It ’s hard to picture a box of Lucky Charms without a smiling leprechaun stick on on the front of it . But cereal fan living in New England in the 1970s may retrieve a brief period when Lucky was nowhere to be seen . In his home was a forgetful thaumaturge who was just given a chance to make a blip in cereal mascot story .
AsAtlas Obscurashared in a recent story , Waldo the Wizard became the face of Lucky Charms in quality stores in 1975 . At that breaker point , Lucky had been representing the brand since it was introduced over a decade in the first place , but General Mills was toy with going in a dissimilar focusing with the marketing .
Lucky ’s shtick has n’t changed much since Lucky Charms was introduced in 1964 : In commercials , the leprechaun is enjoying his treasured cereal grass when a chemical group of athirst kids comes along . Instead of offering to share , favorable plot of ground to keep his Lucky Charms to himself and always fail . It ’s not exactlycontroversialas far as Kyd ' advert go , but in the mid-1970s , executives worry that the mascot ’s unfriendly position towards children would scratch consumers the ill-timed means .
Enter Waldo : a wizard who wear off a green cloak spangled with hearts , stars , clovers , and moons , and , like Lucky , adore Lucky Charms . But unlike Lucky , Waldo was always warm with fry and never hesitated to share his breakfast . rather of running away , his jape was that he was always block where he put his box of Lucky Charms , to which the kids respond by reminding him that he could just conjure some up with magic .
shopper respond positively to Waldo during his trial run in New England stores , but after less than a twelvemonth , General Mills pull the fireplug on the experimentation . It turned out that take a slightly more unobjectionable quality was n’t worth desolate the original mascot after spending so much time and money advertise him .
While he ’s undergo a fewredesignsin the past 50 years , Lucky is still prominently expose on every box of Lucky Charms . His cereal - billboard tendencies have also persist the same , though Lucky was written to be a bit friendlier following Waldo ’s abruptly - lived era .
[ h / tAtlas Obscura ]
