How do the 90s and early 2000s elites stack up to today’s hype strains?

MJPassion · Sep 20, 2018

Elmer Bud said:
G `day BBB

CBD was very much a thing in Europe and the UK .
Even if they didn`t know it .

Then there was the Skunk causes psychosis scare . They knew the Skunk had no anti psychotic CBD .

Lots of hash with CBD . Just because only small amounts of hash came to the USA while Europe had an over supply . Doesn`t mean there was no CBD before Jaime and Shanti .

Thanks for sharin

EB .

I've heard Bubba Kush is also a CBD variant. Not much CBD but the cut has been around for 20+ years.

MJPassion · Sep 20, 2018

Night crawler said:
1990s one 10 pack was all you needed to be rich now pack after pack after pack after pack .

The 90's were a whole different era than what we are experiencing now.
Cuts were held tight and rarely shared with other growers out of fear of competition. Seeds were a bit more difficult to obtain.

Then Cali passed medical... That was a world wide game changer for seed acquisition and new growers coming on the scene.

Still... only about 10% of growers are on these forums. 90% are purchasing seeds from the hacks like Crop Kings out of that shitty add infested High Times mag.

Mikell · Sep 20, 2018

MJPassion said:
Who grew the Sweet Skunk?
Chi just did a huge release of SSS1's a bit over a year ago so I'm not surprised of the win.
Maybe the Old School is making a comeback with the Old School tokers and the New School is popular because it's "What's available"...

Likely the cut. Chimera is better known abroad than domestically.

A lot of the older types are remaking the rounds. Live extractions allow for different appreciations and typically taste more like the smell of the live plant, which does not always translate through drying/curing. We're a few years behind, shatter is still "king" in many parts.

bigtacofarmer · Sep 20, 2018

MJPassion said:
The 90's were a whole different era than what we are experiencing now.
Cuts were held tight and rarely shared with other growers out of fear of competition. Seeds were a bit more difficult to obtain.

Then Cali passed medical... That was a world wide game changer for seed acquisition and new growers coming on the scene.

Still... only about 10% of growers are on these forums. 90% are purchasing seeds from the hacks like Crop Kings out of that shitty add infested High Times mag.

The 90s followed up the last era of big gardens. When I started ordering from marc emery in the late 90s it only took a little research to figure out who was doing real work and who was just chuckin and knock offs of other peoples work. There were more seedbanks before that but mostly little tiny ads in the back of high times. I should have probably sent away to some of them too. But even just looking at what marc offered back then it was already about 75% knock offs. Now there must be 1000 places to buy seeds. Im sure the percentage of hacks has gone up. But at the same time the clone trade has gone huge. So chuckers can still make great seeds with other people work. Or someone can come out of some former police state into legal and bring his familys 30 years of breeding material to the public. Most landraces are gone but now skilled breeders are actively seeking them, understanding there value even more. Anyone can cross a male to an elite clone and go pheno hunt something great. And some breeders have again gone to huge plant numbers.

I think there is actually more diversity and quality to be found than ever before. There just happens to be 1000s of choices all claiming to be the best or rarest or whatever they think you want. So now in order to find rare gems you must sift through alot of copy cats, faker, chuckers and liars. And even some of them have great plants.

Also does not help. It seems when a breeder loses parent material that has won awards or made them lots of money, many will not admit they are no longer offering the same product. Creates a lot of strains with pre in thr name and confusion to any wondering why the so called legendary strain is no longer any good.

Sport Farmer · Sep 20, 2018

J-Icky said:
Honestly some of the best stuff, overall effect wise I’ve smoked was some seeded compressed commercial stuff that was in my area in the late 90s. Yes you could say it was mexi brick weed but there were a couple that I’ll never forget and still wish I had kept better track of those seeds. One was an emerald green with bright red hairs that would have you wanting to lay down but kept your mind racing and another was bright lime green with very few noticeable hairs that was the most euphoric, giggly weed I’ve ever smoked. Neither were today’s one hitter quitter, ultra potent, high thc strains but a joint between 3-4 people would have everyone proper. They were only around for a little over a year and then were never to be seen again and the days of cheap good weed were gone and it was back to 50-100 a quarter for anything that wasn’t brown mexi brick.

