Lucky Charms

Lucky Charms is a brand of breakfast cereal produced by General Mills since 1964. The cereal consists of multi-colored marshmallows and pieces of shaped pulverized oat, each resembling one of several objects or symbols associated with good luck. The packaging and marketing features a leprechaun mascot, Lucky. History Lucky Charms was created in 1964 by product developer John Holahan. General Mills management challenged a team of product developers to use the available manufacturing capacity from either of General Mills' two principal cereal products—Wheaties or Cheerios—and do something unique. Holahan came up with the idea after a visit to the grocery store in which he decided to mix Cheerios with bits of Brach's circus peanuts. An advertising company employed by General Mills and Company suggested marketing the new cereal around the idea of charm bracelets. Thus, the charms of Lucky Charms were born. Lucky Charms was the first cereal to include marshmallows in the recipe. These pieces are called "marshmallow bits", or "marbits", due to their small size. Marbits were invented by Edward S. Olney and Howard S. Thurmon (U.S. patent number 3,607,309, filed November 1, 1968, and assigned September 9, 1971, for "preparation of marshmallow with milk solids"), with the patent grant now assigned to Kraftco Corporation. The mascot of Lucky Charms, created in 1963, is Lucky the Leprechaun, also known as Sir Charms, and originally called L.C. Leprechaun. The cartoon character's voice was supplied by the late voice actor Arthur Anderson until 1992. Lucky has also been voiced by Eric Bauza, Tex Brashear, Jason Graae, Doug Preis, and Daniel Ross. In 1975, Lucky the Leprechaun was briefly replaced by Waldo the Wizard in New England, while Lucky remained the mascot in the rest of the United States. Envisioned as a forgetful wizard who was kind to children, Waldo initially prevailed in market tests. However, Waldo's creator Alan Snedeker suspects he sealed Waldo's fate by working on TV ads that portrayed a nicer version of Lucky.