Why Colorado Tokers Love Lucky Charms

Here’s a surprise: I was planning to do a review of a certain strain right before St. Patrick’s Day 2018, but my stoner scheduling habits got in the way. Fortunately, there were plenty of other varieties of cannabis to keep me occupied until March rolled around this year, when I finally got another chance to try out Lucky Charms.
This potent hybrid is better known for its sugar-like trichome coating than being magically delicious, but it’s become a popular strain nonetheless, routinely stocked at over ten metro dispensaries at any given time. A cross between the White and Appalachia (a rare hybrid with Green Crack and Tres Dawg genetics), Lucky Charms has become a commercial cannabis fixture thanks to high yields, easy maintenance, short flowering time and heavy cannabinoid growth.

Although lacking taste, this five-tool player with the appealing name creates a relaxing, efficient high perfect for winding down without becoming too giggly or immediately useless. Food will add to that sedation, though, and that gets difficult when Lucky Charms hits you with a third wave of munchies (which will happen no matter how boring your diet is). Get your shit done before enjoying a bowl, because whether it comes in thirty minutes or two hours, the cliff dive is inevitable.

That little cartoon shitbird leprechaun might be disappointed to find out that not only is Lucky Charms in peak season right now, but people are after it year-round in Denver. The end of the rainbow has been spotted at A Cut Above, Altitude, Buddy Boy, Colfax Pot Shop, Doc’s Apothecary, the Farmers Market, Frosted Leaf, Green Grass, Healing House, Kaya Cannabis, Kind Love, LoDo Wellness, Pig ’N’ Whistle, RiNo Supply Co., Smokin Gun Apothecary and Universal Herbs — and that’s just scratching the surface.

My favorite versions so far come from the Colfax Pot Shop and Kind Love; both are sugar-coated, fat and potent. Flavor has been the lowest common denominator of every cut I’ve come across, but the two stores I just mentioned, as well as Green Grass’s Lucky Charms in Central City and the concentrate form at A Cut Above, bring smooth, creamy notes of hash and berries under that familiar grassy-cannabis flavor.

Looks: Much like the White, Lucky Charms has a very dense bud structure, with pear- and cone-shaped wintergreen buds that come wrapped in a thick sheath of trichomes. It rarely grows above the waist, giving it an indica-leaning look.

Smell: My jars of Lucky Charms can start smelling earthy, sweet and skunky after curing for several days — kind of like Skywalker OG, with notes of sour sugar cookies and sweet hints of hash, cheese and berries at the end. You have to be patient, though, and really look for those aromas.

Flavor: Those Kush flavors of subtle bubble gum and earthy soil come through heavier in the taste, as do the strain’s sour, gassy notes, giving Lucky Charms more of a Kush/Chemdog taste.

Effects: Although easy to manage and light on the visual effects, Lucky Charms still carries a stiff high that’ll keep you in the same seat for an hour before you know it, and then the munchies take full effect. The high has been used to fight off anxiety, stress, minor pain, eating and sleeping disorders, headaches and nausea.

Commercial grower’s take: “Short, tight buds. They’ll kind of peak off a little bit to make some weird shapes, but they’re really dense for the most part, so a lot of squatty buds. You get that from the White, for sure. Same goes for Lucky Charms’ abundance of resin glands. I don’t think the 'tasteless' label is entirely fair, though. You’ll get sweet hash flavors in there, and a little sweet-berry funk, too. Not the heaviest flavor, but still, it’s not bland.”

Is there a strain you’d like to see profiled? Email [email protected].