Everyone knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The sacredness of breakfast cereal is, in today's breakfast-centric world, unquestionable. One of these cereals that we've held dear to our dark little hearts for so long is Lucky Charms. We ate them as kids, so we figure that they're still as wonderful and holy as the day we first shoved little colored marshmallows into our tiny mouths.

Well, I've investigated today's version this cereal throughly, and I've discovered that while we weren't looking, it became something more... sinister.

Lucky Charms are, naturally, most famous for those tiny little marshmallows that fortify the oat cereal bits with much-needed sugar and fun. Chances are, if you ate the cereal as a kid, you had a favorite marshmallow, too. No one had a favorite oat thing, despite the fact they come in different shapes--no, once an oat bit, always an oat bit, no matter what shape it's in. However, while you were busy converting your breakfast from the brightly-colored world of cereal to the more properly bohemian world of coffee and last-minute homework, General Mills was busy taking away your favorite charms.

Oh, that's right. Chances are, your favorite marshmallow is long gone, my friend. I was lucky enough to adore the purple horseshoe, a bit of hardcore rock-out cereal still with us today. Also, if you were lame enough to like pink hearts you're still in luck today. But anything else? Gone. orange stars became shooting stars. Yellow moons and blue diamonds somehow merged to become the blue moon. Green clovers became, of all things, hats.

Some of my readers may be young enough to believe that the red ballons are a standard of the Lucky Charm universe. Well, they're not. Those were the first additions to the cereal--the pandora's box to more and more evil new marshmallows! Two of these marshmallows that I imagine have been in the cereal for a bit are the rainbow (which, from its shape, looks as if it's going to attempt to muscle out the sacred horseshoe someday) and the pot of gold. Both of these, like the shooting star and the lame-o hat, are obvious bids to small children's inability to comprehend a marshmallow of two colors or more.

However, General Mills is not content to stop there. The box I bought to research this article contained a brand new marshmallow. This is the "Magical Star in Moon" marshmallow. This marshmallow is the pinacle in evil capitalist plots! All you need is to "just add milk to make stars appear" in the orange moons. As this is the second moon shape in the Lucky Charms, it is only a matter of time before the blue moon--an imposter itself--is rendered obsolete from the cereal! Furthermore, it's one of the worst innovations in cereal ever. I tend to eat my cereal dry, and when you eat this orange monstrosity in such a way, you realize that this "magic" is really just your standard Lucky Charms hard marshmallow with a disgusting squishy marshmallow center that sticks to your molars.

Marshmallows are not all there is to Lucky Charms, however. Like good and evil, happiness and sadness, puppies and kitties, you need a contrast of things in this world to truly appreciate what you have. Hence the oat bits. Truly, the oat bits are not all bad. While they get a bad rap for not being full of pure sugar, you can honestly get sick of mouthful after mouthful of dry crunchy marshmallows. The cereal also claims that this whole grain base is "sugar frosted," but it's hard to notice when you've been eating pure sugar. Also, in competetors of Lucky Charms, the oat bits can have some intriguing shapes, like the anchors of Malt-O-Meal's Marshmallow Mateys.

But what of the shapes of General Mills' original creation? Lucky Charms has oat bits in four different shapes. But most people remain ignorant about the nature of these shapes. Lucky Charms doesn't actively advertise them, that's for sure. On the box, the marshmallows glow in a holy light over a mass of undecernable brown. Only upon opening the box can you actually see what the heck they are, and even then you have to really pay attention to figure out what they're supposed to be. In fact, when I truly began to see what these shapes were, I realized a much more insidious plot was taking place.

General Mills is trying to make us believe that Lucky Charms are sacred. It's true. The oat shapes are in the forms of a bell, a shamrock, a Christmas tree, and a fish! These are all famous symbols of Christianity. Yet, despite General Mills' attempts, we should be wary of their sanctification of this cereal. Upon careful inspection of the Bible, you'll find that Jesus never ate Lucky Charms. In fact, Jesus never even heard of them. They were invented in China.

Yes, Lucky Charms can be delicious. However, I think that we should resist the capitalist plot of General Mills. Their squishy marshmallows and their terrible rainbows should be questioned! Do not buy their product. Malt-O-Meal and Fred Meyer make marshmallowly delightful cereal for much less.