Creature From Tatuaje: The Monster Series Gets Its 14th Full-Size Release
The full history of Tatuaje's Monster Series, from 2008's The Frank to the 2026 debut of Creature From Tatuaje as a full-size release, the line's 101st entry.
Pete Johnson launched the Tatuaje Monster Series in 2008 with The Frank, a tribute to Frankenstein and the first in what became an annual Halloween-season ritual. The format was deliberately theatrical: each release limited to 666 numbered boxes of 13 cigars, sold only through 13 lottery-selected retailers nicknamed the Unlucky 13, packaged in coffin-shaped boxes, and priced around $13 a cigar. Thirteen characters followed over the next decade, from The Drac in 2009 through The Bride in 2018, with two further releases, The Chuck and The Tiff, added in 2019 to close out what is generally counted as the original 13-character lineup.
In 2021 Johnson shifted strategy. Rather than inventing new characters, he began revisiting the earliest Monsters in chronological order under a Redux sub-line: Frank Redux 1 in 2021, Drac Redux 2 in 2022, Face Redux 3 in 2023, Wolfman Redux 4 in 2024, and Mummy Redux 5 in 2025. If the pattern holds, The JV13 Redux is next, with halfwheel projecting a September or early October 2026 arrival, though Tatuaje has not confirmed a date.
The Creature has a separate lineage from either track. It first appeared in September 2021 as a 14th character folded into Monster Mash, a sampler bundling shrunken versions of all 13 originals, at a 48 ring gauge. A second, differently sized version turned up in the 2024 Monster Smash sampler, a 13-count box in a new 5 1/4 x 52 box-pressed robusto extra vitola, produced by My Father Cigars S.A. in Nicaragua.
This year the Creature left sampler status behind. Creature From Tatuaje debuted at the 2026 PCA Convention & Trade Show in the spring, shipped to retailers starting in mid-June, and arrived at its intended full size for the first time: a 6 7/8 x 52 perfecto, an all-Nicaraguan puro built from wrapper, binder and filler all grown in-country, produced at My Father Cigars S.A. in Esteli. It sells for $19.54 per cigar, $195.40 per box, with production capped at 7,000 boxes of 10 cigars, 70,000 cigars total. That 10-count box is itself a break from Monster Series tradition, which has used 13-count coffin boxes since 2008.
Halfwheel's definitive profile of the cigar went live August 20, 2026, more than two months after the cigar had already reached store shelves, formally cataloging it as this year's flagship full-size Monster release. By halfwheel's count, which tracks every full-size, Redux and sampler variant back to 2008, Creature From Tatuaje is the 101st release in the Monster Series lineage, and the first time the character born in a 2021 sampler has been built to the ring gauge Johnson reportedly intended for it from the start.
Halfwheel's own review was mixed. The cigar left their reviewer wanting more, a profile of earth and creaminess in the first half shifting to earth and pepper in the second, with the reviewer noting it needed a more solid tobacco base than what came through in the three samples reviewed.
Source: halfwheel