Make believe you're an old fashion tobacco salesman .....

[T206DK]

I wonder if a modern day comparison to Ty Cobb tobacco might be something like Copenhagen or Skoal. I chewed Copenhagen sometimes during high school. I remember it was drier and finer grained than other brands of chewing tobacco or snuff. I never saw anyone try to smoke it , but theoretically you could chew the stuff, smoke it , or use it as snuff I guess.

[Abravefan11]

My wife works for a major tobacco company and when they introduce a new product they start with a test market. Usually one or two cities. From there they gather data and if worthy move forward making changes to packaging, advertising, and product. It's a long process and most products never make a national launch.

Tobacco users are extremely brand loyal and getting them to try something new is possible, getting them to change over full time is very difficult.

Based on the advertising I have seen Penn marketed the Cobb tobacco and gave it a go in the Augusta area. If it wasn't going to succeed there with the Cobb name it was probably not going to sell anywhere.

Given we have no evidence of an attempt to sell it outside of Georgia it was a flop.

Whether Cobb pulled out not wanting to be associated with a failing product, or Penn pulled the plug (no pun intended) we may never know.

How the cards factored into the brief production of the product I have no idea.

[T206DK]

Tim , you make a great point about the test markets. It's probably not a stretch to think that ATC would test the Ty Cobb brand out in his home state in order to maximize exposure. Maybe the brand didn't have time to gain a following due to the break up of the ATC monopoly. Why market something if the near future is uncertain...maybe that was the thinking. One thing seems certain, and that is that cigarette consumption was increasing around 1910; there was also a vocal anti-tobacco movement at the time as well. It does seem that ATC was pretty proud to have gotten Ty Cobb's endorsement based on the ads that were posted.