Between 1762 and 1962, the folks who made and sold cigars were on the cutting edge of advertising. They created nearly every advertising image, gimmick and theme used today. These pioneers led the way into the world of modern advertising.







No package was used in more ways, in so many shapes and sizes, with so many images, than a cigar box. In the art of using the package to attract the customer’s eye, the cigar industry did it earlier, better and more adventurously than anyone. The cigar industry created point-of-sale advertising.







Like all pioneers, not all their ideas were good ones.







The men and women who selected a brand name or chose an image worked without precedents, polls or web-sites to warn them not to decorate their boxes with skunks, drunks, spiders, snakes and Satan to sell cigars.



So they did.







Marketers of other products watched with interest ... and learned that pretty girls, dogs, cute kids, cute girls, sports, celebrities, cute women celebrities, good health, healthy girls, good times, wealth and good looking women were much more popular with customers.







In the U.S. cigar industry, experimenting with brands was a way of life. Lessons were never-ending. Cigar companies, salesmen, wholesalers, retailers and even customers ... everyone created brand names, chose pictures, selected the style of box. It was “Advertising Anarchy”® at its ultimate.







Between 1762 and 1962, two million brands of cigars displayed six hundred billion domestic and clear Havana cigars made and sold in the U.S.







The “industry” that sold those billions was fragmented into tens of thousands of small clever entrepreneurs, advertising pioneers, innovative package designers, hard workers, progressive unionists, government regulators, counterfeiters and tax evaders.







It’s the greatest story ever NOT told.







This Cigar Museum is my way of sharing that story and the artifacts I’ve found.







I take full responsibility for errors of fact, omission or interpretation. If you think I’m wrong, misguided, or ill-informed, you might be right. Feel free to let me know.







Tony Hyman



Central California



2014