Terphogz is the Mendocino County breeding crew that created The Original Z, the terp-loud cultivar half the modern seed market has since borrowed a letter from. Today the operation runs as a genetics house: regular and feminized seed packs, collaboration drops, and a licensing vault opened up to outside partners.
What They Make
The shop is built around seeds. Regular and feminized packs run ten seeds to a pack, priced from $180 to $369, with flowering times listed between 49 and 60 days. A separate Known Washers category flags the cultivars selected specifically for hash yield rather than bag appeal.
The catalog leans hard on Z crosses. Z3 pairs The Original Z with Hindu Kush BX3, Banana-Z runs it into Banana Z3, and Gelonoidz takes it to Gelonade. Bloogatti crosses Bubblegum Gelato with Blooberry Z, Zazaya runs Papaya into Z3, and White Zlushi pairs Zlushi with White Z.
Collab drops widen the pool further, with Blue Zuava and Placa Blava made alongside Kounter Kulture and Red Skrrrt-Banger alongside Conscious Genetics. New Seed Drops keeps two dozen packs in rotation and the feminized shelf holds twenty-one. Clothing, hats and accessories round out the store.
The Crew
Co-founders Tony Mendo and Green R Fieldz have been breeding together since the late nineties and formed Terphogz in 2014, bringing about a half-century of combined growing between them. Mendo started at thirteen and moved to Mendocino at seventeen. Fieldz came up in music, cutting three albums with features from Smoke DZA, Yukmouth, Potluck and Andre Nickatina.
The name is a rap reference, a callback to the E-40 line about big cars, turf hogs and Cadillacs, landed on at a point when nobody was putting terp in a moniker. The houndstooth print they built the look around beat its own fashion resurgence by about a year. Managing director Jondo Orantes came in around 2017 as a minority partner with thirty-plus years of growing and a hand in both Blooberry Z and Zlushi.
Hardware And Tools
The crew has taken multiple first-place trophies at the Emerald Cup, Chalice, Secret Cup and High Times events. Blooberry Z, made by crossing Dankster Blooberry with Z3 pollen, took Second Place Hybrid Flower at the Michigan Hash Bash Cup. In 2017 they also built Proto-Terp, a tool that compiles test results to compare terpene profiles.
The Skittles Fight
In 2021 candy maker Mars Wrigley sued Terphogz in Chicago federal court, demanding the brand never use the letter Z alone or combined with anything else, and seeking $250,000. The case settled in 2023 with no damages paid. Terphogz gave up the bare Z and the circle-Z branding, and kept The Original Z along with its Z logo.
The High Rise Take
That fight is the whole brand in miniature. A Mendo crew got dragged into federal court over a single letter and walked out still holding the genetics. Every Z-suffixed strain sitting on a menu right now traces back to this garden, which is exactly why the vault opening to licensed partners in 2025 reads less like expansion and more like paperwork catching up.