El Presidente Posted March 1, 2022 Share Posted March 1, 2022 A very good read. Riste makes some excellent cigars and is one of the sharper tools in the cigar industry shed. https://halfwheel.com/10-thoughts-please-stop-marketing-cigars-to-children/405536/ 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NSXCIGAR Posted March 1, 2022 Share Posted March 1, 2022 I don't know--there are worse things for kids than cigars. I started at 12... Seriously though, we don't need any cigar producers to be catching the ire of the FDA at this point. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B44 Posted March 1, 2022 Share Posted March 1, 2022 That article seems to have kicked the hornets nest. You’re seeing both Privada and Riste respond in the comments and on Reddit. I’m not quite sure that their guttural responses are the right moves, but I’m sure it’s tough to remove emotion from the equation. In any case, the last thing any of us need are hightened awareness or a refound drive to further clamp down on our hobbies/business. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asudevil08 Posted March 1, 2022 Share Posted March 1, 2022 There's too much d*ck measuring at this point from a "new school"/"old school" perspective and neither seems to appreciate being called out (the whole privada beef with the cigar patriarchy). I think Brian was hoping his foray into collaboration with JC Newman would help legitimize the Privada movement from a "lets all appreciate each other" perspective. Have to agree that Privada does get a lot of unncessary crap from people simply because of the perception it has from the outside (not that Brian hasnt helped light those fires from time to time). I do believe they have some pretty good products, regardless of their quasi cult status among the membership who thinks their stuff is the next coming of Christ. FWIW 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Fuzz Posted March 2, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted March 2, 2022 Personally, if you remove the words; "Cigar", "Tobacco", "Cigarillos" from the packaging and it is indistinguishable from a pack of candy at a cursory glance, then it should not be allowed. It doesn't matter if it is not marketed to kids. Can you buy them from a petrol station or convenience store? If so, do you think kids never go in there? Unless you have laws that prohibit tobacco being visible to the public, kids will see it. That then gives the Govt plenty of ammunition to crack down harder on the industry. They're just waving the red flag at the bull by using that kind of packaging. 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Cigar Surgeon Posted March 2, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted March 2, 2022 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huckleberry Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 I have stacks of high school kids over to the house when my kids are hosting, and I very often have a pretty box of ccs lying around and they all know where my coolidor is located in the basement. Heck, my son feels like he owns the basement. I haven’t had a single young person ever ask about them, even when I’m smoking one. I started smoking them when I was 16 because they were forbidden fruit. I just don’t ever see young kids smoking cigars. They literally can’t even finish listening to a poorly produced rap song that lasts about three minutes. All of a sudden they are going to spend an hour smoking a hand rolled cigar that won’t get them high? Cannabis has been conclusively proven to be damaging to the under developed brains of human beings until about the age of full development. There are more cannabis vape pens being passed around by these kids and nobody gives a crap. But cigars now, now there is a grave concern? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cigar Surgeon Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 4 minutes ago, Huckleberry said: But cigars now, now there is a grave concern? Not by reasonable people no, but the FDA isn't reasonable people. They've been gunning for cigars for a while now, and they've made it crystal clear they're focused on whether cigars are being sold and marketed towards kids. As @Fuzz said above, you take away the cigar branding and show the packaging to a non-cigar person, they'll think it's candy or something marketed towards kids. And the FDA is going to nail the entire industry with it. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huckleberry Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 12 minutes ago, Cigar Surgeon said: Not by reasonable people no, but the FDA isn't reasonable people. They've been gunning for cigars for a while now, and they've made it crystal clear they're focused on whether cigars are being sold and marketed towards kids. As @Fuzz said above, you take away the cigar branding and show the packaging to a non-cigar person, they'll think it's candy or something marketed towards kids. And the FDA is going to nail the entire industry with it. I don’t disagree with your point about the branding in question. In fact the more thought I give to it the more I agree with you I disagree with not continuing to fight with base level truths. Take away those and it all eventually goes to nothing anyway. Slower? Maybe, but it still all goes away if we don’t keep the main thing the main thing. The packaging is absurd and unnecessary for sure. Kids spending hours with a cigar that doesn’t get them high is in a lot of ways absurd to me, and a main point we need to continue to make imho. I think he could have saved a lot of words and just kept it at those examples of pretty reckless labeling, because those examples lose against the reasonable person standard when examined in a reasonable manner by reasonable