Remember last year’s bizarre drink hit, Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino? Yet another unicorn has been let loose to run free. General Mills on Monday announced it’s replacing the hourglass marshmallow in its Lucky Charms cereal with a unicorn. In other news, Lucky Charms had an hourglass marshmallow?
Earlier this month, the company asked Twitter users to send an emoji suggesting their choice for the new marshmallow. Sorry, ear of corn, peace sign and butterfly, all of which also garnered at least one vote.
The new marshmallow is shaped like a unicorn’s head and neck and is mostly white, with blue and purple swirls depicting its mane and horn. (Blue and purple are apparently established unicorn colors, as the Twitter unicorn emoji is blue and purple, and so was the Starbucks drink.)
For those who follow those things, you should know it’s the first new permanent Lucky Charms marshmallow in a decade. Some of us Gen X kids still remember what a big deal it was when blue diamonds were introduced in 1975. The last permanent new marshmallow, introduced in 2008, was the yellow and orange hourglass the unicorn will now replace. The remaining lucky-charm marshmallows are hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, rainbows and red balloons.
Twitter fans seem excited about the new addition to the sugary herd.
Lucky Charms made a new marshmallow of a unicorn and its pink and blue, can Starbucks sue them? Unicorn Frappucinos not marshmallows.
— CardinalIron (@CardinalIron) February 19, 2018
I’m so glad Lucky Charms released that new unicorn marshmallow to help bring us all together under the sugar rainbow as our world falls apart.
— Aaron Gilbreath (@AaronGilbreath) February 19, 2018
#SNL #weekendupdate General Mills has announced they’re replacing the hourglass marshmallow with a magical unicorn in Lucky Charms cereal. No plans yet to replace the toasted oats with anything that people actually want to eat.
— HireMeWeekendUpdate (@HireMeWeekend) February 19, 2018
Boxes of Lucky Charms cereals with the new unicorn marshmallow are already starting to appear on store shelves and should be widely available by mid-March, a General Mills spokesman said.
First published Feb. 19, 10 a.m. PT.
Update, 10:39 a.m. PT: Adds comment from General Mills.
