Part
of today's complete balanced breakfast
(9/21/03)
I have gotten really into eating Lucky
Charms lately. I think that they really are a excellent representation
of what kids want in a breakfast cereal. You know what I mean,
something that is advertised as a 'part' of a balanced breakfast.
Often the other parts are juice, milk, toast. Now correct
me if I am wrong, but I would think that milk and toast make
up pretty much any of the nutrients in the cereal and milk.
That's not really the point to my banter today, but it is
a good place to start.
The
start of a beautiful friendship
What makes kids so lucky to get
their hands on this cereal? The Charms! According to
memory, originally Lucky Charms consisted of dehydrated marshmallows
in several shapes (all the same flavors) yellow moons, blue
diamonds, orange stars, green clovers, and pink hearts. According
to a website, the blue diamonds were actually added later
to the original 4. I guess my memory isn't so good, what a
surprise.
What's
new pussy cat?
The first new marshmallow I remember being
added was the purple horseshoes. Lucky, the leprechaun, got
kicked in the bootie and suddenly had a great idea. A purple
marshmallow to represent the purple bruises on his rump. How
horrible.
Red balloons popped up when Lucky needed
something to get away from the Charm stealing kids. Several
additions were mostly modifications of the old ones.
- Yellow moons became blue
- Stars turned into shooting stars
- Clovers showed up as a decoration for
Lucky's hat
Both the shooting stars and the hats allowed
the cereal engineers to use the new dual color technique.
The lack of a yellow marshmallow must have made things difficult
for some kids, so dual colored yellow/orange pots of gold
were added to retain a yellow marshmallow presence. Of course
the 3 colored technique for marshmallows was soon established.
Rainbows were added to help find the pot of gold marshmallows
What
else is there?
Very little attention is paid to the rest
of the cereal. In fact the other day I stopped eating the
cereal after I had eaten all the marshmallows. However, the
rest of the cereal is the whole point of this page. Take a
look at the rest of the cereal. A spade and a clover quite
possibly a deck of card reference. The next shape, can best
be described as a bell. Although it is close to the spade,
it is definitely a different shape. Lastly, a shape that can
only be described as.. a fish. Like the corn shape in Jujyfruits,
I see a real lack of association with the cereal bits that
give nutrient value to Lucky Charms.
My
idea
The best explanation i have for the cereal
bits, is to recommend that they were initially a part of a
cereal that did not market well initially. But what do fish,
spades, bells and clovers have do do with one another? As
far as i can tell they are all nouns and that is about it.
My guess is, that nounies, the grammatical cereal is just
not a good idea for a cereal. Now if they had made it frosted
nounies.. oh man that would be some good stuff!
-Me
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