Face Mint is a hybrid built from two of the West Coast's most influential OG lines, and it shows up on menus under enough aliases (Face Mints, Face Mintz, Mint Face Off, Face Off Mints) that most people don't realize they're smoking the same cross twice. This is what happens when a stone-cold OG classic gets crossed into the mint-cookie family that's dominated shelves for years.
Where It Comes From
Face Off OG is the older half, and the one with the deeper paper trail. The line traces to Southern California in the late 1990s, when standout batches of OG Kush circulated the underground market under the Face Off OG name.
Archive Seed Bank, the Oregon breeding operation, got hold of a cut from that run and selected a single plant, #4, then spent years backcrossing it into the stabilized BX1 and BX2 releases that remain the reference point today.
Kush Mints is the newer half. Seed Junky Genetics built it in Los Angeles in the late 2010s by crossing Bubba Kush pollen onto the clone-only Animal Mints, and it became one of the most-crossed cultivars of its era. Face Mint is one of many pairings that came out of running Kush Mints through other established lines.
The Cross
Face Off OG supplies the backbone the line is known for. Kush Mints brings the frosty, resin-heavy structure it inherited from its own Bubba Kush and Animal Mints parents, and buds run amber-green and heavy with trichomes.
This pairing circulates through more than one grower rather than staying locked to a single brand, which is how it picked up a pile of names along the way. The flower in the jar is the same cross whether the label says Face Mint, Face Mintz, or Mint Face Off.
The High Rise Take
Face Mint earns its shelf space on strength, not novelty, and it's built for the end of the day rather than the middle of it. Track down Face Off OG and Kush Mints in the same jar, whatever the label calls it. Start low, wait it out, and never drive on this one.