What’s more emotionally resonant than 5,000 candles in the wind? 15,000 cardboard vessels bearing thousands more sugar-smithed unicorn heads riding a manifold wave of cresting rainbows.
And that’s before you add milk.
This ferociously (and fangoriously) devoured fantasy is more likely than you think: once again, Lucky Charms is giving away specially designed boxes of All Marshmallows—but this time, each 270g iridescent treasure chest is full of only rainbows and unicorns.
How long before seasonal cereal rotations become literal?
Someday I anticipate we’ll reach a cereal singularity. When all the ideas have been made already, it will become most economically viable to print Count Chocula and S’Mores Oops! No Graham Crackers! Cereal on respective sides of the same box. Then some grocery stocker need only flip the boxes around come October and brainwash anyone who brainwash customers into believing it never happened.
No need to read that box back, humble shopper. Just chew on that cocoa corn, because we’ve always been at war with Boo Berry.
But until that dark chocolate day arises, we must remain hesitant about letting seemingly carbon-copied cereals get away with döppelganging up against us brave breakfast lovers. That’s why when I first heard General Mills was releasing Fruity Lucky Charms, I immediately saw it as a 10-month early reanimation of Franken Berry under a different name: perhaps out of creative laziness, perhaps to use up a few thousand quarts of near-expired strawberry syrup.
So I’ll try the stuff, for sure, but don’t think I won’t be swapping my spoon for a pitchspork, just in case I need to incite a little bedlam.
Photos via sega_retro_revival
What does Franken Berry do for the 10.5 months of the year he isn’t slinging spooky strawberry cereal and reclining seductively in plain view of traffic?
Trading secrets with Lucky and Mario, apparently.
Thanks to tips from sega_retro_revival and cereal compatriot Gabe Fonseca on Instagram (thanks!), we now know that General Mills is at the very least testing a new Fruity Lucky Charms cereal. While the cereal hasn’t been confirmed to be hitting stores, the “not for resale” boxes sega_retro_revival received directly echo four cereals play-tested by General Mills about this time last year, all of which ended up coming out. So I think it’s safe to say that those specifically nostalgic for 2006’s Berry Lucky Charms will have something to look forward to soon.
You know that unfortunate person in your life whose birthday tragically falls within a week on either side of Christmas? The one whose cake and ice cream inevitably end up getting rebranded as pumpkin pie and sugar cookies so their family can make a joke about “2-for-1 discounts?”
I have a theory that Lucky the Leprechaun is that person. Why? Because he seems to be thoughtlessly regifting his Chocolate Lucky Charms like someone who’s lived through a spirit-numbing lifetime spent receiving “festive birthday socks.”
Yes, while the Toast Crunch family’s holiday party went off with nationwide fanfare—and probably more than a few interstellar parades, assuming the aliens got my celebratory transmission—Lucky and his band of merry Charms certainly didn’t try to steal Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch’s thunder.
Rather, we’ve been gifted Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms, a cereal that takes the Chocolate Lucky Charm flavor General Mills has refined for decades, with the, erm, questionable geometry of holiday marshmallows first seen in last year’s Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms.
Despite sounding unique, the Cinnamon Vanilla variety wasn’t terribly compelling. So maybe it’s for the best GM went the safer route: especially since, astoundingly, I haven’t yet reviewed Chocolate Lucky Charms on this blog.
That means I can consider Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms a gift of opportunity, if not originality. Much like how coal gives a chance for some (very) early summer grilling. Continue reading
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn0FoCeBnSj/?taken-by=jhome_market
What’s the regifting equivalent of that old grade school exchange? You know, the one that goes, “Hey, can I copy your homework?” “Okay but change it up a little so it’s not obvious.”
I’d imagine that a similar kind of yuletide tomfoolery would involve spray painting unwanted tube socks, or maybe deep frying a fruit cake.
Or, you know, something like Lucky Charms’ “new” cereal variety for Holiday 2018.
See, the reason the above image, discovered by @jhome_market on Instagram, looks about as uncannily familiar as an Orwellian news report is because last year General Mills released Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms alongside the spellcheck-triggering redundancy of Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs. But this time, they’re evidently cutting their losses, cutting their creativity, and splicing 2017’s snowiest cereals together into one cereal that totally hasn’t been made before. Next thing we know, Big Lucky is going to tell us we’ve always been at war with Kellogg’s.
