Who is the lucky charms guy

He started his showbiz career when he was just 12, playing an orphan in a radio show in He then starred on Broadway alongside Orson Welles, an experience that would be dramatized in the movie Me and Orson Welles ; Zac Efron played a version of Anderson. In , he tried out for the Lucky role with an advertising agency, and got the part that became his calling card. Nobody asked him if he was Irish at the time, not even the president of General Mills.

And it was a fun character to play. Hardly a day goes by when somebody doesn't ask me to sing the Lucky Charms jingle, and I'm proud of that. Currently, the voice of Lucky the Leprechaun is voiceover artist Doug Preis , though the character has also been voiced by actor Jason Graae.

Follow Delish on Instagram. Kitchen Tips and Tools. Delish Shop. United States. According to People , General Mills' Jet-Puffed marshmallow brand began producing special Lucky Charms-themed marshmallows that were larger and more fluffy than the ones found in cereal boxes.

Now fans don't have to wait until breakfast to enjoy these iconic, magically delicious vanilla-flavored marshmallows they know and love in their snacks and desserts. The announcement revealed that each bag would contain the four Lucky Charms standbys — green clovers, pink hearts, blue moons and yellow stars — and would hit supermarket shelves in September of that year. For decades, Saturday-morning TV commercials crowed about Lucky Charms' yellow moons, green four-leafed clovers, orange stars and pink hearts.

What the casual consumer may not have been aware of, however, is that each of those specially shaped marbits is symbolic of one of Lucky the cartoon leprechaun's magical powers.

A General Mills press release revealed what those powers are, and which marbits reflect which ability. For example, the heart gives Lucky the power to "bring things to life," while the shooting star grants him the power of flight. The four-leafed clover gives him luck, although the release makes sure to warn that "you never know what kind of luck you'll get.

Meanwhile, the purpose of the press release was to herald the introduction of a new marbit — which symbolized a new power for Lucky. The new addition: an hourglass, granting Lucky control over time. During the holiday season, General Mills tried to shake things up with an experiment, launching a winter-themed chocolate version of Lucky Charms.

The limited-edition chocolate-flavored "Winter Edition" hit stores that November, boasting chocolate-flavored cereal and special marbits shaped like snowmen, snowflakes and snowballs. Even Lucky the Leprechaun got into the act, wearing mittens and earmuffs on the cereal box. According to a review of the limited-edition "Winter" version of Lucky Charms from The Impulsive Buy website, the cereal received an impressive eight out of 10 score.

Among the benefits of the new version is that the cereal turned the milk into chocolate milk in the bowl, which is never a bad thing for chocolate lovers. However, the cereal didn't get high points for originality. As the site noted, the limited edition "is just regular Chocolate Lucky Charms with the marshmallows from last year's Cinnamon Vanilla version. Producing Chocolate Lucky Charms with winter-themed marbits wasn't the only holiday promotion that General Mills embraced to sell some cereal.

The company's blog took readers on a trip down memory lane back to and , when the company offered a special giveaway that, for some, truly was a gift that kept on giving.

At the time, Lucky Charms added green marshmallows shaped like trees. In support of the tree motif, customers who mailed in two UPCs and a special certificate from the cereal box would be sent a live Colorado blue spruce seedling.

One kid who did just that was Joan Stone, who excitedly planted a few of the seedlings in her parents' backyard in northern New Hampshire.

According to Stone, when the seedlings arrived in the mail they were about four to five inches tall. Two decades later, she estimated the last remaining tree had grown more than 20 feet high.

The others, she thought, had been used as Christmas trees over the years. In , Lucky Charms and its leprechaun mascot celebrated their joint 50th birthdays. In celebration of the cereal's half-century milestone, a capella singing group Pentantonix created a special song to mark the occasion. In "Evolution of Lucky Charms" , the five-member vocal group extoll the virtues of the multicolored marshmallow marbits, including "hourglasses, rainbows, and tasty red balloons" while taking a musical journey through all the various Lucky Charms jingles from over the years.

The song wasn't the sole result of the group's admiration for a sugary-laden breakfast treat; Pentatonix was commissioned to write and perform the song, which appeared in an animated Lucky Charms commercial. The ad was was subsequently recognized at the Clio Awards, the annual awards gala honoring the year's best work in advertising.

There have been a lot of different types of marshmallows introduced into the Lucky Charms roster over the years. As the Village Voice detailed, the cereal has hosted marshmallows shaped like pots of gold, stovepipe hats, rainbows, horseshoes, balloons and more, all with an underlying theme meant to suggest the luck of the Irish. In , Los Angeles' ABC News 7 reported on a new permanent arrival to the Lucky Charms family of marbits, the first new one in 10 years: a marshmallow shaped like a tiny unicorn.

There was, however, a victim of this new arrival; to make room for the unicorn, the hourglass marbit was retired. So how did General Mills settle on the unicorn as a new permanent addition to Lucky Charms?

Through social media, of course, tweeting out a request containing a ton of different emojis and asking which ones Twitter users would most like to see transformed into a Lucky Charms marshmallow.

The overwhelming favorite proved to be the unicorn. Rainbows were introduced into Lucky Charms back in , recalled Mentalfloss in a retrospective look at the beloved breakfast cereal. Years later, when the rainbow came to be used as a symbol for LGBTQ pride, it was only a matter of time before the Lucky Charms rainbow would take on a supporting role. That, reported HuffPost , came to be in , when General Mills launched its LuckyToBe Lucky Charms campaign, encouraging people to take to social media and share why they're feeling pride by using that hashtag during Pride month in June.

The campaign was revived the following year. Patrick's Day limited edition of the cereal. This special edition, reported the Irish Post , would include, along with the traditional green four-leafed clover marshmallows, marbits resembling gold coins and pots of gold. An animated TV commercial was produced to promote this special limited edition, which was only available to purchase until March In addition to the new marshmallows, a Lucky Charms spokesperson told Simplemost that the back of each box features a "leprechaun trap" design encouraging kids to go hunting for Lucky the leprechaun within their homes.

Another facet of Lucky Charms' St. Patrick's day edition, the Taste of General Mills blog detailed, was a choose-your-own-adventure-style story designed for the Amazon Alexa. Voice has become such a big part of how people experience content, so we wanted to dial up our opportunity to tell stories with audio and voice.

In March , the cereallife Instagram account shared a leaked photo of a box of what was purported to be a new variety of Lucky Charms that General Mills was about to introduce to the market: Lucky Charms Honey Clovers, adding extra sweetness to what is arguably already one of the most sugar-packed cereals on the market.

Generals Mills neither confirmed nor denied that the leaked image was legit, but that didn't stop numerous outlets — including MSN and Yahoo News! According to the leaked packaging, the main difference with this edition of Lucky Charms isn't the marshmallows but the cereal itself. As Delish pointed out, the honey clover bits appeared to be cereal pieces; furthermore, those honey clover pieces resembled four individual pieces of Honey Nut Cheerios that had been melded together into a clover shape.