Viaje Shipping Three Skull and Bones Red Releases Next Week

Next week, Viaje will begin shipping a trio of Skull and Bones Red vitolas that haven’t been on the market since September 2019.

It’s the Skull and Bones Big Ivan, a 5 x 60 petite gordo, the Skull and Bones Fat Man, which measures 4 1/4 x 56, and the Skull and Bones Little Boy, a 4 1/4 x 52 petite robusto. The company has not yet released much in the way of specifics about this latest batch of the cigars, including blend details or pricing, and has not yet replied to an e-mail seeking additional information about them.

One retailer who has begun accepting presales indicates that the cigars come in 25-count boxes, with boxes priced between $242 and $276, meaning that individual cigars are priced between $9.68 and $11.04.

Viaje debuted the Skull and Bones line in 2010 with the Daisy Cutter, and it has since grown to include more than 50 releases spanning several blend variations. The line uses the names of famous bombs for its vitolas, with the red-banded line named for nuclear weapons and the white-banded line named for non-nuclear weapons.

The Little Boy gets its name from the codename for the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, during World War II, while Fat Man gets its name from the bomb dropped over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. The Big Ivan is named for the Tsar Bomba, a thermonuclear aerial bomb developed by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s that is regarded as the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested.

The Skull and Bones Fat Man and Little Boy debuted in 2011, with subsequent releases in 2013, 2016 and 2019. The Skull and Bones Big Ivan debuted in 2013 and received follow-ups in 2016 an 2019. Previous versions of the line have used a Mexican San Andrés wrapper, Dominican binder and fillers from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and the United States.

Patrick Lagreid

I strive to capture the essence of a cigar and the people behind them in my work – every cigar you light up is the culmination of the work of countless people and often represents generations of struggle and stories. For me, it’s about so much more than the cigar – it’s about the story behind it, the experience of enjoying the work of artisans and the way that a good cigar can bring people together. In addition to my work with halfwheel, I’m the public address announcer for the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks during spring training, as well as for the Salt River Rafters of the Arizona Fall League, the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury and previously the Arizona Rattlers of the Indoor Football League. I also work in a number of roles for Major League Baseball, plus I'm a voice over artist. Prior to joining halfwheel, I covered the Phoenix and national cigar scene for Examiner.com, and was an editor for Cigar Snob magazine.