Last year’s supernova, elongated pacifier, and marshmallow-shaped marshmallows are returning too, again masquerading as snowflakes, snowballs, and snowpersons. A final unwelcome comeback is Chocolate Lucky Charms’ bizarre tradition of using corn instead of oat ingredients, a snowshoe-sized misstep that swaps Lucky Charms’ iconic density with something more hollow and starchy.
So apologies for my preemptive Grinchitude—I’m just not looking forward to not getting a Gingerbread Toast Crunch again this year. I’d even settle for Coal-coa Puffs. But until we know more about this December’s cereal lineup, I give my thanks to jhome_market for sharing (the cereal can be found at Walmart, so far). And if you see a new or interesting cereal, be sure to send it to our Submissions page for a chance to see it here.
Have a holly jolly leaf raking!
The year is 2022: the last known record of humankind.
Following the success of their Magical Unicorn, Jazzy Yeti, and Iridescent Riddle-Telling Sphinx marshmallows, Lucky Charms has decided to keep the cryptozoological marbit trend rolling with a sugar nugget more mythical than ever before: a Technicolor Cthulhu marshmallow!
Predictably, this marshmallow becomes too ornately psychoactive—too destructively beautiful—instantly vaporizing any who see it with its multi-folded, granulated power. The end of civilization naturally follows.
Grim, I know, but that deadly premonition is years away. We should rejoice while we can, because Lucky Charms’ newest Magical Unicorn is a gorgeous harbinger of breakfast doom. It also marks a very strange shift in Lucky Charms’ ethos: just a year or two ago, General Mills was so committed to removing artificial colors that they turned the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—veritable icons of neon ’80s excess—into pallid reptile droppings (that still tasted good, mind you).
There were even reports that Lucky Charms would lose its artificial colors too, by the end of 2017 or so, leading tinfoil-hat conspiracists like me to predict last year’s Mixed-Up Marshmallow Cereal were conditioning cereal lovers to accept color changes. But after the milk-splashing cannonball of a flop that was all natural Trix, GM seems to have abandoned this ideal, bringing back Trix and introducing this very very artificially colored unicorn marshmallow, finally acquiescing to the ravenous demands of inner children everywhere.
Because the best news is that the Magical Unicorn is a permanent addition to the Lucky Charms family, replacing the youngest of the brood: the hourglass. I’d like to see how the Unicorn explains the ‘glass’ absence to the rest of the sugary fam, but I’m sure it can just say he’s “having the time of his life at a farm upstate.” Continue reading
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfPdEyyHn5q/?taken-by=cerealouslynet
Though Starbucks’ infamous Unicorn Frappuccino is long dead and gone—presumably with technicolor Snozzberries growing from its fertilized burial grounds—the Jazzy-Solo-Cup-colored liquid’s namesake cryptid is still grabbing the cereal industry by the horn.
Just weeks after Kellogg’s confirmed the in-store release day (March 5th) of its Unicorn Cereal (formerly known as Unicorn Froot Loops when released abroad), and just days after Lucky Charms announced the planned obsolescence of its hourglass marshmallow, Instagram user @sydnee_alexandra stumbled upon this real-life unicorn at an HEB store: a box of unannounced Lucky Charms with Magical Unicorn Marshmallows!
Given that there’s still an hourglass on the box, and that these intricate equine marbits likely have more artifical color than a Dorito at a tanning salon, these Unicorns likely aren’t a permanent replacement.
But I sure hope they taste like cotton candy.
Time is running out on the hourglass. Grab a box while you still can! pic.twitter.com/8HWPJXXg3v
— Lucky Charms (@LuckyCharms) February 8, 2018
Goodnight, sweet curvaceous and fluorescent prince.
Though the above tweet from Lucky Charms is needlessly cryptic, major news sources have confirmed the rumors: before long, the hourglass marshmallow will be disappearing from boxes of the much-loved oat and marbit cereal.
The good really do die young: introduced in 2008, the hourglass is actually the newest mainstay Lucky Charms marshmallow. And despite being very questionably recognizable as an hourglass, the marshmallow was redeemed by an awesome commercial campaign, in which it became a powerful talisman capable of controlling time itself.
The hourglass will be far from the coolest discontinued Lucky Charm marshmallow: that honor is shared by rainbow whales and keys that only revealed in milk.
Like a ten-year Snapchat streak about to expire, the hourglass’ early retirement raises many questions: is this part of General Mills’ war on artificial colors? Will we see popped balloons, waning moons, and an end of the rainbow in the near future? And most of all, what marshmallow will replace the hourglass?
Feel free to leave your marshmallow guesses below. I’m banking on a naturally colored magic sugar beet.
