Hamlet cigars are most famous in the UK for their advertising campaign "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet", which presented scenes in which a character, having failed dismally at something, is consoled by lighting a Hamlet cigar. The product being advertised was deliberately made unclear until the cigar itself appeared, accompanied by the tune of Bach's Air on the G String played by French musician Jacques Loussier, followed by the slogan "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet".

Ban on Tobacco Advertising edit

Since the UK banned all tobacco advertising on television, cinema and radio in the 1990s,^[1] as did much of Europe during that decade, the adverts are no longer aired. The final cinema adverts were initially shown from 1999 with the special slogan "Happiness will always be a cigar called Hamlet,"^[2] although they reverted to the original tagline for a period after the UK tobacco industry refused to cease advertising voluntarily. It was eventually forced to do so by the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002.^[3]

The closure of the century-old^[4] former J. R. Freeman's factory in Cardiff at which Hamlet's cigars were produced was announced in September 2007, and production transitioned to Gallaher's Ballymena factory by September 2009.^[5] The Cardiff factory was demolished the following year.^[6] By 2014 plans were afoot to move production again — this time to Lodz, Poland^[7][8] — with the Ballymena facility also to be shuttered by 2017.