With life breathed back into the match industry through the need for popular patriotic and military advertising, the O.P.A. (Office of Price Administration) insisted that a free book of matches accompany every pack of cigarettes. Free matchbooks became a mainstay. They were so much a part of every cigarette purchase, that the O.P.A. saw this practice as mandatory and regulations ensured continued free matchbooks with cigarette and cigar purchases. After all, the price of a matchbook hadn't increased in fifty years. Why should vendors complain? Even in 1945, a matchbook itself cost a tobacco vendor only about one-fifth of a cent. At the height of the fad, vendors thought they were giving the matchbooks away as a favor to their customers.

At the close of 1945, more than five hundred billion matches were manufactured in the United States. Matchbooks made up around two hundred billion, one hundred billion were wooden safety matches, and the rest were the wooden "strike-anywhere" match. The figures spoke for themselves. American matchmaking had become a bustling industry and a far cry from its humble beginnings just 50 years earlier.

After the war, production grew steadily. Every American business, product and service wanted to be a part of the big campaign. A matchbook salesman could not only support his family, but also provide them with new and unexpected post-war luxuries. Match factories thrived and boasted large profits. This affluent sales period lasted only a short while, however, as the threat of cancer became real for every cigarette-smoking American. The popularity of the common match book coat tailed the rise and fall of the popularity of cigarettes in America.