I remember this shit... I'd say it was late 90's sometime in the Bay Area... My roomate at the time, a girl, was getting this bricked green bud from her boyfriend and she was selling it. It was all kinds of different strains mixed together and seeded out pretty good. Basically bricked green bud. No mold and still pretty frosty. Decent smell. Wonderful highs, but compressed brick. We assumed it was some mexicans who got a hold of some good seeds.

It was nice because it was cheap but still considered good green. You could get an ounce of it for like 75 bucks or something stupid.

You could pinpoint the good stuff out of it really easy. Some of the strains mixed in there was some of the dankest shit out there although you only knew that by the taste and high. At the time I had a few friends who were doing single closet grows and I passed out those seeds to those guys and one of them grew a plant that I still remember to this day... Some of the most wonderful smelling/tasting hard hitting weed ever. It grew like a huge monster single stalk cola in his closet. I had a clone of it, but lost it in a move... I still had some beans from those bricks but sadly, I couldn't even get one to pop even with ga3 and I popped like 20 of them a little over a month ago. They were just too old... Almost 30 years now.

Some of the stuff I remember from back then was this stuff called "Builder" - It was very orangy, bulbous looking buds and the shit would just numb your whole body and take you out. Smelled like coffee. God damn, I'd give anything to get some of that stuff again. Best weed I've ever smoked. Some of the other stuff that was floating around in those times was some shit from Felton called God Bud or something like that.. Really strange looking weed. No hairs at all, really super light green and just covered in crystal everywhere. You'd only see that shit once in a blue moon. There was also some Northern Lights x Hashplant stuff that would float around that had an unreal taste to it. I miss that shit too.

I agree though, stuff in the 90's and 2000's was much more interesting in terms of taste and highs. Stuff nowadays is just as described.. really dull, boring highs with zero complexity to them. You're just a bump on a log or uncomfortably high in an unpleasing way. A lot of them bring on weird effects too that are very undesirable. I'm working on bringin back some of those old girls. I have a ton of old seeds from that era and I have a few girls going right now that are very unique and hard hitting from these days.

:tiphat:

Water- · Sep 20, 2018

I try and avoid the varities that have a lot of OG Kush in it.
OG Kush is a weird high for me, I dont like it... it brings me down to low

willydread · Sep 20, 2018

I'm realizing that seed brands like nirvana, kc brain, which at the end of the 90s were labeled as seedbanks of a lower level, almost "fake", have instead maintained the quality, at least on some strains, much more than the versions "official" ...

Klompen · Sep 21, 2018

willydread said:
I'm realizing that seed brands like nirvana, kc brain, which at the end of the 90s were labeled as seedbanks of a lower level, almost "fake", have instead maintained the quality, at least on some strains, much more than the versions "official" ...

I'm really considering getting some Nirvana beans when I can afford it. The prices on them are way more reasonable than the so-called high end genetics. Maybe I won't get the very best of the best, but then again I doubt I'll be disappointed(unless they get intercepted)

bigbadbiddy · Sep 21, 2018

willydread said:
I'm realizing that seed brands like nirvana, kc brain, which at the end of the 90s were labeled as seedbanks of a lower level, almost "fake", have instead maintained the quality, at least on some strains, much more than the versions "official" ...

Yeah that was quite the culture shock for me coming back to "the game" after a ~20 year hiatus.

Back when I last grew, Nirvana was considered thieves, copycats and no-good bootleggers. Everybody and their mother was throwing shit at them and they had a VERY bad standing in the community.

Now I came back and suddenly Nirvana is considered a top breeder and sort of heirloom genetics .... wtf?

That was the first indicator for me that things had changed massively in the meantime.

I have told this story before, also here on the board but I really love how it summarizes the whole change in the scene:
In the late 90s, Serious Seeds had just come out with the AK47 and Nirvana F2ed it (like they did with everything else) and offered it as Nirvana's AK47.

Serious Seeds didn't like that at all, just like Sensi didn't like Nirvana F2ing their Jack Herrer and naming it Jock Horror etc. etc.

