2020 Cigar Retailer Survey: Toros Supplant Robustos As Best-Selling Size

The cigar world was long dominated by the robusto, the short, plump size that has been the most popular for roughly the past quarter century. But there’s a new king in the cigar world, and it’s the toro. In our latest Cigar Insider survey of cigar shops across the United States, a commanding 51.7 percent of retailers named the toro (also known as a corona gorda) as their best-selling size, compared to a mere 24.1 percent for the robusto.
In last year’s survey, robustos ranked No. 1. As toros are essentially slightly longer, slightly fatter robustos, consumers have clearly shown a preference for smokes of greater girth. Adding fuel to that trend is the strong showing of the No. 3 cigar size, the Grande (6 by 60 smokes or fatter), which was named No. 1 by 17.2 percent of those answering.
Fat is a selling point in today’s cigar world, and slim just doesn’t sell. Panetelas, the thinnest standard cigar size, was named as the worst selling size by nearly half of those answering our survey, followed by lonsdales and petit coronas (tied at 1.2 percent), which are thinner than toros or robustos.
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