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PUNCH ME! PUNCH ME AGAIN!

Is General Cigar’s Punch the most-promoted brand in America?

Los Angeles, August 25 – He looks fiendishly from left to right, a passel of cigars in one hand and a sick grin on his face. Dressed in his clown’s outfit, he drifts gaily through the day, happy to be a beacon for tobacco lovers looking for their favorite muse.

It’s Punch.

Whether you know him as the focus of the Punch brand from Cuba and more recently from Honduras, he’s been involved with tobacco for more than 160 years.

In some European countries such as Great Britain and Italy, you’ll find a life-sized wooden statue of Punch in front of neighborhood tobacco stores in the same way Indians have adorned the front of tobacco shops in the U.S. for more than a century and a half.

But here, Punch is much more. Ever since the Honduran-made version of the brand was introduced to the U.S. market by Villazon & Company in 1969 (which became part of General Cigar in 1999), it has been the focus of some of the most innovative promotions in the cigar industry in the last few years, including, but certainly not limited to:

• “The Art of the PUNCH” video, offered in 1998, featuring highlights of 19 famous knockouts by legends of the ring such as Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes and Mike Tyson.

• General Cigar’s second retail concept, the “Punch Bar” in Boston, Massachusetts, which opened in 1999 inside the Sheraton Boston Hotel and Towers, but closed a few years later, a casualty of anti-tobacco laws in Massachusetts.

• A consumer contest in 2001 to select the final blend for a new size, the Champion. This tiny perfecto, just 4 ½ inches long by 60 ring, was offered in two blends and the “Contender 2" blend tallied 58 percent of the voting to 42 percent for “Contender 1" to become the production blend for this new size.

• What promotional campaign would be complete without a bobblehead doll? General produced a unique-looking bobblehead for Famous Smoke Shop earlier this year (he’s pictured above) to combine with special offers on its web site and in its catalog earlier this year, and voila, sold like wildfire. “We put it together with some items that had not been moving well . . . and they sold,” noted Famous’s very satisfied Arthur Zaretsky.

• And now General is really pouring it on, with the Punch Photo Shoot at retail tobacconists across the country from February through June of this year, Punch Poker Events at tobacconists nationwide now (if you’ve missed it in your area, look on eBay for Punch card decks!) and now Punch Dart Nights on occasion, whenever the mood seems to strike.

What about the cigars? They are outstanding, of course, and now offered in a wide variety of blends and shapes. Along with the traditional, full-bodied Punch, Punch Deluxe and Punch Grand Cru lines, the more recently-introduced Punch Gran Puro blend is made solely from Honduran-grown tobaccos and has a medium-bodied taste so seductive we ranked no. 7 in our roster of Medium-Bodied cigars announced on July 18. Subscribers to our value-rich CigarWire service have access to all of our brand-name recommendations, street pricing survey of 500-plus brands and consensus ratings by brand and year for 565 brands from 1992 to 2003.

You can beat your friends “to the Punch” by visiting General’s web site, CigarWorld.com to see how they’ll be clowning around with our friend next. I’m still waiting for the “Punch Me” tournament with George Foreman!
~ Rich Perelman

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