But Serious had some grit to them and somehow they succeeded where others had failed and in the early 2000s, Nirvana pulled its AK47 off the shelves, first renamed it AK48 and then changed the whole makeup of the plant, no longer being an F2 of the Serious' AK47 but simply another cross of unrelated genetics.

Now comes the funny aspect of the story and what likely made a huge contribution towards Nirvana (and similar "breeders") getting the rep it has today (as a somewhat "heirloom breeder"):

During the early 2000s, Serious had already been raided and lost parent stock of the award winning AK47. Serious simply replaced the lost parent of AK47 with a parent plant from their "The Chronic" seedline (a strain that was based on original AK47 and touted as the next big hit by Serious themselves but nobody else really liked it, was quite mediocre by all accounts).

Due to these circumstances, there was a point in time, a few years, when the Nirvana AK47, that Serious was trying to get pulled off the shelves, was by all accounts a "better" and/or "truer" representation of the original AK47 than the one the original breeder, Serious, offered to the market.
Sounds absurd but that's how it was. Dig up some old threads, ask some people from back then, it's what happened.

Now this is admittedly an extreme example but nonetheless, it is just an example of stuff going on in "the scene" back in those days. Sensi and Dutch Passion and others have pulled similar shit where they didn't conserve their strains, lost this or that parent stock, lied to the masses and maintained for years (Serious does to this day) that "nothing changed and the strain is the same as ever" while people bought and grew that stuff only to realize that the 1/4 price "knockoffs" from Nirvana are better representations of the strains than "the originals".

And that all leads us to today, when a company like Nirvana is suddenly considered an heirloom breeder while old powerhouses like Sensi, DP and Serious have dropped off a cliff.

gladysvjubb · Sep 21, 2018

I started smoking in 1970. My friend and I were just talking about the fucking Colombian that used to get you so fucking stoned you forgot where you were! I grew out 80 bagseed of this stuff and it was powerful as hell. I still have seeds. But the fuckers grew 8 feet tall. Today NOTHING stacks up except one pheno I grew of Top 44. It was like lemon and gave us the old powerful high. I am still searching for that pheno. It is a crippler.

willydread · Sep 21, 2018

bigbadbiddy said:
Yeah that was quite the culture shock for me coming back to "the game" after a ~20 year hiatus.

Back when I last grew, Nirvana was considered thieves, copycats and no-good bootleggers. Everybody and their mother was throwing shit at them and they had a VERY bad standing in the community.

Now I came back and suddenly Nirvana is considered a top breeder and sort of heirloom genetics .... wtf?

That was the first indicator for me that things had changed massively in the meantime.

I have told this story before, also here on the board but I really love how it summarizes the whole change in the scene:
In the late 90s, Serious Seeds had just come out with the AK47 and Nirvana F2ed it (like they did with everything else) and offered it as Nirvana's AK47.

Serious Seeds didn't like that at all, just like Sensi didn't like Nirvana F2ing their Jack Herrer and naming it Jock Horror etc. etc.

But Serious had some grit to them and somehow they succeeded where others had failed and in the early 2000s, Nirvana pulled its AK47 off the shelves, first renamed it AK48 and then changed the whole makeup of the plant, no longer being an F2 of the Serious' AK47 but simply another cross of unrelated genetics.

Now comes the funny aspect of the story and what likely made a huge contribution towards Nirvana (and similar "breeders") getting the rep it has today (as a somewhat "heirloom breeder"):

During the early 2000s, Serious had already been raided and lost parent stock of the award winning AK47. Serious simply replaced the lost parent of AK47 with a parent plant from their "The Chronic" seedline (a strain that was based on original AK47 and touted as the next big hit by Serious themselves but nobody else really liked it, was quite mediocre by all accounts).

Due to these circumstances, there was a point in time, a few years, when the Nirvana AK47, that Serious was trying to get pulled off the shelves, was by all accounts a "better" and/or "truer" representation of the original AK47 than the one the original breeder, Serious, offered to the market.
Sounds absurd but that's how it was. Dig up some old threads, ask some people from back then, it's what happened.

