United’s Flying Cigar Store

 

(National Cigar Museum) ... The person who actually conceived of the “Flying Cigar Store” is not identified. It’s a toss-up between Turner, a P.T. Barnum-like promoter who needed advertising dollars to keep him and his plane in the air, and United Cigar, one of the nation’s biggest advertisers with a store in just about every town with an airfield. Whether Turner saw a cash-cow or United Cigar envisioned the crowds the unusual aircraft was attracting, or both, is not recorded. In either event, it was a marriage made in Heaven. The retail giant contracted with Turner for a 10 week, 25 town tour, for which he was paid $10,000. Continued