Why Colorado Tokers Love Cookie Monster

So many Sesame Street characters are iconic. Bert and Ernie. Oscar the Grouch. Back in 1977, Big Bird was on an iconic Sports Illustrated cover with tall, shaggy-haired Detroit Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych. Elmo was responsible for an all-time toy craze in 1996. And still, none of them compare to Cookie Monster.

Toddlers loved that blue fur and simple vocab. We envied his diet, and some of us still do. But as parents start watching the show with their kids and reconnect with Cookie Monster, some see a sad reflection of addiction and America’s sugar intake — or maybe that’s just the ranting of someone stoned off his ass on Cookie Monster, a Herculean strain with alleged Girl Scout Cookies and OG Kush origins that I’ve been smoking a lot lately.

You can find strains with the same parents as Cookie Monster, like Cookies OG, Cookies Kush and OG Cookie. Are they all the same strain? Sort of, but not really. Once the Cookies craze hit in the early 2010s, growers were quick to breed their cuts of Girl Scout Cookies with other popular strains, and backcrossing it with OG Kush was an obvious choice. After winning a first-place trophy at the 2014 High Times Cannabis Cup in Seattle, Cookie Monster was one of the children that stuck around.

Cookie Monster has a reputation for relaxing users, and it’s known for snowballing effects that chip away at stress and pain before you crumble into bed. The intensifying high is somewhat rare for potent strains, mounting fifteen to twenty minutes after smoking and sending cocky stoners to sleep early. Anyone smoking this strain as quickly as its Sesame Street namesake mows down cookies can’t blame Mr. Snuffleupagus for a lost day, because lack of productivity is a common (and often sought-after) aspect of the high. Like most strains bearing the Cookies moniker, Cookie Monsters carries flavors that would be at home inside a cereal box or ice cream shop, full of hints of sourdough and creme de menthe on top of the usual weed notes of Kush, sandalwood and dank earth. Keep this one in your cookie jar and it’ll just get better.

We’ve caught Cookie Monster at 1136 Yuma, Berkeley Dispensary, Cherry Peak, High Level Health and Urban Dispensary.

Looks: Typically dense and triangular or cone-shaped, Cookie Monster’s buds aren’t the biggest, but they could be the brightest. Pear-colored calyxes look white under a milky sheen of trichomes, bright-orange pistils and spots of blue-ish purple.

Smell: Strong hints of biscuit with sweet, fruity notes, almost like a pilsner beer, hit the nose up front, followed by strong, earthy whiffs of hash and damp wood. The result is a tangy funk with plenty of sweet, doughy layers in between.

Flavor: Safe to say that Cookie Monster takes after its Cookies heritage more than the OG Kush side of the family (even though Cookies strains are part of the OG family, but you know what I mean). Those earthy, resinous flavors of Kush and sourdough mix well with a cheesy, fruity funk, giving your mouth a fresh feeling after a hit.

Effects: Treat Cookie Monster like an edible, going low and slow while feeling out the relaxing effects. Smoking too much can be debilitating in 45 minutes, easing the body and mind far past the point of not giving a shit and into the realm of falling asleep while sitting up.

Home grower’s take: “I actually get hints of mint more than anything. I took some cuttings of it from a grower who cannot be named, and it actually turned out pretty strong. We got more than a pound per plant from it, which isn’t terrible, but it took about ten weeks to fully bloom, and we didn’t do much better in future runs with it. Made some great rosin, though.”

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