The history of Cinderella 99

Timeline

1. 1996Mr. Soul and a partner known as Sly start Brothers Grimm Seeds.^3,4
2. 1996In Amsterdam, Mr. Soul finds a few seeds in a Jack Herer bud bought at the Sensi Smile coffeeshop; one grows into the female he calls Princess.^1,5
3. 1996–1999He crosses Princess with a Shiva Skunk male and backcrosses to her generation by generation, through P.50, P.75, P.88 and P.94.^1,2
4. 1999Cinderella 99, a P94 male crossed back to Princess, debuts.^1,2,6
5. Jun 2000The breeding story is documented online in a post called "A Cinderella Story".⁵
6. 2002Brothers Grimm shuts down over security concerns, and its small batches of seeds soon run out.^3,7
7. 2003Female Seeds launches its own feminized C99, developed from the original Brothers Grimm line.⁸
8. 2014A cross of Cinderella 99 and White entered by Natural Remedies takes third place for best U.S. hybrid at the Denver Cannabis Cup.⁹
9. 2015Mr. Soul revives Brothers Grimm in Colorado with a new partner.^3,4
10. 2016Brothers Grimm re-releases the line as "Cinderella 99 2016" (Princess × Cinderella 99), and Mr. Soul begins making feminized seeds.^5,7
11. 2017Westword’s "Why Colorado Tokers Love White 99" profiles a cross of The White and Cinderella 99.¹⁰
12. 2015–2023State labs in our dataset record 598 tests of Cinderella 99 flower, 523 of them in Maryland.¹¹
13. Oct 3, 2026Weedmaps lists Cinderella 99 flower at 21 stores near New York and 12 near Newark, and at none in 19 of 27 markets.¹²

Why it spread

Growers liked the plant: Leafly attributes its popularity with indoor growers to its short, bushy stature, high yields, short flowering time and high THC.¹³ Breeders used it widely: SeedFinder counts 300 direct descendants of the Brothers Grimm original.¹ After Brothers Grimm closed in 2002, a C99 stayed on sale through Female Seeds, which launched its version in 2003.^3,8

Mr. Soul says he chose the name for its parallels with the fairy tale, in which Cinderella rises from humble beginnings to become a princess.^1,5

The disputed parts of the story

• Year of the seeds: the breeder’s own accounts, on SeedFinder and the Brothers Grimm site, say 1996; a 2025 interview write-up says 1997; Weedmaps says the late 1990s.^1,4,5,14
• Parents: databases list Jack Herer × Shiva Skunk; the breeder’s own account is Princess × a P94 male, a backcross line that carries Shiva Skunk (see genetics).^1,13,15
• The last step: Weedmaps says Cinderella 88 was crossed back to Princess; the breeder’s account adds one more backcross generation, the P94 male.^1,14
• Feminized seeds: SeedFinder lists the Brothers Grimm releases as regular seeds only, while Brothers Grimm says it began making feminized C99 seeds in 2016 and sells them now.^1,2,5