grandaddy purple has been in circulation pretty consistently. GDP only started to become scarce in 2016.
With legalization, a new recreational demographic suddenly became the primary consumers of cannabis in California. Those people didn’t have the knowledge that experienced smokers and prop 215 medical patients had. They didn’t know anything about the variety of genetics that were available, because they were not part of the cannabis culture.
Girl Scout Cookies was simply the most known cannabis “brand” in the general media culture because of Berner’s shameless promotion of cookies in bay area rap, and probably even more so because of news coverage that was attracted in 2013 or 14 when San Francisco girl scout troops were selling cookies in front of dispensaries.
This had already been going on for at least 3-5 years, but the local news found the girl scout cookies strain name and its connection to rap music to be an easy way to generate controversy about strain names that might attract kids to try weed. It was classic marijuana demonization.
That little wave of puff piece marijuana demonization news coverage is largely responsible for the market saturation that cookies achieved in recent years. A bunch of first time smokers (or first time legal buyers) recognized the name from the news, tried weed / high end product for the first time, and of course they liked it.
Berner’s marketing continued to push out other classic california genetics when his business was licensed for recreational sales.
Because it’s kind of relevant, here’s another post I wrote about how girl scout cookies first showed up on the bay area medical and black market cannabis scene in 2012.