A Charm's Life - Lucky Charm's cereal

The inspired notion of combining marshmallows with a whole-oat cereal came to former vice president and product developer John Holahan in 1963. Holahan was brainstorming in the aisles of his local super market one day when he came upon the orange Marshmallow Circus Peanuts that were among his favorite confections. He took a bag back to the lab, cut up the "peanuts," and sprinkled them over a bowl of Cheerios. They "ate just right," Holahan recalls. "I knew we had a winner, a concept that had great promise."

An advertising agency suggested a charm-bracelet concept, which was later changed to the leprechaun motif. The charms themselves were a technical challenge from the start. No one in the food industry had ever tried to make small, intricately shaped marshmallows. To form the shapes, the marbit foam would have to be extruded, rather than baked in flat sheets as all marshmallow products were at the time. The kind and amount of gelatin in the formula had to be adjusted so that the marshmallow strips would hold their shapes after being formed. An inordinate amount of starch would be necessary to keep the pieces from sticking together after they were cut. And they had to have a much lower moisture content than ordinary marshmallows. In fact, they had to be as dry as the surrounding cereal to prevent it from getting soggy in the box. The pieces couldn't be baked--a process that tends to seal in moisture--but would have to be dried slowly to permit desiccation. Chemists and candymakers from General Mills and Kraft collaborated for months to devise the proprietary formula and drying technology that are still used today The resulting marbits have the texture of candy pumice and make up over 25 percent of a box's volume.

Now, more than three decades later, Lucky Charms is General Mills's number-three seller, bested only by Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios. Among presweetened children's cereals, it is number one, with more than $150 million in annual sales. The product has been a survivor. But the history of Lucky Charms marbits, like any evolutionary record, has its share of dead ends. Some of the marbit shapes have gone extinct. Blue diamonds got axed from the standard mix in 1995, as more complex and colorful pieces gained a competitive advantage. The yellow moons became blue instead. Soon the venerable orange star will be permanently replaced with a sprightly orange-and-white shooting star that first invaded the mix several years ago. In fact, from the founding population of marbits, only the pink hearts and green clovers remain.

Yet for every marbit extinction, General Mills engineers have a dozen new designs that will speciate on supermarket shelves in years to come. Though he's loath to talk about concepts in development, Geoffrion agrees, when asked directly, that glow-in-the-dark charms would be a brilliant addition. Can it be done? "Not yet," he says with a nervous laugh. But when it can, Lucky Charms could be the first midnight snack to provide its own illumination.

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