Fake Cohiba Genios

[Stevieboy]

Ahhhh...you poor bastard! What a disappointment

This has happened to me twice in the last year when someone's come back from Cuba.....
First time was with Cohiba Piramides LE...from 2008 lol!!!!
The second was a box of Cohiba Esplendidos that were so badly made that I burst out laughing at the guy who showed me...poor sod was not pleased

[monkey66]

Does anyone have a version of the 'my friend/family visited Cuba....' story and the sticks were real?

[Simon-JG-hr]

Thanks for sharing that macker. Very interesting to read a blow-by-blow account of actually comparing real Cohibas and their fake counterparts side-by-side. Excellent pictures too.

[cohibaIV]

Well putting aside the whole range of arguments why fakes are bad (not least for the cuban govt), it would still be interesting to know what the fakes were like to smoke. Did you try any?

Sure, they would be nothing like a genuine cohiba, but assuming that they were 'good' fakes (not full of short fill and assorted rubbish etc) then they could still be good smokes for the money. I've tried cuban fakes in the past that were so cheap that they undercut the cheapest non-cuban cigars available but tasted a damn sight better than them (although no where near as good as what they were supposed to be of course), so sometimes even with fakes you can get value for money if you know what I mean...

You could open one up and show use the contents??

Soon see if well made or not..

[cohibaIV]

What a bloody shame.....

Thanks for sharing tho...

Makes you think, do Cubans not know what fakes are like or just not that botherd???????

[captain duff]

Well putting aside the whole range of arguments why fakes are bad (not least for the cuban govt), it would still be interesting to know what the fakes were like to smoke. Did you try any?

Sure, they would be nothing like a genuine cohiba, but assuming that they were 'good' fakes (not full of short fill and assorted rubbish etc) then they could still be good smokes for the money. I've tried cuban fakes in the past that were so cheap that they undercut the cheapest non-cuban cigars available but tasted a damn sight better than them (although no where near as good as what they were supposed to be of course), so sometimes even with fakes you can get value for money if you know what I mean...

[macker89]

My girlfriend phoned me up a couple of weeks back to say that a friend of hers had been visited by some relatives who live in Cuba and that they had given her some cigars to try and sell. A familiar sounding story and all the alarm bells started ringing straight away but I have to admit that my pulse did quicken a little at the thought of the slim chance of me grabbing some top class smokes from someone who doesn't know their market value. The friend dropped them off to my girlfriend and I had her describe them over the phone and straight away my excitement doubled but my suspicions quadrupled as it would seem that she was staring at 2 x 25 boxes of Cohiba maduro 5 Genios Oooh, the things I could do with 50 of those at bargain bucket prices Later that evening, I had her bring them over and I looked forward to making a direct comparison with the 10 box that I had in my humi.Here's what I found......

Right off the bat my heart sank as the cardboard outer boxes were ultra flimsy and had no seals or factory code/date on them. The presentation boxes themselves had a woodgrain finish rather than the smooth lacquered one of the originals and the printing was definitely not as crisp. The clasp of the case whilst being of a similar style to the originals had an awful blobby cohiba logo on it that was barely legible. Once open, the shoddy construction of the case itself was there for all to see with uneven and unfinished edges aplenty and there was even the obligatory diagonal rather than half moon shaped cut on the corner of the cedar inlay....one thing I will say is that it gave me a timely reminder of just how well made and nicely finished some of our cigar boxes actually are.
The sticks themselves didn't actually look too bad. They were well rolled, they were all the same length and width and the wrapper was a fairly nice dark colour. The bands were fairly well printed with gold lettering and nice sharp edges. A direct comparison with a kosher stick shows that the band suffers from all the usual fake flaws though, a lack of raised gold lettering, a slightly orange hue to the yellow background, incorrect number of white squares and subtle differences to the 'Habana, Cuba' font. The final test of comparison was aroma and the fake's half decent looks were totally belied by it's smell or more appropriately its lack of, the real Maduro 5 has a lovely rich aroma with sweet chocolatey notes and the imposter had very little smell to speak of other than that of a regular production cigarette.
Ooh, one little last minute find was that some kind soul had tucked some fake warranty and habanos stickers in the bottom of the box so that they could be applied at will by a counterfeiter wishing to up his game.

All in all it was an interesting experience to see these fauxhiba's up close but I've still got that little twinge of disappointment that I don't currently have 50 bargain Genios's in my humi.