STG Enough Already, Chicken Little, Or What?

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Dec 9, 2023
1,247
14,676
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Truth. You are correct. I stuck my chin out, and won’t be surprised at contrary opinions. At least we share pipe smoking, for as long as it lasts.
No worries :). I was complaining a week or so ago about the topic of SG/GH tins being bad coming back up over and over. I was reminded that some people don’t know about this and I agreed. So, like many humans, I too can be hypocritical in my opinions lol
 

Oddball

Starting to Get Obsessed
Dec 29, 2022
288
1,465
TN
I enjoy pipe smoking arguably as much as any of us on this forum. But at risk of sounding like a pinhead, there is much agonising hand-wringing on the forum over corporate tobacco business. Too much. It’s like a group of gossiping ladies under the hair dryers at the salon. The self-righteousness and inflated belief in assuming any of us has an informed opinion is getting a little boring (including this one, too, of course!) Is it really the strong belief here that our own actions or opinions are right and everyone else’s are wrong? Is it impossible that others (who concocted and executed these business decisions) might have valid viewpoints, whatever the heck they might be? Is it a bloody disaster? Is the sky falling? The end of the pipe smoking world as we know it? I don’t think so. Even if it is, I think we vastly overstate our relevance and importance as a community and demographic.
welcome to the internet pal....
 

SSGT.

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jul 7, 2024
182
933
Sealy Texas
Is it really the strong belief here that our own actions or opinions are right and everyone else’s are wrong? Is it impossible that others (who concocted and executed these business decisions) might have valid viewpoints,
This forum is based in the United States, where we have the right to be wrong if we so choose to be. So, if you want to have a different take on things than I do, well you can be wrong if you want to be.
 

anotherbob

Lifer
Mar 30, 2019
17,061
32,049
46
In the semi-rural NorthEastern USA
I mean, I feel like maybe you struggle to understand the purpose of the forum. Of course losing the largest US producer of tobacco, who has existed for 175 years, is going to cause a stir. Hundreds of tobaccos, most likely being someone's favorite, are gone. Of course we overstate our relevance. If we didn't, there wouldn't be a forum full of these people. I recommend skipping posts that do not interest you rather than running the risk that you "vastly overstate (y)our relevance and importance as a community and demographic."
sure but at the same time there was a lot of what most generously could be described as shocking hyperbole (not the generously described part). There is a difference between passion and self importance.
 

MisterBadger

Part of the Furniture Now
Oct 6, 2024
864
6,879
Ludlow, UK
I think that, if someone from any time up to the mid 19thC were to have read (or had read to them) these Sutcliff/Macbaren/STG threads, they would be astonished to learn that so many varieties of tobacco were universally available. It really wasn't until the late 19thC that consistent, branded merchandise became generally marketed in the First World and when you look at all the different tobacco brands (and manufacturers) that used to exist then but disappeared a few years later, it all begins to fall into a different perspective.

For three generations we have been mentally conditioned to expect choice and to follow brand. We don't have to accept that conditioning. I mean, even 100 years ago only a minority of smokers exercised the kind of multifarious choices (to say nothing of a connoirsseurship arguably bordering on the effete) that now seems normal to this modern minority we comprise.

Even in the 20thC First World - I speak of Europe - there were dark times when people counted themselves lucky to get tobacco of any kind at all. I once saw a cartoon - I wish I could find it for you - of two Channel Islanders during the German occupation during WW2. The caption read:

"My horse's tail is gone? Dammy, I had to smoke something."
 

Sobrbiker

Lifer
Jan 7, 2023
4,508
59,632
Casa Grande, AZ
I read the news as it came, and glad I did because I was able to stock up enough of the very few offerings I felt living without would present a hardship on my enjoyment.
Beyond that, I’ve learned a lot about the current state of the industry.
Makes me more appreciative of the minority of companies that do give a damn about our minority approachs how we choose and enjoy blends.
 

