Lucky Charms Owe Their Existence to Cheerios and Circus Peanuts

Everyone is familiar with Lucky Charms because they are miraculously wonderful whether you eat them or not and have always been since they were first released in 1964. Children have been instructed to consume their oat flakes combined with enchanted marshmallow forms by Lucky the Leprechaun for almost 60 years. They sold $283.4 million worth of them in 2018, so business appears to be booming. Where did the genius come from to put oddly crispy marshmallows in cereal?

Cheerios and circus peanuts are responsible for the creation of Lucky Charms. In the 1960s, product creator John Holahan was a huge lover of circus peanuts. If you're not familiar, they are peanut-shaped marshmallows that fall somewhere between the soft marshmallow you'd use for S'mores and the crunchy marshmallow you get in a box of Lucky Charms.

When Holahan was brainstorming new cereal concepts in 1963, he added chopped circus peanuts to a bowl of Cheerios. Because he was so proud of what he had created, he showed it to the influential people, and within a year, Lucky Charms were available in stores.