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Figurado Shapes

Updated 2026-07-09 · by Eric

A figurado is any cigar that isn't a straight-sided cylinder... if it tapers, points, or bulges anywhere, it belongs to this family.

The shapes

• Belicoso: a standard body ending in a short, rounded taper at the head. WSA has reviewed one... the Arturo Fuente Don Carlos Belicoso (5⅜ × 52), rated a Hand-Me-One (2/4).
• Torpedo: a longer, sharper taper to a real point.
• Pyramid: tapers along its whole length, from a wide open foot up to a pointed head.
• Perfecto: tapered at both ends, usually with a rounded belly and a closed foot.
• Salomon: the showpiece... a large perfecto-style vitola with both ends worked, often finishing in a small nipple at the foot.

In practice, "torpedo" and "belicoso" get used almost interchangeably by makers and shops. The names blur; the shapes are cousins. Dimensions still read length × ring gauge, but on a figurado the ring is quoted at the widest point and keeps changing as you smoke.

What the taper actually does

• At the head, a taper funnels smoke onto a smaller patch of your palate. People describe it as concentrating or focusing flavor.
• At the cut, you choose how much of the point to take off, which tunes the draw... cut a little, test, cut more only if it's tight.
• At the foot, a closed or tapered foot means the first few puffs are mostly wrapper, so a perfecto opens on a different note than it settles into.
• Along the body, the changing ring gauge shifts the wrapper-to-filler balance as you go, so the cigar evolves by geometry alone.

Figurados are also genuinely harder to roll than parejos, which is why factories hand them to their most experienced rollers... and part of why they tend to sit at the pricier end of a line.

Keep reading

• Sizes and shapes: the vitola hub
• Parejo shapes
• Ring gauge, explained
• Anatomy of a cigar

Reviewed at WSA since this page was written