people. When he has to throw a political shot at people who disagree with cancel culture as being rapists, racists and whatever other broad trigger words he used to call his shot he just loses my respect. He is concerned about the reckless and absurd usage of cigar labeling and goes and does it himself, maligning a large portion of people, people he most likely refrains from even knowing. It was cheap and wildly inaccurate and it took away from a lot of solid points. Just my two cents… 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuzz Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 39 minutes ago, Cigar Surgeon said: 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juliano88 Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 I think it’s a hit piece from the old world cigar establishment at a new movement. I am not a member and I tend to smoke more heritage cigars, but I do not believe that they brand these cigars to kids. The big brands need a scapegoat for the FDA and Privada is cutting into their millennial market. I can see both sides of the argument but man I was not a fan of this article. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post MrBirdman Posted March 2, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted March 2, 2022 Sometimes, even arguments you don’t like, that seem to support people you don’t care for, and that bother you to your core - sometimes they are true. We all know that few kids will be attracted to premium cigars as we know them - they are about slowing down to enjoy a refined experience, not getting high (or even that buzzed) before or during a night out. I was a teenager once, and if I had sat down at a party and lit a stogie I’d have been thrown out, called weird in school, and become instantly less viable as a dating option. Kids also have similar olfactory preferences to adults, most of whom find cigar smoke foul, whereas many a pot-abstainer can enjoy or at least more easily tolerate the aroma of marijuana. But CM’s article wasn’t about whether some cigars’ marketing makes them especially attractive to kids - it wasn’t about that at all. It was about whether the FDA will perceive that marketing as such. CM says it will - and given what we’ve seen not just in the US but abroad, can anyone seriously doubt this to be true? The editorial and responses are a fascinating prism through which to view the state of online discourse, which is dominated by trolls and well-meaning people who waste their time on them. I read through the coherent comments I could find and virtually none address what CM said in his editorial. I suspect that this is not just trolling but also “I read the title, skimmed the opening paragraph, and looked at the pictures so I know exactly what the whole article says” reactions. I can’t begin to count the number of political articles I’ve been sent by online-obsessive friends, accompanied by something like “Proof that x is y” only to actually read the entire article and discover it says “one person says x is y, which might be one minor facet of the overall topic/argument of this article, which is not that x is y.” Something about the internet and its info-overload drives people to read less, think less, assume more, and speak without care. Maybe if we all went back to 56k days when a page could take a minute or two to load, people would try to make their time on each page more meaningful. In lieu of that though, my next best suggestion is that all these people light up a cigar, slow down, and reserve your editorial/news reading and commenting for those more peaceful, contemplative moments. Unless you’re a kid. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Fuzz Posted March 2, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted March 2, 2022 It's not about branding to kids. They are packaging their cigars to be less like the established brands, making it stand out, be eye catching, and in some cases using images that depict what they taste like (eg fruit, sweets, deesert, etc). The problem is, it is making the packaging look more like a kid's candy bar. Looks at this and tell me at first glance what you think it looks like. Without reading the packaging, you could be mistaken in thinking the Raspberry Cream cigarillos were raspberry cream filled wafer sticks. It's not a very big stretch of the imagination. The industry should steer well clear of that kind of perception. 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bijan Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 All I know is my 2 year old thinks cigars are cool because daddy smokes them. He knows the empty tubos lying around that he plays with are from cigars. He says things like this is for cigars, daddy smokes cigar, Dana (his name) smoke a cigar. He may likely think they're less cool when he grows up as tobacco is pretty unpopular here these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuzz Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 6 minutes ago, Bijan said: All I know is my 2 year old thinks cigars are cool because daddy smokes them. He knows the empty tubos lying around that he plays with are from cigars. He says things like this is for cigars, daddy smokes cigar, Dana (his name) smoke a cigar. He may likely think they're less cool when he grows up as tobacco is pretty unpopular here these days. My god-daughter ( @jay8354 eldest kid) when she was really young (4 or 5), once piped up when Jase asked what I wanted to drink, "Uncle Fuzz drinks wine!". She was not wrong, but everyone was a little taken back by that. 