Wasn’t there once some special promotion which featured green tree-shaped marshmallows?
Yup! Your memory serves you well, YTMezoan. These were the Earth Day Tree marshmallows released a couple years ago. Man, I’m gonna be a Marbit expert after this thread!
1.Good God, I’ve learned something I don’t think I ever wanted to know. That’s gotta be a first in history.
“Marbit”?! They actually have a name for those things? :eek:
- tracer’s exposition on the history of Lucky Charms marbits shudder reminded me of this routine I saw from a comedian many years ago about the history of Oreos, progressing from the standard cookie we all know and love through Double-Stuf and Big Stuf (the opening of which required “the same amount of torque needed to open the door of the Space Shuttle in high orbit”). After every product was described he would ask the audience “But were the executives at Nabisco happy?! No, they weren’t!”
Until the last product. He asked the question, the audience responded “No, they weren’t!” and he replied “Well, yeah, actually, they were.”
END HIJACK
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
Did anyone remember around 1976 or so you could send in a Trix boxtop and vote on if the rabbit should get to eat Trix or not? I voted YES and got a glorious red, white, and blue button in the mail proclaiming “YES! Let the rabbit eat Trix!” I bet my packrat mom still has that someplace, haha. I’m gonna make her track it down.
I find the new(er) “fruit shaped” Trix rip the hell out of the roof of your mouth, a la Cap’n Crunch. And do they still use that “Trix is for kids!” campaign? I always thought that a bit, erm…discriminatory.
I have before me a box cover that I have saved over the years, to reassure myself that it really existed: The “Swirled Whale Edition” of Lucky Charms cereal, featuring red-white-and-blue-swirled whale-shaped marshmallows in amongst the usual six. On this box, we see a worried-looking Lucky the Leprechaun riding an even more worried-looking multi-colored whale down a rainbow toward the cereal bowl. Lucky, his green scarf blowing behind him, points toward the marshmallows and shouts, “YIKES! WHALES IN MY CEREAL?!”
As if this were not enough, the bonus prize INSIDE! the box is a package of Rain-blo Color Bubble bubble gum balls (PARENTAL SUPERVISION NECESSARY).
John Holahan invented Lucky Charms by slicing up Circus Peanuts and sprinkling them on Cheerios. He died late last year–an obituary is at His Lucky Charms Ran Out.
that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever read. 
my Marbits all dissolved in tears.
I must admit, I found the red balloon to be even more problematic than the blue whale. Like tracer said, balloons have no occult significance.
One thing missing from tracer’s history is all the marshmallows that had to be pulled because the Religious Right complained about them. To wit:
- Yellow pentagrams
- Black swastikas
- Pink triangles
- Green Darwin fish
- Purple phalluses
- Blue Sheela-na-gigs.
-Ben
1976? Hmm, I remembered Trix having the same contest in the early 90’s. And I voted “Yes” as well 
One thing about “traditional” Lucky Charms marbits is the classic chant. They could do the rainbow chant, but now it would be cumbersome and non-rhythmic.
Okay everybody, sing along:
Pink hearts
Yellow moons
Orange stars
Green Clover
and Blue diamonds.
(Part of this delicious breakfast.)
Side note here: notice how these cereal commercials always included the caveat: “Part of this delicious breakfast.” It’s that hidden reminder that your breakfast was supposed to be more balanced by having some eggs or bacon or sausage, and some fruit, not just cereal in milk. Like that ever worked. MORE SUGAR!
I was disappointed with the marbit changes. Okay, the purple horseshoes was a decent addition, if it did throw off the chant. But then the rest of the random changes got absurd. Shooting stars? THey don’t look like shooting stars, I don’t know what they look like but it ain’t shooting stars. And replacing the green clover with a hat? Just so they could use the two tone process. That’s pointless overkill. They changed yellow moons to blue moons, which I can see linking to the theme, but they got rid of blue diamonds in the process. Okay, diamonds were never very fitting anyway. So “pot of gold” is an orange and yellow mess, “shooting star” is a bizarre orange and white chunk, and the hat is just lame. Also, the marshmallow bit size shrank sometime back. Anybody else remember that?
I read a pretty good history of Lucky Charms in a magazine once… I think it was “Discover.” They talked about the brainiac who had the idea of sprinkling Circus Peanuts on sweet-bland cereal. What a billion dollar idea that was. This article also had a history of the various shapes the marshmallows have taken over the years.
Yes, they are still using the “Trix is for kids!” line. Curse them! They’re never gonna give that crazy rabbit the cereal, no matter HOW many kids vote yes. He should just go get some Marbits and be done with those annoying kids!!!
voguevixen wrote:
I still have my “YES! Let the Rabbit eat Trix” button in my desktop drawer at home – alongside my “Don’t Spread Med” button the school was handing out during California’s “Mediterranean Fruit Fly Epidemic” of the mid-1970s.
I’ll bet VERY few kids voted “NO” in that Trix election, and that the “NO!” buttons are collector’s items now.
pezwookiee lamented the omissions of the e-mail he received from General Mills thusly:
They also missed that time when they had the limited-edition “Mixed-Up Marshmallows” version of Lucky Charms, with the stars being blue instead of orange, etc… It was before the two-toned marshmallows came out.
IIRC, they DID allow that poor rabbit to have some Trix once. This was back in the early 70’s. They ran the commercial about a week, maybe 2, and it showed the rabbit being given a bowl of Trix by some kids, and he was literally dancing with joy over the prospect of eating it. He looked positively ORGASMIC, like he was going to keel over after the first mouthful or something. Anyway, he scarfed down the whole bowl in about 1/8th of a second…and asked for…you got it…ANOTHER BOWL!!!
And was told by some hateful-ass cartoon kid, “Nope! Only ONE, Rabbit!”
Said Rabbit gets this look of total sadness on his face, and commences begging. The kids get all snotty and sort of just walk off, him still pleading and generally making an ass of himself.
Of course, I saw this when I was about 10, so I may have the events a little misconstrued, but I definitely remember the commercial. I was so glad he finally got his damn wish.
I was a little put off that he got greedy about it, though.
Lucky Charms and Trix: perhaps two sides of the same coin?
With Lucky Charms, the kids are always trying to get the cereal from Lucky.
With Trix, the Rabbit is always trying to get the cereal from the kids.
You’d think they’d all be able to get together and work this out somehow.
He was wrong. They now make Oreos with chocolate icing.
You see?!? Circus Peanuts have done MUCH MORE for this world than you people think.
Don’t you ever say anything bad about them again. Ever.
I remember him getting some too and I was born in 1974. I think it was sometime in 1986-1990. They had a commercial where he won some kind of race and the prize was the cereal but they found out he was a rabbit and they asked kids to vote for him. And they voted to let him have it and they did. But again never again. (until kids forget he ever had it and they do it again. Perhaps every 15 years?
Sadly my mom never bought me fancy cereal like that. We got bags of oat piece cereal. Like cheerios and other such bland stuff. And amazingly I don’t buy myself the stuff now that I’m 26, but that’s due to the fact that I don’t eat breakfast, huh?
Back in my day, we didn’t have no fancy purple horseshoes.
We had “orange, lemon, cherry, and other natural flavors” – and we liked it!