It does not have all the elements that you could find in a direct mail letter – no subheads, no Johnson boxes, no marginal notes – but it does have the important ones. The paragraphs are short, with the first line indented; there are indented blocks of type for emphasis and variety; there is a meaningful P.S. that recaps the offer and adds a little spin of urgency to it.
This may not appeal to someone who abhors smoking, but it should be admired by anybody who wants to produce copy that gets results.
Thompson Cigar Company
5401 HANGAR COURT
TAMPA, FLORIDA 33614
The enclosed mailing label can bring you -- on approval -- a box of 42 custom-blended Cuban Seed leaf cigars. Cigars you can't buy in any store anywhere. Try them out. Put them to your own tests. Unless you're 100% satisfied, return the partially empty box for a full refund!
Are we out of our minds to make an offer like this? Maybe so -- but giving customers a chance to smoke at our risk has kept us in business for 70 years.
Why not send back your mailing label now -- and judge these superb cigars for yourself?
Dear Fellow Cigar Lover:
I’ve taken the liberty of reserving, in your name, one of our "Sterling Sampler" boxes of 42 fine Cuban seed leaf cigars:
6 Plazas
6 Panatela Extras
14 Juniors
6 Cleopatra's Needles
4 Churchills
6 Corona Chicos
42 Cigars in all
To help you discover a cigar most to your liking, I'm including a generous sampling of both cut-filler cigars and vintage-leaf, long-filler, all-tobacco cigars. And, as a special added inducement, I'm pricing these cigars so you save 35% under their regular per-cigar prices.
With your o.k., I’d like to send you this assortment. When your sampler box arrives, break seal and open it. Choose a cigar. Unwrap it. Smell it. Roll it gently between your thumb and forefinger, feel the soft crinkle of expertly cured tobaccos.
Then light it up, savor the mellow aroma, see how slowly, smoothly and evenly it burns. Notice the silver-white ash, an see how long the ash grows before it drops -- both signs of truly fine cigars.
(over, please)
Thompson Cigar Company
5401 HANGAR COURT
TAMPA, FLORIDA 33614
The enclosed mailing label can bring you -- on approval -- a box of 42 custom-blended Cuban Seed leaf cigars. Cigars you can't buy in any store anywhere. Try them out. Put them to your own tests. Unless you're 100% satisfied, return the partially empty box for a full refund!
Are we out of our minds to make an offer like this? Maybe so -- but giving customers a chance to smoke at our risk has kept us in business for 70 years.
Why not send back your mailing label now -- and judge these superb cigars for yourself?
Dear Fellow Cigar Lover:
I’ve taken the liberty of reserving, in your name, one of our "Sterling Sampler" boxes of 42 fine Cuban seed leaf cigars:
6 Plazas
6 Panatela Extras
14 Juniors
6 Cleopatra's Needles
4 Churchills
6 Corona Chicos
42 Cigars in all
To help you discover a cigar most to your liking, I'm including a generous sampling of both cut-filler cigars and vintage-leaf, long-filler, all-tobacco cigars. And, as a special added inducement, I'm pricing these cigars so you save 35% under their regular per-cigar prices.
With your o.k., I’d like to send you this assortment. When your sampler box arrives, break seal and open it. Choose a cigar. Unwrap it. Smell it. Roll it gently between your thumb and forefinger, feel the soft crinkle of expertly cured tobaccos.
Then light it up, savor the mellow aroma, see how slowly, smoothly and evenly it burns. Notice the silver-white ash, and see how long the ash grows before it drops -- both signs of truly fine cigars.
(over, please)
Try a couple of each of these six superb cigars at your leisure. Try other cigars too, the ones you normally buy at stores, so you'll have a basis for comparison.
And then, you decide. If you don't agree that these cigars are among the finest you've ever had the pleasure of smoking, send back the rest of the box for an immediate full refund.
That'll be the end of it. No cost, no questions, no further obligation. The way we figure it, if our cigars can't pass your tests, it's our problem.
But if you're as delighted as I think you'll be -- as delighted as thousands of other cigar lovers who have tried out our Sterling Sampler -- just sit back, relax and look forward to many hours of the kind of smoking pleasure that's all too rare these days.
Come to think of it, this kind of smoking pleasure never has been commonplace. Because the finest cigars can't be mass-produced, any more than the finest wines can be.
For one thing, places on earth where the climate and soil conditions are precisely right are extremely scarce. Tobacco plants and leaves demand a great deal of time and expert individual attention too, for optimum results.