😅 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post El Presidente Posted March 2, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 2, 2022 42 minutes ago, Bijan said: All I know is my 2 year old thinks cigars are cool because daddy smokes them. He knows the empty tubos lying around that he plays with are from cigars. He says things like this is for cigars, daddy smokes cigar, Dana (his name) smoke a cigar. He may likely think they're less cool when he grows up as tobacco is pretty unpopular here these days. Possibly. I am betting however that he is running a cannabis lounge chain by the age of 19 which masks his Toronto wide illegal mull racket. He will be known as "Meticulo" due to his insane attention to detail. "I owe it all to my father" "Your honour" 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dageshi Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 I'm not from the US so I really don't have any skin in the game regarding this. But yeah, that packaging is like poking a Grizzly Bear, I have to assume the people making it are too juvenile to understand what the consequences could be. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enduin Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 There is a big difference between an act of defiance/rebellion/non-compliance that only affects the person committing it, and an act of defiance/rebellion/non-compliance that affects everybody. I fully support the former but strongly disagree with the latter unless it's a joint decision of all who would will bear the consequences of such act. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post bishop532 Posted March 2, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted March 2, 2022 9 hours ago, Juliano88 said: I think it’s a hit piece from the old world cigar establishment at a new movement. I am not a member and I tend to smoke more heritage cigars, but I do not believe that they brand these cigars to kids. The big brands need a scapegoat for the FDA and Privada is cutting into their millennial market. I can see both sides of the argument but man I was not a fan of this article. The article wasn’t suggesting they are branding the cigars to entice kids to smoke. It was suggesting that these companies are purposely releasing products that the FDA perceives as branded towards kids. EDIT: It doesn’t matter what you or I think, or what the truth is. Only what the FDA can convince a judge. That’s the point I believe he was trying to make. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyO Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 Whatever happened to 25 words or less? I felt nauseated reading the damn thing. I think I'm gonna hurl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juliano88 Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 40 minutes ago, bishop532 said: The article wasn’t suggesting they are branding the cigars to entice kids to smoke. It was suggesting that these companies are purposely releasing products that the FDA perceives as branded towards kids. EDIT: It doesn’t matter what you or I think, or what the truth is. Only what the FDA can convince a judge. That’s the point I believe he was trying to make. I agree and that's a good take. I like Halfwheel and the content that they provide. I just feel like there was a better way to approach it. But you are right, the FDA is the FDA. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post jakebarnes Posted March 2, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted March 2, 2022 I unfortunately spend time trying to counsel marketing types on how to not be an idiot--they rarely take my advice. As many said, these companies are intentionally releasing products that can be perceived by the FDA to be branded towards kids. Call me the stodgy old lawyer, but I find myself on the side of the "stop ruining it for the rest of us" group. From a loose port of "bad facts make bad case law," bad decisions like these designs screw it up for the rest of us. As an aside unrelated to the above: I find the packaging in question horrifically ugly. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silverstix Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 9 hours ago, Bijan said: All I know is my 2 year old thinks cigars are cool because daddy smokes them. He knows the empty tubos lying around that he plays with are from cigars. He says things like this is for cigars, daddy smokes cigar, Dana (his name) smoke a cigar. He may likely think they're less cool when he grows up as tobacco is pretty unpopular here these days. I purposely don't "hide" my cigars or my cigar smoking from my 5 year old. I don't like to smoke when he's outside with me, but I don't keep my hobby a secret. I let him look at all of my cigars, help me with inspections sometimes, have him smell different cigars, all that stuff. I don't want him to grow up and see it as the forbidden fruit - right now he knows that cigars are for adults and that's that. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bijan Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 20 minutes ago, Silverstix said: right now he knows that cigars are for adults and that's that. Yeah there's a long list of things my son knows are for adults: Wine is for grown ups, Knives "is" for grown ups, Etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonahs_whale Posted March 2, 2022 Share Posted March 2, 2022 Pretty clear where Jas Sum Kral stands with their online merch As a "Geriatric Millenial" (not my term), I generally find the packaging and branding of Privada Club and others like it rather annoying. Big words with no meaning. Trying to build hype with loudness and being "edgy". What has always drawn me to cubans and older cigar brands is the simplicity of it all. Hand-rolled, brand name + size, simple logo, and of course the 1-2 hours of sitting there just enjoying it without any distractions. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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