This isn’t your grandmother’s advent calendar -- unless your grandmother filled her advent calendar with marijuana.

We’ll explain:

A Vancouver, BC-based packaging company that focuses on the legal marijuana market has come up with a unique twist on the traditional advent calendar, turning it into a retailable promotional product for cannabis dispensaries and websites.

Instead of counting down to Christmas, however, CannaCalendar’s “420 Bud Party Advent Calendar” ticks off the 20 days leading up to April 20, or “420” – a counterculture holiday in which marijuana enthusiasts often gather to celebrate cannabis, partake and advocate for its legalization.

Surprising to probably no one: The calendar’s inventors admit they were stoned when they came up with the idea. “Well, we are advocates,” Michael Landon told bc.ctvnews.ca, reportedly with a laugh.

The front of the 420 Bud Party Advent Calendar.

Cartoon representations of pop culture characters like Harley Quinn, Steve Urkel, Spock and Luke Skywalker – all drawn as marijuana buds – provide colorful artwork for the calendar. As the product name suggests, the characters are supposed to be partying. The buds appear to represent real marijuana varieties – “see if you can recognize some of your favourite strains,” CannaCalendar says in a product description.

The colorful characters of the 420 Bud Party Advent Calendar.

To be clear, CannaCalendar isn’t selling cannabis with its advent calendar. Instead, Canadian neighborhood dispensaries and online dispensaries that buy the calendar put half-gram samples of their various strains in each day’s slot – a new toke for each day of the stoner advent. They’ll then retail the calendars at a price of their choosing. In this way, the calendar becomes a kind of promotional sample kit of the different varieties of marijuana the businesses offer – and, obviously, a cash generator for the dispensaries as well.

Regardless of one’s personal position on marijuana legalization, the calendar makes an interesting case study for promotional product distributors in Canada and the U.S. Canadian lawmakers are on track to legalize recreational marijuana for adults by July, while legalization for medical and recreational purposes is spreading on a state-to-state basis in the U.S. While advertising restrictions figure to be tight in order to prevent promotion to minors, the CannaCalendar example proves that companies that think creatively and deliver something unique can spark sales in the niche.

Oh, one other thing. CannaCalendar also offers a weed-themed advent calendar for counting down the days of the real advent to its genuine conclusion on Christmas. Same concept – CannaCanada customers stuff the day slots with marijuana samples and sell the calendars. No doubt that you’ll want to keep consumers who use this calendar away from advent calendars with more traditional fillings like candy and chocolate; the goodies are not likely to last the night, much less the 24 or 25 days.

The front of CannaCalendar's marijuana advent calendar for Christmas.

Inside CannaCalendar's marijuana advent calendar for Christmas