Zkittlez: taste the rainbow, spell it with a Z

Word on the street#

Ask around and you get two stories. In one, a giant candy company bullied a small cannabis breeder over a spelling trick. In the other, a breeder borrowed a famous candy's name and its look to sell a drug that kids could mistake for sweets. Both versions get told with total confidence, usually by someone who has read a headline and a comment section.

Both sides have a real argument, so we are going to do something unfashionable and read the record. Zkittlez is one of the best-known strain names there is. Its breeder, Terphogz, is a California company. The candy is Skittles, and its maker is the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, part of Mars Wrigley. What follows is what the court filings, the two sides' own statements and the press say, with the source next to each claim. We are not lawyers, and we are not ruling on anything. A court already did that.

One wrinkle up front. The record does not give a single clean date for everything, and we flag where sources disagree rather than pick the tidier story.

What the record says#

The claim

On 3 May 2021 Mars Wrigley announced lawsuits in the United States and Canada against companies it said were using its candy brands to sell THC products [1]. One of them was filed in Chicago against Terphogz and five other companies selling cannabis and related goods under the name Zkittlez: Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. v. Terphogz, LLC, No. 21-CV-02357, Northern District of Illinois [1][2]. Wrigley's filing says the Zkittlez marks are "substantially identical in sight, sound, meaning, and commercial impression" to its own [1].

The claims, as listed by a law firm that summarised the case, covered trademark infringement, false designation of origin, unfair competition, dilution under federal and Illinois law, and cybersquatting, with Skittles marks including the tagline "Taste the Rainbow" and its S logo at the centre [2]. Wrigley asked for damages, a permanent injunction, the surrender of products, and the transfer of the Zkittlez website [1].

Wrigley's stated reason was child safety. It said it "strongly condemns the use of popular candy brands in the marketing and sale of THC products," because children could mistake them for candy [1]. We note this because it is the heart of the candy maker's case, and it has nothing to do with whether the weed is good.

The refusal

According to reports at the time of the settlement, Wrigley sought $250,000 and wanted Terphogz never to use the letter Z, alone or combined with other letters or numbers [3][4]. Terphogz said no. It argued the demands had no support in federal trademark law and violated its First Amendment rights [3][4]. Its lawyer drew a line between his client, whose products are state-regulated, and "unregulated pirates" that Wrigley had sued separately [3].

The ending (the first one)

In July 2023 the case settled. A law-firm write-up reports that, under the parties' agreement, the court enjoined Terphogz from using the ZKITTLEZ marks, and that Terphogz agreed to stop at once, including on branded items such as "ZKITTLEZ HEMP" [2]. The write-up cites the order as of 3 July 2023 [2]. We could not open the docket ourselves, so we are quoting the order as reported, and one other law-firm summary dates the settlement to June 2022 [7]. A third report places it in 2023 [6]. We go with 2023, and we flag the conflict.

Terphogz put out its own statement on 18 July 2023. It said it had used the name "for over 10 years with no complaints from the candy maker," and that consumers "can still enjoy our unique and highly sought-after cultivar under the name 'The Original Z'" [3]. Press accounts of the terms say no damages were paid, Terphogz stopped using "Zkittlez" and its circle-Z branding, and it kept "The Original Z" and its Z logo [3][4]. Its managing partner described the practical effect as a labelling change: "now we just have to change the labeling" [5].

The sequel

It did not end there. In January 2025 a trade outlet reported that Wrigley had asked the court to enforce the order, alleging more than 100 violations, such as continued sales of a product called Zkittlez and similar names left up on social media [6]. Terphogz replied that it was not in violation, called the motion a "gotcha," and said it had removed the images and names from the accounts it controls. Its lawyer said the 2023 settlement recognises Wrigley's trademark while letting Terphogz brand its seeds as "The Original Z" [6].

A Seyfarth summary published in February 2025 reports that the court found the violations significant, including partly censored versions of the mark, and set a compliance deadline of 4 February 2025, with a $1,000 daily fine until then and Wrigley free to seek profits and fees [7]. That is a law firm's account of a ruling that we have not read ourselves. We report it as that.

Fair summary: the candy maker says a famous name was being traded on; the breeder says the name was theirs for a decade, and a letter of the alphabet is not property. A court agreed to an order, and the two sides still disagree about how far it reaches.

What the plant says#

This part of the story usually gets skipped. The name changed in 2023. Did the plant? We can now say what the lab record holds for the old name, and where it stops.

CannaLib has a dossier on Zkittlez, frozen on 29 Sep 2026 [10]. It holds 558 flower lab tests of lots sold under the name. The median is 20.9% THC, and the typical range (10th to 90th percentile) runs from 14.8% to 26%. The most-agreed seller or breeder claim is 23% THC, from 5 independent sources, so claims and labs are close to each other [10]. The leading terpenes, by stated value, are β-caryophyllene, α-humulene, limonene, linalool, α-bisabolol and nerolidol, and CBD runs from 0 to 0.1% across 346 samples [10].

Same jar before and after? We cannot answer that yet. The page's 9 aliases for the strain are spelling and seed-listing variants, and "The Original Z" is not among them, so we cannot split the lab tests by the new name or by date. A rename is a label change, and a before-and-after comparison needs lots we can tell apart. We would rather say so than guess.

The family tree. CannaLib records two parents, Grape Ape and Grapefruit, each with one source on the summary line [10]. That agrees with the strain guide we cite [8], which also mentions a third parent nobody identified. The page records 491 descendants, so the strain has been widely used in crosses. Checking the parents in DNA is an upcoming release: a sample sold as Zkittlez in a public DNA panel, against samples sold as Grape Ape and Grapefruit. Think of kinship as a family-resemblance meter: a true parent scores about 0.25, a grandparent about 0.125. We have no kinship numbers yet, and none appear here.

The cups. CannaLib lists 25 cup placings for the name, 20 verified against published results, between 2015 and 2025 [10]. Many are in concentrate categories such as rosin and hash, so they speak for what was pressed or extracted, not for flower alone. The verified list includes the Emerald Cup in 2017 and 2018, and High Times Cannabis Cup placings in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019. Ganjapreneur separately reported in December 2016 that a "Zkittles" entry bred by 3rd Gen Family and Terp Hogz was named the Emerald Cup's top flower [9]; that spelling is not one of the page's aliases, so we do not count it among the placings. A strain guide also lists a 5th place in 2014, but we could not confirm it against a second source, so we leave it out.

For how a hot name outruns its plant, see The Pineapple Express Files. For one plant sold under many names, see One Plant, Fifty Names. The full record for this strain is on the Zkittlez page.

So what is Zkittlez?#

Today, what we can say is smaller than the loudest takes on either side. The record shows a real lawsuit, a settlement, an order about a name, a rename, and a later disagreement about compliance. The lab record shows a flower with a median of 20.9% THC across 558 tests. Neither shows whether the plant changed with the rename, because that is not what a trademark case measures, and our lab data cannot yet tell the two names apart. A name is a label, and a court can settle who may print it. It cannot say what is in the jar.

That is the gap CannaLib exists to fill, and it is why part of this episode is still open. When the DNA release lands we will update it. The strain's whole record lives on the Zkittlez page. For the wider picture of why names and plants drift apart, start with Lineage Under the Limelight.