour category worldwide, though its share of any one market varies widely between countries. Mint variants sit in the same family with a softer profile, and between them they account for most flavoured sales worldwide.

Is menthol the same as mint?

Not quite. Menthol is the cooling compound itself, l-menthol in tobacco, while mint describes a rounder, sweeter flavour profile that usually carries menthol alongside other notes. Every mint variant is a menthol variant, but not every menthol tastes of mint. A non-menthol pack carries neither.

What is a crush ball in a cigarette?

A crush ball is a liquid-filled bead in the filter that releases a flavour when squeezed, also called a click, a pop, a switch or a flavour bead. Single-capsule variants carry one. Dual-capsule variants carry two, which can be crushed separately or together.

Which cigarette flavour is the mildest?

The super slim menthols, Oscar Ice Cold and Mac Ice, which are made around cooling rather than tobacco weight. In the classic family, Dunhill Grey England is the mildest, and it smokes lighter than most king sizes without any cooling at all.

Are flavoured cigarettes banned in Australia?

Yes. Section 121 of the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Regulations 2024 bans additives with flavouring properties, including menthol, and section 123 bans the capsules and beads that carry a flavour. Both have applied to everything sold in Australia since 1 July 2025.