Flying High Above The Jungle With Fruit Loops

A quick note this flower was bought a while ago, and I’ve just gotten around to publishing the actual notes. Recently the Cannabis Nation growers have pushed to unionize and were at one point picketing outside my local joint. I won’t go back until they’re successful. Got to support unions!

I like fruity weed. As such, in conjunction with “what’s fresh” this is one of my go-to dispensary questions to give budtenders an idea of what I’m after, which is and will always be FLAVOR.

This particular trip to Cannabis Nation netted two strains, their house special Violets Delight (amazing) and Fruit Loops. If this flowers name was anything remotely reflective of one of my favorite childhood cereals, then it would easily become a new favorite, so I copped a few grams and scuttled home excited to light up.

Fruit Loops is the result of crossing of Blue Dream and White Widow. I’m not familiar with Blue Dream, but I have a quarter of Black Widow, which some say is the original White Widow) and it’s a hitter, so we have some interesting genetics here courtesy of the locally loved, family-owned-and-operated High Places farm out of Oregon City.

Appearance: Pretty Pedestrian Loops Actually

This is one of those unassuming buds that could easily be recruited into the CIA to be a field operator kind of unassuming. This is pretty much the kind of bud you look right over in the display case because it doesn’t have any bling-like visual features to capture your childlike fascination with new and metaphorically shiny things.

Nope, this fruit loops flower is the cannabis version of Mark Scout in Severance, dutifully going about its job of getting me high with almost no pre-warning as to what I’m about to get. In essence, it is unassuming as fuck.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion. Why can’t things just be normal? What’s wrong with just existing as you are?

At what point did it get to be everything must have to be a “limited edition exclusive double platinum carbon fiber triple dank candy counter novelty”? What’s wrong with direct, transparent, honest, and calm? What’s wrong with the reassuring comfort found in the indifferent neutrality?

“Yeah, but you review hype strains all the time!” Yes, this is true, I do love the above, but one can both simultaneously enjoy the cut-and-dry light refreshment of an ice-cold Miller High Life just as much as he can the hip-hoppity notes of your nephew’s favorite double IPA.

This Fruit Loops flower I’ve got has a healthy green color, youthful and spring-like. There are darker shades mixed in with the lighter, breaking up the tone profile of the bud, like a cannabis-themed camouflage pattern.

Little stigma hairs are sporadically scattered around the body of the nug. They are dark, medium-long, and clumped together like sweaty auburn armpit hairs.

This strain is both a bit hairier and also lacking any sort of deep purple colors that I noticed, which seem to be quite common in indica-dominant fruity strains in my experience.

Smell: Unfortunately Your Sibling Left The Box Open

The smell is immediate yet muted in its impact with a very obviously intermediate intensity. There is a very, very faint spunkiness and more fresh citrus, probably from the Blue Dream parent’s parent of OG Haze.

This isn’t a full-blown lemon haze Pledge spray levels of lemon citrus but more subtle mango and pink guava notes.

Honestly, I was hoping for a little more. Maybe it’s because I absolutely fucking loved Fruit Loops cereal as a kid. All those artificial flavors and mix of soggy and crispy loops, the sweetness increasing each time you kept your leftover milk in the bowl and added a fresh pile of loops from the box.

Shit, opening that brand new box of fruit loops and getting to the bag, and getting that first whiff of artificial fruit and refined sugar powder in your face was such a blast.

Obviously, I was probably setting myself up for disaster by assuming, for no real logical reason, that this would be some fake-fruit tropical bomb on the nose, just like Focus North’s Tropicana Cookies just blows you away with a pixy stick-like tropical Kool-Aid bouquet on the nose.

It’s not that at all. I really only get citrus on the nose. Maybe a little mellow funk à la, the tiny sweet hint of watermelon, or perhaps even fresh-cut papaya. But those smells are not very obvious at all; they’re merely blowing by on the wind from the juice shop a block down the road.

