The history of Gushers

Timeline

1. Jun 16, 2014The Cookie Fam’s Gelato pheno-hunt ends with a private tasting; the keepers include “Bacio” Gelato 41, the future Gushers parent.⁸
2. 2018Gushers, credited to Cookie Fam Genetics, places 10th in the licensed outdoor category at the Emerald Cup, the earliest dated record we found.^3,9
3. Sep 2019High Times lists Gushers among 20 trending strains and credits the cross to Kush4Breakfast.¹⁰
4. Oct 2019Westword profiles it and counts 11 Colorado dispensaries carrying some form of the strain.⁵
5. 2020–2024The 177 state lab tests of Gushers flower in our dataset date from these years.¹¹
6. Jan 2021Leafly names Gushers among eight cultivars trending up in 2021, along with crosses such as Cannarado’s Jolt and Purple City Genetics’ Gusher Pie.⁹
7. 2023Grape Gushers, a GMO × Gelato cross with no Gushers in it, wins Gold Indoor at the California State Fair Cannabis Awards.¹²
8. 2024Gush Mintz, bred from Kush Mints and an F1 Durb × TK41 cross, is California’s ninth best-selling flower strain, with $8.9 million in January–November sales.^6,13
9. Sep 2024Leafly’s monthly trend list features Blue Gushers, grown by Made in California and Arizona, and SF Canna’s Cherry Gushers.¹⁴
10. Jan 2026Gush Mintz is nominated for Leafly’s Strain of the Year 2025, after dropping out of California’s flower top 10 for 2025.^15,16
11. Jul 2026Leafly’s 100 best strains of all time lists TK41, “better known by the copyrighted name of a gushing fruit snack brand”, among strains for feeling euphoric.¹⁷

Why it spread

It combined two parents with followings of their own: a numbered Gelato cut from the Cookies Family and Triangle Kush, a Florida indica Leafly calls mythical.^1,2,17 It moved as cuttings: the breeder’s line was never sold as feminized seeds, and by 2019 Westword found wholesale growers and extractors sending it around Colorado.^4,5 In 2021 Leafly described it as a California staple still spreading across the US.⁹

Then breeders built on it. Purple City Genetics’ Gush Mintz and Gusher Pie, Connected’s Poison Gushers, Cannarado’s Watermelon Gushers and Jolt, and Mohave Cannabis Co.’s Durban Gushers all carry it, and Gush Mintz reached California’s flower top 10 in 2024.^{6,9,13,18,19,20}

The name

Weedmaps, AllBud and Westword all tie the name to the candy, and AllBud says the strain is named for it; Leafly says it is named for its “explosively thick fruit flavor” and declines to print the snack’s name for legal reasons, and its Poison Gushers page calls “Gushers” an infringing name.^5,7,18,21,22 Official Cannabis has no connection to the snack or its maker.

The disputed parts of the story

• Breeder: Cookie Fam Genetics (Weedmaps, Westword, SeedFinder), Kush4Breakfast (High Times, 2019) or unknown (Leafly) (see genetics).^4,5,7,10,21
• Date: no source we opened gives a release year; its Gelato #41 parent was selected in 2014, and the 2018 Emerald Cup is the earliest record of Gushers itself.^3,8
• The 2018 Emerald Cup: Leafly wrote in 2021 that Gushers “took a 2018 Emerald Cup trophy”; SeedFinder’s results list puts it 10th in the licensed outdoor category, and Leafly’s own 2018 winners article does not mention it.^3,9,23
• White Gushers: another name for the same strain (Leafly, Weedmaps) or a phenotype of it (AllBud).^7,21,24