The Death of the Box Mod, The Rise of the Vape Pod
Two bearded men stand shoulder to shoulder in a crowded room.
At a signal from a judge, they both lift large, bulky devices to their mouths, inhale, and then blow out a huge stream of vapour.
One exhales the clouds further than the other - and wins the contest.
To most people this would be a bizarre scene, but competitive cloud chasing was an event that took place at venues around the world.
And it was all due to the not-so-humble box mod.
The rise of box mods
To understand the origins of box mods and cloud chasing, you have to go back to the origins of the modern vape device.
Back in the 2000s, the first vape devices were very different beasts from what they are now.
Designed to resemble a cigarette, these devices produced a thinner wisp of vapour and very little nicotine. While they helped thousands of people ditch cigarettes, for many other smokers they just weren’t satisfying enough.
This led to DIY innovation.
In bedrooms, garages and sheds, smokers came up with their own modified devices, often using a box-like device to house the battery. This gave rise to the name box mod - box as a nod to the design, and mod to indicate it was a modified device.
As a community rapidly developed online, vapers showed off their devices, which often featured incredible designs - and huge clouds of vapour.
These devices had pros and cons. On the positive side, they helped many smokers quit the habit - but they also lacked the safety features we now take for granted.
However, the vape manufacturing industry in China took notice, and it wasn’t long before they started developing similar devices to take advantage of this new market.
Effective but complex
Again, these devices helped many vapers, but they were also often complicated to use. Articles and videos on how to use the devices proliferated across the internet, and thousands of people who had flunked science at school suddenly became experts on Ohm’s Law.
But while large-scale production ensured that tens of thousands more people did get off smoking, the complexity of these devices hindered mass take-up of these devices.
It would take an American company to come up with a device that was compact and simple enough to reach the masses - but the success of this new vape would end up threatening the entire independent vape industry.
The rise of the pod
Juul revolutionised vaping by combining improved technology with a new e-liquid formulation.
Prior to Juul, if you made nicotine strengths too strong, the user would get a harsh hit on the back of the throat. This was due to the type of nicotine used in the e-liquid, a form known as freebase.
Juul realised that this freebase e-liquid was a barrier to people adopting vaping. To address the issue, they perfected a way of formulating nicotine salts. These nicotine salts allowed them to deliver the combination of a strong nicotine hit and a smooth throat hit.
For many hardened smokers, this was a big step forward. Now, with a slim, simple and easy-to-use device, they could get an experience that was sufficiently satisfying to replace cigarettes.
But Juul’s early marketing clearly targeted the younger generation, a move that would dog the company for the rest of its existence. Juul became a craze among young people as well as adult smokers, leading to a huge backlash against vaping.
However, Juul’s device was only one step along the way to the rise of the pod device.
As Juul first gained popularity and then fell apart under a tsunami of lawsuits and negative publicity, Chinese manufacturers invented ever better refillable pods.
With the improved performance, taste and ease-of-use of these devices, many mod vapers started to transition over to them.
Then the Chinese industry went back to the simplest idea of all - a device that could be opened, used and discarded without the need to press a button or insert a charging cable.
Refillables and disposables
Disposables weren’t completely new - in fact they had been around in one form or another since near the start of vaping. For most vapers, their weak nicotine hit and flavour made them a less attractive choice than mods or pod devices.
However, when improved performance was combined with ‘double-concentrated’ nicotine salts which delivered bolder, sweeter flavours, the popularity of the devices took off like a rocket.
Millions of smokers adopted the device. And again they became popular amongst children, triggering a public panic which may yet kill the vaping industry.
At the same time, refillable pod devices from companies like Vaporesso and Uwell continued to get better and simpler. Increasingly, coils became built into the pod, and refilling became simpler, making the barrier to use ever lower. 10ml ‘bar salts’ were created that mirrored the strong, bold taste of disposables at a fraction of the cost.
That dual path is continuing today, with refillable pods from key brands continuing to gain in popularity while disposable devices are rapidly becoming replaced with prefilled, multiple pod devices.
Judging history
Mods were both good and bad.
They helped many ditch smoking, but also gave the industry a disreputable look with bystanders alarmed by huge clouds of vapour and media warning of the danger of battery explosions.*
The success of pod systems and disposables offered a similar mixed bag.
Finally, smokers had a simple but effective device which was hugely successful at helping them quit smoking, but both the environmental consequences and the appeal of disposables to children would cause panic that has led to everything from vape bans to taxes.
What does the future hold? Vaping changes so rapidly that it is hard to predict with any certainty. However, if regulations allow the independent industry to survive, then the continued trend towards simplicity looks likely to continue.
*It’s also worth noting that while few people use them nowadays, modern mods are very different from early devices. They are typically easier to use while still often offering functionality that no other vape device can match and come with built-in safety features that make problems extremely rare.
For most vapers, though, the combination of simplicity and decent enough performance makes pod systems a no brainer.