The 50-Year History of Lucky Charms, in 65 Marbits

As we found out this morning, Lucky Charms cereal is 50 years old. Can you believe it? It was the first ever breakfast cereal with marshmallows.

It all began with a bowl of Cheerios and a couple of circus peanuts. Those were the base ingredients that John Holahan, vice president of General Mills, opted to experiment with when he and his team were given six months to create a new brand of cereal that would be a hit with kids.

Holahan’s research took him to the grocery store, which is where the oat cereal-plus-sugar combo occurred to him. It may not seem like a revolutionary recipe by today’s breakfast cereal standards, but it was back then: Lucky Charms became the first marshmallow cereal.

In those 50 years, it appears that the cereal has gone through many incarnations of the tiny marshmallows they call “marbits.” I had no idea- I only remember stars, hearts, moons, and clovers. Multicolored marshmallows? Olympic symbols? There have been 65 different marbits over the years, each described in a timeline at mental_floss.