Mcclelland Frog Morton's Cellar

I have one tin of FMC left, and I am planning on letting it sit in the cellar for about 5 years before I open it and enjoy it.

Even if suitable components could be found that mirrored the Frogs, they couldn't be introduced into the US market due to the FDA Deeming Regs without going through the mysterious and hyper expensive "Deeming" process and receiving FDA approval prior to being distributed for sale.  Not gonna happen. 

The folks I know who cellared McClelland blends aren't going to be giving it away.  They'll sell it at after market rates or use it to trade for other tobaccos that they want.  Prices may drop a bit next year, but in a few years it's likely that prices will begin to rise as the existing stock gets smoked.

I was completely surprised to find that I had any of it around as I didn't like it when I smoked it, so I didn't stock any.  I don't stock anything I don't intend to smoke.  I knew about McClelland closing its doors well before the announcement, but didn't buy any because I already had what I needed for smoking.  It never occurred to me to hoard it for scalping.  I did know in advance about the final shipment in January and told a few people that I knew who liked it to keep an eye out, so they were able to buy some to smoke.

That post was way too focused on regulations.

The point is: I think it is very likely that someone will replicate, at the least, Frog Morton's cellar. Deeming regulations be damned.

The FDA could have different regulations for domestically produced items vs. imported items. There could be a loophole or exclusion or no applicable laws.

It's possible.

Many business have been forced into importing as a way to stay in business and legally avoid new domestic regulations. A long time ago there was a guy named Gordon Clark who manufactured 90% of the worlds surfboard cores in the USA. The EPA and local governments came down on him with hard threats intimidating/forcing him out of business. www.surfer.com/features/clarkfoamletter/ . I was talking with some different unrelated people at the time and had a chance to talk to the OSHA guy dealing with the guy at EPA. In any case by that point they had already shut down and in the aftermath all the surfboard core production went overseas since EPA had different regulations for domestic production vs. overseas import regulations . So various companies were able to import the surfboard cores and avoid dealing with the domestic regulation nightmare in the U.S. The EPA, OSHA and environmental groups made sure there was no way they could afford to manufacture domestically in the U.S.

I should not be discussing this but since its 13-14 years ago and anonymous  - I had a client a long time ago who was importing industrial evaporation filtering machines for chemical tanks in Los Angeles. The EPA, OSHA and local California environmental groups came down hard on his U.S. client - essentially forcing them to import these expensive filter machines from an expert - which needed to be replaced 1-2 x per year in a certain way. I was told the filter machines do little very little in reality except to appease CA regulations and environmental groups - so these groups can in turn claim they are fighting pollution. Crazy. My client was making really good money when his new customer shut down the tanks, fired 90% of the workers and started importing the chemicals. Manufacturing domestically and creating U.S. manufacturing jobs was not affordable and it was too expensive to leave CA  - so they were forced to import.

I guess my point is - it's possible this type if thing could apply to the tobacco industry.

I don't know. I just want to be able to smoke McClellend's Frog series again.  

Gee. 1/5 of a tub. That's generous. Let me get back to you after those 100 posts. l.ol,.

I’ve never smoked any of the Frogs. I only became curious about them about three months ago. Oh well, such is life.

I never got the chance to smoke the Frogs either. Not that I haven't wanted to try them, but a B&M owner told me this a couple months ago, "I wouldn't bother trying to get some. It would be worse that you find you love it, and then there is none left, than to never have tried it in the first place". I left there in total agreement with that statement, and haven't chased any down.

The best advice for I have for you is instead of offloading forty dollars or whatever it is on a tiny tin head to a club and trade a bowl of Penzance or something for someone else's fmc. Then try the English luxury like I said. It's really close enough that you aren't really missing much. Good luck buddy

Blend #5 is a good blend in its own right, but it's not comparable to FMC. It was designed to be similar to Dunhill 965, though I don't think it is.

You'd best stick with eBay. The amount of money you would need to make a change in my situation that exceeds my liking for the FMC would be exorbitant. If you could afford it you would already have a cellar full. It ain't going to get cheaper than $50/tin. That's only 50¢ per gram, $1.50 per bowl. Much cheaper than any decent cigar.

I try (and have succeeded pretty much) to not get hung up on OOP blends. There are so many currently in production to choose from, my suggestion is take that $500+ you would need to grab ten tins, for example, off eBay and explore what's still around. When you find something you dig, go deep on it and keep searching for your next blend you love. I'm still very much in the acquisition and cellar building stage, so condimental OOP tins are a money sink for me personally.

That same $500 would buy you 40-50 tins or a very large amount of extremely solid bulk. Vastly more than the 2.2 pounds of Froggy.

Back in 2016, when the FDA announcement hit with the force of the meteorite that took out the Dinosaurs, I read through the 400+ pages of findings and testimony, as well as the FDA published forms and highlights to try to understand what all of this meant.  That was no easy task as the regs were written in a mixture of Sanskrit and Neo-Medieval-Bulgarian.  But what was reasonably plain was that imported blends were not going to get a pass from the SE or Deeming processes if they wanted to stay available in the US market.  That's a hurdle all blends introduced after February 15th 2007 are facing.  Foreign blenders' deadlines for registering their blends are different from those of domestic blenders, but they are there nonetheless.

There were some workarounds that have allowed blenders to appear to issue new blends subsequent to the cut off date of 8/8/2016, but if those ploys weren't actually a matter of record prior to 8/8/2016 you're SOL.  New blends made by importers can enter the US market.  All they have to do is go through either of the supposedly  ruinously expensive SE or Deeming paths first.

You only way to continue to smoke McClelland's Frogs is to just empty out your bank account and buy it a scalpers prices, unless you have other unicorn blends you can use to trade.