What happened to the MycoBox?

What happened to the MycoBox?

Cylocybe Special MycoBox Grow Kit was the UK's favourite for many years.

We had an IP claim recently on the name 'MycoBox' which you can read about below.

But, this isn't about that..

It's easy to change the name to something even better, like 'CyloBox'.

But what's the point?

The truth is, we know our hugely successful kit was obsolete as soon as we launched our new Cylocybe MonoBox grow kit earlier this summer.

Cylocybe MonoBox is harder to contaminate, much faster, easier and even makes G2G or Agar transfer techniques possible for when you're ready to level up!

There's a reason why our new kit has been selling like hot cakes all summer, it's our best grow kit yet and the one we've been working towards for years.

Cylocybe MonoBox is the true way forward for our customers 1st, 2nd and 10th experience growing mushrooms 🙂

Original blog post:

WE HAVE TO CHANGE 'mycobox' TO SOMETHING ELSE

Forgive us if we seem a bit ratty in this blog post but the Cylocybe Special MycoBox means everything to us.

Why is it when things are going well something has to come along and pull the rug from underneath you… Life!

What happened?

A mushroom company in the UK got in touch to say we were using their name 'MycoBox'. Of course, we thought it was a hoax at first… After all we've been using this name since May 2018 with our PF-Tek MycoBox and thought it was an original name.

How did we manage to use another's product name unknowingly you may think? Especially when it's so simple just to search for the trademarks existance here and here.

Great question! …It's because the company in question didn't think to register the trademark.

The funny thing is, with the insane popularity of our 'MycoBox' over the years, so many competitors began to use the name to sell kits which resembled ours. Thinking that it was our cool unique product name, it did grate on us but we bit our tongue and let it slip.

We might not have been the first to use the name 'MycoBox' but with the greatest of respect, we made the name what it is.

What was our MycoBox?

Our MycoBox was a grow kit like no other. Innovation was bursting out its seams. Even the hygiene kit and humidity tent were different to what anyone else was doing at the time…

6 injection ports -- a true first of its kind product. And for tens of thousands of customers every year, MycoBox is synonymous with these innovative and forward thinking features to increase the accessibility for people to this hobby. And it certainly has -- since its introduction, we have seen first-hand an absolute boom for this product which propelled us to the No.1 spot for years.

What is their MycoBox?

Instructions: "You are going to start the kit by injecting spores at 4 equally spaced sites around the top of the Mycobox" "Inject as close as possible to the edge and push straight down -- if you get a small crack it is no problem as it will be covered by tape (N. B. Do not twist while injecting as this can block the syringe -- see MB-FAQ for how to unblock). Quickly tape over holes afterwards (with selotape or similar)"…

Difference between ours and theirs

Two major differences:

• Our kit is completely different in every way imaginable. No customer could possibly get the two mixed up.
• Our 'MycoBox' name is not as legitimate as theirs. We did research and they are right, they had it before us.

I'm presuming with the popularity of our MycoBox over the years that they might have been hounded by customers accusing their product of not being a genuine MycoBox and for that we apologise. We didn't do our homework well enough on that product name and it was 100% accidental -- we did a better job with our other product names.

We won't get in to which one is better -- they're from different generations. What I will say though is that their MycoBox doesn't have six sides, but now we're just poking a bit of fun 🙂

What I'll highlight instead is their MycoBox doesn't have injection ports (again, that was a unique innovation born on Cylocybe.com). Their product is used by pushing a needle through the plastic and essentially cracking a hole in the lid with a needle and then taping it up afterwards.

…We actually feel rather envious of these guys, especially after drilling literally millions of holes in plastic lids and pushing a bit of rubber through every tiny hole by hand -- our calloused fingers are the true victims of our Inject-thru products success!

Some other key differences:

• We use perlite for creating humidity, not vermiculite
• Different growing method
• We use a different tent
• Different hygiene kit
• Our kit is substantially bigger
• etc…

So, what now for MycoBox?

We know the other website has a point. It seems unfair on the surface of it but we understand and get where they are coming from.

Intellectual property is important to respect. We would be hypocrites if we didn't.

We don't believe in the slightest that we have profitised from this mix-up. The success is from our product's features, not its name and we think anybody would agree on this.

But, we are going to stop selling MycoBoxes until we come up with a new name. We've spent so many years dealing with copycats that we would never in a million years be one ourselves. Being unique is the DNA of Cylocybe.

An alternative to the MycoBox? MONOBOX.

Right now, 50% of grow kit sales are for the MonoBox Grow Kits. These kits are the absolute pinacle of 4 years worth of product development and a big quality leap from MycoBox. Customers are absolutely loving them and we couldn't be more proud of our offering. MonoBox really is the latest and greatest. And again -- unique. Completely new generation.

What we've learned from this?

Not to make the same mistake again.

We're also in the process of submitting all of our trademarks to be registered. We never thought we'd need to do this but turns out we should to make it easier for companies to make a search online and know definitively that it belongs to us.

Hopefully the other website learns from this situation and gets their name trademarked to try and avoid this happening again with other companies.

Even when a trademark hasn't been registered officially, it still belongs to the person who came up with the idea. So to anyone thinking that they can try to sneak in a trademark registration before us for one of our products, you'll be fighting a losing battle and wasting your time as it's easy to prove who was first.

Let's just say our MycoBox Grow Kit held something very special to us. It was such a unique grow kit at the time. It helped us become and stay a household name in the UK mycology scene. It helped change our lives and turn Cylocybe into the biggest UK myco site for years. Not because of its name, because of its stand-out qualities.

RIP Cylocybe Special MycoBox.