Edgar M. Cullman Sr., a cigar maker who worked to broaden the appeal of his product in the late 20th century, helping transform its public image from an unwieldy mobster’s appendage to a cool and slim object of desire, died on Sunday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 93.

His son, Edgar Jr., confirmed his death.

The elder Mr. Cullman was the longtime president, chairman and chief executive of the General Cigar Company, a leading manufacturer that over the years produced some of the country’s most ubiquitous cigars, including inexpensive and midpriced brands like White Owl, Tiparillo and Tijuana Smalls, and higher-priced ones like Macanudo, which has long been among the country’s best-selling premium cigars.

The Cullman family, known for its multigenerational tobacco interests, was involved with General Cigar from the early 1960s until 2005, when the company was sold to Swedish Match, a maker of snuff and other tobacco products. That year, General Cigar reported sales of more than $170 million, according to Culbro, which was General Cigar’s corporate parent from the 1970s to the 1990s. (Culbro is today the family’s private equity company.)

Edgar Meyer Cullman was born on Jan. 7, 1918, and, as a company publicist told Business Week in 1968, was “diapered in tobacco leaf.” His great-grandfather Ferdinand Kullman was a wine and tobacco merchant from Germany who settled in the United States in the 1840s. Ferdinand’s sons, Joseph and Jacob, founded Cullman Brothers, a tobacco brokerage house, in 1892.