Real girlie cards, but from cigarettes, not cigars

     Black and white girlie cards featuring nude and semi nude young women turn up on ebay with regularity. They’re often called “cigar insert cards” and they’re not.

        They’re cigarette cards. Cigarros in Cuban means Cigarette.

    This mistake is sometimes made by ebay sellers (who speak Spanish and should know better) because [1] the Trinidad name is confused with the modern cigar brand that has revived that name and [2] the Cuban word cigarros (cigarettes) is carelessly mistranslated.  

NCM Home        Premiums        Cuba

     Any doubts what TRINIDAD cigarros are?

Below is a close up from a tin Cuban sign.

Top line reads “Cigar and cigarette factory”

[12233]

    At right is the back page of a Cuban baseball program from 1947 not in the

NCM collection. Bottom line reads “Try

and compare.”

    Of all the cigarette cards produced outside the U.S., none were more popular than the nudes and cabaret performers given away in droves by Cuba’s largest 20th century cigarro (cigarette) maker, Trinidad y Hno.  Made for the island’s home market, the cigarette cards of Trinidad and Brother became favorites of sin-seeking Americans who flocked to the Caribbean during the 20’s and 30’s to escape the Puritanism of prohibition. So popular were Trinidad’s cigarette cards, Santiago and Brother, Gener and other Cuban makers began offering similar cards. A sample from each of those three companies is seen here.

[14074]