Egg Shen

Lifer
Nov 26, 2021
1,203
3,999
Pennsylvania
I kind of get it specifically when there are multiple threads that are seemingly parallel and turn into the same talking points etc. The problem I have is once I've replied to a thread, I get alerts for that thread even after it seems to have run it's course, and I've lost interest. Now obviously I could just ignore the alert, but I just can't help myself. I need to know what wrong thing was said on the internet on any given day! :LOL:
Yeah but all those threads died down; they’re no longer on the first page. And then this guy made yet another thread about it.
 

krizzose

Lifer
Feb 13, 2013
3,427
21,658
Michigan
Is it a bloody disaster?
Losing Mac Baren is a disaster. The roll cakes and the HH line are gone forever. STG manufactured Navy Flake won’t be the same as the original; STG will never case their tobaccos in the Mac Baren maple sugar, and they will never make the Mac Baren spicy cavendish. I’m lucky that I’ve got good quantities of my favorite Mac Baren blends stashed away, but it sucks for the pipe smoking world generally. There are plenty of great tobacco blends available, and yes, life will go on. However, losing that venerable catalog of blends and the tradition and know how therein remains a disaster for pipe smokers.

And that doesn’t even touch on what the loss of Sutliff means to small US blenders like Country Squire, KBV, Peretti, and WCC.
 

sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
21,387
52,143
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
I think that, if someone from any time up to the mid 19thC were to have read (or had read to them) these Sutcliff/Macbaren/STG threads, they would be astonished to learn that so many varieties of tobacco were universally available. It really wasn't until the late 19thC that consistent, branded merchandise became generally marketed in the First World and when you look at all the different tobacco brands (and manufacturers) that used to exist then but disappeared a few years later, it all begins to fall into a different perspective.

For three generations we have been mentally conditioned to expect choice and to follow brand. We don't have to accept that conditioning. I mean, even 100 years ago only a minority of smokers exercised the kind of multifarious choices (to say nothing of a connoirsseurship arguably bordering on the effete) that now seems normal to this modern minority we comprise.

Even in the 20thC First World - I speak of Europe - there were dark times when people counted themselves lucky to get tobacco of any kind at all. I once saw a cartoon - I wish I could find it for you - of two Channel Islanders during the German occupation during WW2. The caption read:

"My horse's tail is gone? Dammy, I had to smoke something."
Well, the professional blending business is a bit over 3 generations, what with blending houses still turning out their products well past the century and a half mark. That said, a great majority of the various blenders have gone tits up, swallowed up by conglomerates, their separate brands reduced to scalps worn round the conglomerate's belt. In place of a market with more idiosyncratic offerings, people are left to debate the various supposed merits of what is the same mixture, tinned under different labels.

Variety might have been an illusion, but the illusion was still there. Humans like abundance or at least, the appearance of it.

I think that it also depends somewhat on what one is looking to get out of pipe smoking. At one end it's the nicotine hit and at the other it's the flavors, with most somewhere along that continuum. I'm in the flavors camp and couldn't care less about the Nic.

In the wider scheme of things fine pipes and pipe tobaccos are really a niche first world topic and the tobaccopalypse is of zero importance, but keep in mind this is a niche first world forum, devoted to a very niche first world subject and market.

Yes, I'm aware that tobacco is ubiquitous in the world at large, but that's not been the focus here. Here, it's "fine" tobaccos and silly expensive luxury pipes, with the occasional nod to cobs, etc., as well as acquisitions and collecting, and reviewing tobacco, and about as precious as it can get. That's what enthusiast sites generally are, a bit precious, maybe with some practicality added for leavening.
 

fishmansf

Can't Leave
Oct 29, 2022
478
1,664
PNW
People should be angry at the former Mac Baren owners, not STG. STG saw a failing business and offered to gobble them up. Mac Baren had been poorly managed by the son for years. He is to blame.