Today was the day… the all-new Tatuaje website launched as well as the official announcement for the newest addition to the Monster Series, “The Face” launched. In total, 21,658 cigars will be available for purchase divided up between 666 dress boxes containing 13 cigars and 1,300 plain boxes containing 10 cigars. The dress boxes will be shipping Oct. 13, while the other boxes will be out right around Halloween. The cigars have a MSRP of $13, but there are definitely retailers who are marking them up.

Tatuaje

The reason behind the dress boxes and regular boxes is simple, these cigars command a high price on both the retail and secondary markets and their limited availability combined with the diehardness of Tatuaje fans means that tons of regular smokers don’t get them. As such, Johnson wanted to make sure that regular smokers could get a chance to smoke at least one. As a side-note, When I talked to Johnson at the show, he was thrilled about his partnership with S.T. Dupont to create this limited edition Maxijet lighter. I sort of feel like you should get a free box with purchase, but anyways.

Johnson will not be releasing the Actor Series like he did last year (Boris) at the same time, instead of late October, expect to see the cigar around the time of the Oscar’s, i.e. February.

According to Pete Johnson:

They’re in boxes of 13, the cigars are uncellophaned, and wrapped in brown paper with burlap around the bundle, real gnarly-looking. We’re doing 666 of those coffins… There were some guys who only wanted to smoke the cigars. They didn’t want the fancy box, they just wanted the cigars. So we’ll have 1,300 boxes of 10, very plain boxes that just say ‘Tatuaje Halloween 2010 No. 3’ and those are boxes of 10 with cellophane, individually. So for the guys who just wanted to smoke the cigar, they can buy them on the shelf the week of Halloween. But the fancy boxes will be released before the 13th of October.

The cigar itself features a unique tobacco band an ugly Mexican wrapper, with Pete describing the blend as “Cojonu style bold blend.” It remains unclear if this was the only Mexican tobacco Pepin was referring to when talking about new 2010 releases. It should be noted that My Father Cigars has a planned released left for 2010 and Pepin in recent interviews stated his next big chapter would be using Mexican tobacco.

Tatuaje

There are thirteen retailers, who have dibs on the boxes, during Halloween the remaining boxes will be sold to 130 other retailers. Most of “the unlucky 13 retailers” are taking pre-orders, for your convenience:

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.