Ok, I originally wrote a different post but than re-read yours, and noticed it was an assortment box with this problem and not a full box of the same sticks. So here's my best estimation based upon other things I've read about your storage situation.
What I would guess is that this box has been effected like this BECAUSE it was in the center of your wine cooler. As you know, one of the side-effects of a typical fridge cooling unit is the fact that moisture is drawn out of the air inside of the contained space. Since this box was in the middle, there's a possibility it was exposed to more humidity due to the fact that the beads have to work overtime everytime the air is "dried" out. Since that center box never become dried by the cold air, it only gets humidified, and that's why it's so spongy.
Here's another way of explaining the same thing:
The compressor cools and dries the air and lets say it runs for only 1/4th the time.
The boxes on the perimeter are exposed to this cool, dry air and lowers the tobaccos relative humidity in those boxes.
The beads release their humidity and thus re-humidify the perimiter smokes and OVER humidify the interior smokes since this re-humidification process takes 3x the time of the de-humidificaiton process.
If that cooling span was as long as the humidification span, all boxes would be closer to the same RH, but since it is not and the exposure to water is much longer than it's opposite, center areas that are not reached during the refrigeration period are not brought back down to the desired level, thus spongy, wet cigars.
Was that redundant enough to be confusing? Hope you got at least a little of that J!
