Contributor: Franklin Stein
Contenders
Future Premium (Strawberry)
-VS-
Moon Rocks Premium (Sativa)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Light Club. We match two pre-rolled joints against each other in a head-to-head smokedown. Both will be lit. Only one will win.
After 1999 and 2001, there’s really no great year of the future to look forward to, except for one that’s shockingly close to present day: 2020. Expectations are high for this coming year, and the expectations were equally high for this brand of pre-rolled joints that promises a high-impact series of effects, with a THC percentage that’s levels above its competitors. That’s why we’ve thrown two different selections from the 2020 brand into the “Smoke-tagon” to see if they live up to the hype.
On our last visit to Pico Gardens, we were amazed by the selection of 2020 pre-rolls they carried. This shop only carries excellent product, so we knew that these had to be something special. We saw two different types of pre-rolls offered: Future Premium, which appears to be their basic pre-roll, and Moon Rocks Premium, which was their top shelf selection. Both were available in a variety of flavors.
Since we’re bad at making decisions, we opted for one of each. We chose a Strawberry-flavored Future, and a Moon Rocks joint of the Vanilla Mango varietal.
Future Premium Pre-Roll Joint (Strawberry): $20 for 1 joint
Moon Rocks Premium Pre-Roll Joint (Vanilla Mango): $25 for 1 joint
Future Premium (Strawberry)
2020 is still the future, and we hope it looks as good as this pre-rolled joint does. The label on the glass tube informs us that this is 1.3g of SFV OG, and it’s been infused with hash oil and rolled in golden kief. The price point was top shelf, and from the looks of things, this pre-roll was going to deliver on the goods.
The phrase that stood out to us from the label was “rolled in golden kief.” We didn’t know what that meant, and weren’t surprised to find that it quite simply meant: kief that had a light green/light brown color to it. The coat gave the joint an earthy look, almost like sand. It was quite dazzling in the light, and we were ashamed that we would have to burn it up.
We chose the strawberry flavor, and were hit with a very strong strawberry scent, as soon as we opened the tube. It was definitely a dirty odor. It reeked of all the hash oil this flower had been treated with during the process.
It’s rare that a pre-roll joint has just the right flavor, but this one really knocks it out of the park. The taste is strong and heavy, but it’s not filthy. The flavor is there, but only as a sweetener, it was not trying to overpower the smoke. The aftertaste is minimal, too. We were able to puff away easily. Which, to be honest, surprised us – considering how much kief was on this thing. It was absolutely great.
First of all, this joint is a slow-burner. And we mean a slooooooooooow-burner.
However, the effects are not as slow. We got stoned off this joint real quick. SFV OG is a Hybrid strain, and this one burned closer to a Sativa than an Indica, in our opinion. We were definitely feeling a strong body buzz with this joint, and the kief dusted our eyes with a heavy headed sensation. The Indica feelings wore off faster, leaving us to settle into our Sativa high.
Skywalker (Sativa)
If the astronaut on the label doesn’t tip you off, then we’ll fill you in — this joint has been engineered to get you really, really high. There’s less information on this package than on the Future Premium pre-roll, hoping that the extremely high THC count will sway you away from asking any more questions. So without knowing what strain we were working with, we popped open the tube and headed for the blast off.
Like the other joints in the 2020 brand, this bad boy has been coated with golden kief, which gives it a lighter look than most kief-covered joints. It’s tan and bright, and looks more inviting than the darkened green shade of kief. The joint was so fat that we had to pull it (gently) from the tube, and we could also see little bits of plant and leaf stuck to the sides, along with some kief. Perhaps this was meant to approximate the stars, craters and other celestial beings of the night sky. Who knows?
Our chosen flavor was Vanilla Mango, and the scent of the pre-roll was both light and pleasant. It smelled like both parts of its name, but the swirl of flavors created an artificial scent that reminded us of a bad candle.
This joint had a heavy taste that was dark, but not dirty. We had a hard time detecting either vanilla or mango in the puffs we were dragging. The overall taste was kind of sour, and the longer we smoked, the worse our throats started to feel. First, it was an itch, then it was burning like crazy.
Like other 2020 pre-rolls, this joint burned slow, as we passed it around. But unlike the others we’ve smoked, we weren’t over the moon with the effects. We got stoned, and the smoke felt like an Indica to us. As we puffed away, our mouth started to tingle, possibly from all the kief. It was sort of fun at first, but it overstayed its welcome and contributed to the aforementioned scratchiness that we felt in our throats.
And the winner is…
… the Future Premium pre-roll.
Sorry, Moon Rocks, but you didn’t take us into orbit this time. However, we were absolutely blown away by the Future, which delivered a great look, smell, taste, and a high that was everything we look for in a pre-roll.