Smell is big to me, even if it is just a vanity metric to others. Some may argue the smell isn’t the flavor, and it doesn’t get you high in alone of itself, so why care so much?

For me, the smell of flower is like the appetizer at a nice meal. It is not necessary per see, but it makes the whole experience special and ties together two different flavor and texture elements, which can complement or contrast one another depending on the chef’s goals.

Also, if the appetizer is good, then there are good odds the main course will be, and I can’t remember the last time I smoked something that smelled great and didn’t have a quality high to back it up.

This cut of Fruit Loops strain is a little disappointing appetizer. Not horrible, or even “bad,” but just meh. A salad whose primary green element is romaine lettuce and which is topped with 3 carrot shavings and 1 cherry tomato kind of meh.

Sensation: Coming In Clutch To Save The Day

If you were thinking things were starting to feel a little bleak with the slow start on appearance and the very limp-dicked (or should I say limp-nosed) reaction to the smell, well then don’t you worry, things are about to turn around into sunshine!

The best quality of this weed is the high itself, by far, and you know, at the end of the day (or sesh), isn’t that all we really need?

Nobody will “oooh” or “awww” at your sac of fruit loops at your friend’s crusty B.Y.O.W-bongfest session. It’s not going to make your nose giggle when you pop the top on your stash jar, and its terpenes of temptation waft your way.

But, if you just give this unassuming little fellow a chance, delicately grind him up, pack him in a bowl, and welcome him into your lungs, you’ll find a positive, upbeat, chatty vibe wrap around you like a mother’s knit throw blanket.

It’s a groovy, fun, thought-provoking high conducive to tunes and conversation.

Discussing with my wife how cat-like owls seem to be after we just watched an HBO documentary on different types of owls around the world. Owl eyes are so cat-like. Their stare, the energy they give off, their surprise silent ambush hunting style.. it always seemed so feline.

Apparently, the Chinese word for owl is directly translated as “cat-headed-eagle” no joke, and I think the Chinese got it right. Owl is a pretty cool name, too, though.

A Spotify playlist of music inspired by Ghibli Studios plays in the background with a flickering candle with a vanilla scent burns. It is drizzling outside. It’s 6:08 p.m. Time is sliding by. All is good and calm.

Yes, this weed is a time traveler variety, sedating the clock part of your brain so that you can focus all of your energies on the more important task of experiencing euphoria and laughing, of feeling like you’ve escaped to some kind of fantasy, if not just in the physical sensation (with your mind keeping one foot firmly in reality).

It’s a cool high. It makes me happy, and I’m not sleepy. My mind is clear, and words flow through my fingers onto the keyboard of my Macbook to document this sensation in a Google Doc so that I can publish it, well, now.

I don’t do star ratings because I find them too dunce-ified to be of any real detailed use, but if I did, this strain would fall somewhere right above average, I’d say.

The appearance and smell are pretty much-mashed potatoes; not terribly exciting, but not bad either. They’re just there.

I’m not sure how much time passed from when this was harvested and when I consumed it either, so perhaps enjoyed it a bit fresher; then this would be a different tale.

But the important thing is that the high itself is great, which must be in some way fueled by the unassuming 24.13% THC content and measurable CBD content, and more importantly, the unique combination of terpenes going on here.

Blue Dream seems to be big around here, and as I’ve recently learned, White Widow (and Black Widow) don’t fuck around when it comes to the intensity of the high.

I’m wondering if another reason I had perhaps overly high expectations from this strain is that the other strain we bought from that same trip was called Violets Delight. It was absolutely insane in terms of scent and flavor.

I’m definitely going to come back to Fruit Loops, ideally picking something up as fresh as I can get it to see if perhaps there’s more to discover here on the nose and on the palette.

The quality of the high that Fruit Loops imparts is reassuring and underwrites my prospective future re-investment in this fruity strain. FRUITY STRAINS FOR LIFE!