El Producto

Satisfied customer George Burns, showing the magnifying glass he once used to focus sunlight to light his cigars. In his latter days, he had thick eyeglasses that served the same purpose.

El Producto is a brand of cigar manufactured by the tobacco company owned by Mr. Romeo Y. Julieta. It is stored offshore in El Humidor.

Etymology

El Producto is Spanish for "the product." It is a droll name for a product, but Mr. Julieta thought it would advise workers in El Factorio that these were the items with which to fill El Cartón, as opposed to the contents of wastebaskets, or the janitors. It beat the original name of "the product," which was Algo Pa' Fumar ("Something to Smoke").

Famous smokers

The most famous smoker of the product was George Burns. He used a white cigar-holder, something he called "tickling the ivories," though no elephants were harmed. He liked its loosely wrapped tobacco, which meant that it would burn down to a stub more slowly. Wikipedia, while having no article on El Producto, tells us Burns would light a product and use El Progreso of its burn to time El Monólogo and tell him when he should get off the stage. The actual truth is that Burns spent most of his 100 years worried about dying young, such as by being slipped an exploding cigar. By smoking El Producto, even if it were a doctored one (El Kablooey), Burns knew he would get a few more minutes of life before it detonated.

"Besides, I get them for free," he once told El Aficionado.

El Producto moderno

The brand has declined over the years, according to plant manager Mr. Antonio Y. Cleopatra. It now has as little to do with tobacco as supermarket frozen chicken patties have to do with either chicken or Patty. The wrappers and binders now are not leaf but "sheet" — tobacco dust held together in a leaf-like shape with duct tape. El Producto is now the butt of in-house jokes, a "poor stepchild" according to factory workers who might fit the same description.

However, Mr. Cleopatra says that, given the renaissance in cigar smoking, the company intends to "reposition" El Producto, mostly involving shamelessly appropriating the image of Mr. Burns (who remembered the company in his will).

So is she.

Other El Productos

In mathematics, a capital letter Pi is known as El Producto.

$\prod _{k=1}^{10}I_{k}$

This means you take $I_{1}$ through $I_{10}$ and multiply them all together. There is no reason this would be meaningful, but at least it gets you out of your web browser for a moment, though it doesn't keep people from texting you.

Instead of Pi, you can opt for Stigma ($\sum$). It is known as La Mustachía.

See also

• El Kabong
• Greek language