So even in the Golden Age of cigar smoking -- the "B.F.” era (before Fidel) -- first rate cigars were always in short supply. They've always commanded a substantial premium, and
rightly so.
And the best always came from Cuba, where the growing conditions are ideal and where generations of tobacco growers and workers (maybe "artists" would be more descriptive) passed skills and secrets along from father to son.
Enter Castro. Soon after he seized power, the U. S. slapped a trade embargo on Cuban products -- and millions of American cigar aficionados faced a bleak prospect: life without Cuban cigars. As if that weren't enough, Castro then banned exports of Cuban tobacco seed.
From a cigar lover's point of view, catastrophic is too mild a word to describe the circumstances. But happily, cigar lovers are an intrepid, indomitable lot. A Cuban grower, more sympathetic to the needs of fellow cigar smokers than to the imperatives of Communist politics, managed to smuggle 12 pounds of the finest Pinar del Rio tobacco seed out of Cuba -- in the diplomatic pouch of a like-minded ambassador stationed in Havana.
(over, please)
They should both have been decorated for humanitarian service above and beyond the call of duty.
The priceless contraband made its way to. Honduras, one of the few places on earth that boasts climate and soil conditions vir-tually identical to those of Cuba's best tobacco-growing regions.
A noble experiment was about to begin. But first, one more essential ingredient was necessary -- the Cuban touch, that special cigar magic without which no sane man would ever dream of trying to produce a great cigar.
Of the 35,000-odd tobacco farmers in Cuba, only 20 or 30 went to Central America. One of the very best, the legendary Jacinto Argudin, headed up the experiment.
Important questions needed to be answered. Would the Cuban seeds flourish on foreign soil? Could Cuban know-how be transplanted -- and would it work as well in Central America?
Could the traditional Cuban style of tobacco culture, the lengthy and painstaking method where practically everything from planting to curing is done by hand and eye and nose, produce good results? Could truly fine cigars be made anywhere but in Cuba itself?
After many early failures, after years of devoted care and attention, Jacinto Argudin produced -- at last -- a leaf in which a hole burned to about the size of a silver dollar. The experiment was a success; the burn test is the ultimate sign of a good leaf. Central American cigars made from Cuban seed leaf tobacco compete vigorously with authentic Cuban cigars throughout the world.
The trade embargo is still in force. You can't buy Cuban cigars anywhere in America, not legally at least. But it almost doesn't matter now, because you can smoke cigars so authentically Cuban that not one cigar smoker in 1,000 can tell the difference.
It is cigars like these that I’d like to send you -- custom blended Cuban seed leaf cigars from Thompson. Cigars whose tobaccos were grown the old Cuban way, with unremitting attention and uncom-promising expertise. Cigars made from tobacco crops that have enjoyed as much as four years of tender loving care from seed to cigar.
A sampler box of 42 of these superb cigars has been reserved in your name. They await arrival of your
(over, please)
mailing label; until then, they will reside in our temperature and humidity-controlled humidor.
Once we hear from you, we'll remove them and ship them to you immediately. Which means they'll arrive factory-fresh, in peak smoking condition, rather than spending four to six months in the distribution pipeline, as mass-produced cigars do.
For this reason, Thompson Cigars are sold only by mail. You can't buy them in any store. Only in this way can we guarantee freshness and top quality control.
But look -- there's no need to take my word for it. Not when you have this opportunity to judge for yourself, to find out what a truly exceptional smoking experience can be.
Send no money now, Just return your mailing label in the postage-paid reply envelope. We'll send your Sterling Sampler of 42 custom-blended Cuban seed leaf cigars and bill you only $10.90 – plus $1.00 shipping charge. (Send only $10.90 if you prefer to pay in advance and I'll pay shipping charges.)
Then you decide. Smoke a couple of each of the six fine cigars. If you're not satisfied, return the bill unpaid, along with the partially empty sampler box. That'll be the end of it. No questions asked, no obligation now or ever.
I think you'll agree that Thompson's Central American experiment was a success. The Cubans think so; ironically, they now replace their own shortfalls with the Cuban seed leaf tobaccos. Don't you think you owe it to yourself to investigate?
Cordially,
Tom Timmins
P. S. To avoid disappointment, maybe you'd better return your mailing label today. Remember, there's a strict limit to the amount of top quality tobacco produced; this offer can't be extended indefinitely.
