I was at my local B&M this weekend and picked up a selection of good cigars for a two day long bachelor party I'm going to this weekend. (One of my oldest son's friends - he's 32 - is getting married in two weeks and I'm the adult supervision).
Anyway, as I'm checking out the lady behind the counter says, "we have a bunch of sample cigars from vendors that we're trying to clear out. They all retail from $4 to $10. You come in here all the time so pick five of them to try."
She hands me this basket and I pull a selection that included a Smokin' Toad - One I've never heard of - a Flor de Oliva Grand Cameroon, Don Lino Havana Reserve Maduro, an Arganese, and two other's that I gave my son.
Hopefully the rest of these are better than the Smokin Toad.
It was a nice looking cigar and had a nice tobacco smell. I used a punch on it and lit it up. It had a good draw but from the start it was a very mild smoke. Absolutely no spice or any other distinctive flavor that I could discern. I started smoking it and it burned fairly slow and even but it just lacked any predominant flavor. In fact the ash held straight for about the first third of the smoke (I'll send a photo shortly) and it put out a decent amount of smoke but absolutely no flavor.
About 15 minutes after I took the first poor quality photo with my phone, the ash fell off and a couple of minutes later I had to re-lit. It just stopped burning as well as it had been. The draw was still good but it just didn't want to stay lit. I gave up after another 10 minutes or so.
Overall. The construction seemed good. Pre-light it looked good. Draw was decent. ABSOLUTELY NO FLAVOR PROFILE THAT I COULD IDENTIFY. It almost reminded me of some of the cheapies I started smoking 10 years ago - like the Fuente Curly heads or Bances.
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