Now this is admittedly an extreme example but nonetheless, it is just an example of stuff going on in "the scene" back in those days. Sensi and Dutch Passion and others have pulled similar shit where they didn't conserve their strains, lost this or that parent stock, lied to the masses and maintained for years (Serious does to this day) that "nothing changed and the strain is the same as ever" while people bought and grew that stuff only to realize that the 1/4 price "knockoffs" from Nirvana are better representations of the strains than "the originals".

And that all leads us to today, when a company like Nirvana is suddenly considered an heirloom breeder while old powerhouses like Sensi, DP and Serious have dropped off a cliff.

Honestly, not all the nirvana strains I have tried or seen are excellent, but let me tell you:
-haze, in the late '90-early2000 It was "pure" or anyway close to the original, you can also search for the tread of yoss33, actually look like a mostly indica plant...
-jock horror, unless it's a very indica phenotype of Jack herer, I think it's Jack x nl
-White widow, in 2003 I had two very very sativa plants ....
-sterling haze, i tried it in 2005 under the old name ognl x haze & was Amazing, better than originale... Now i dont know, i have a pack of sterling h., one day i will try it...
I've heard many good things about mystic blue, aurora indica, ice & bubblelicious, but I've never tried ...

OldSchoolGrow · Sep 21, 2018

I have a cut that the world has not seen in mass production. It's called Hassan and it's from Iran and was brought to the USA in the 80's. Best weed I ever smoked, and it trashes modern day genetics. My best breeding mom also.

MJPassion · Sep 21, 2018

OldSchoolGrow said:
I have a cut that the world has not seen in mass production. It's called Hassan and it's from Iran and was brought to the USA in the 80's. Best weed I ever smoked, and it trashes modern day genetics. My best breeding mom also.

Get busy with it!

OldSchoolGrow · Sep 21, 2018

MJPassion said:
Get busy with it!

I already have tens of thousands of seeds. Waiting for my county to step up and let me do business. :tiphat:

Burt · Sep 21, 2018

Dr green thumb also swears by the Iranian and uses it a lot
Care to explain where Hassan came from in Iran?
I may be able to track her down if she really thrashes west coast elites

Klompen · Sep 21, 2018

OldSchoolGrow said:
I already have tens of thousands of seeds. Waiting for my county to step up and let me do business.

I don't have any real good genetics just now, but I can relate to having a short-sighted country! My state is in the best agricultural region of the entire country and is letting everyone else beat us to the starting line when it comes to cannabis. I wish we'd at least do like Oregon and all personal use/growing even if we don't allow business. I'm going to try to start some plants this fall once the property is ready and all the county inspectors have been through it. Maybe once I'm done dumping every penny I have into this place we'll have some money left over to start collecting some good genes. Maybe you can sell what you have when the new seed bay site ever gets done?

Storm Shadow · Sep 21, 2018

Dr GreenThumb wishes he had Iranian genes

Sport Farmer · Sep 21, 2018

It's not really my intention to derail this thread with photos, but I felt it was related to the discussion since these beans came from this era... late 90's or so..

I have no clue of it's genetic origins but I do know that the seeds were from some outdoor crops in Oroville, CA long ago... All the phenos that have popped for me display these pink calyxes and an odd amount of red hairs.. Looks like a fuzzy orange nuglet when dried. :biggrin:

Super hard hitting killer high that lasts well over 2 hours... Just like the highs I remember from these days... We call this one Black cherry cream because it has this odd darker cherry sort of tone to it with a creamyness odor mixed in. Really killer high. I've crossed this particular girl with some grape licorice cookies, but I haven't got around to those yet.

Anyway, thought you guys might appreciate taking a look at her.

Elmer Bud · Sep 21, 2018

G `day SF

re the orange pistils .
They don`t shrink into the calyx when the plant is fully matured ?

The tales of red hair skunk fascinate me . Red pistils on dried herb signal early pick to me .

Thanks for sharin

EB .

GGNo2 · Sep 21, 2018

I smoked some bubblegum in the mid 90s and it's been my best experience ever since.
Ive personally grown a few bubblegum strains since but never had a pheno even close to what I smoked in the 90s. That's shit had me and my mates rolling in fits of giggles.

How do the 90s and early 2000s elites stack up to today’s hype strains?

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