It’s an important debate.

Today I shall compare and contrast these two battling cereals to see which one rules the marshmallow based cereal category for ultimate surpremacy.

First, let’s take the encumbant, General Foods’ Luck Charms.

Been around since 1964.

Great name, great brand. Nice Irish mascot, originally called L.C. Leprechaun AKA Sir Charms.

Lucky Charms are housed in the traditional standardized cereal carton, with plastic bag inside.

But let’s get down to the food itself.

The small funky shaped frosted cereal bits are a little Cherio’s-like. An oaty taste. Not bad. Again, kinda small. The smaller shapes give less frosted taste. There is not enough cereal mass for the sugary flavor to burst.

The marshmallows win on style and theme, pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and of course green clovers, etc., etc.. They even have colors embedded in colors. Nice.

They don’t call them Magically Delicious for nothing.

Nutrition: Don’t care. If this is a factor, your eating the wrong ceral. Try Special K or somethin.

Price: $3.89 for this 24 oz box of sweet goodness. Or about $3.26 per pound.

Now let’s take the challenger, Marshmallow Matey’s.

I’m assuming the Malt-O-Meal people got pretty tired of getting their oats handed to them by their cross-town Minneapolis rivals, General Foods so they decided cold cereal was their true calling.

Mr. Malt and Mr. Meal probably got together and said, “O!” (hence the O in the name) and decided in order to compete, they have to win at price. But do they win on taste? Seems like people will spend there life savings for a box of cereal. That crap is expensive!

MMs date or origin is not known, probably within the last 10-12 years. Dunno. Don’t want to look it up.

Point goes to Lucky Charms for being the first to market.

The name, Mashmallow Matey’s is a funny name. The name says, “we’re not trying very hard, cause we’re cheaper so screw you. Heck make fun of our name, we don’t care. It was between that and ‘Chucky Larms’ and the lawyers had a fit so, yeah.”

Point goes to Lucky Charms. Great branding. And half point for embracing diversity with the little Irish fella. Cause isn’t that what it’s all about?

MMs are packaged in a pain-in-the-pantry plastic bag. Prolly for cost reasons.

We’ll give a point to Mashmallow Matey’s for cost savings.

Now let’s get down to it, shalll we? The sugary joy itself…

Enlarged to show texture.

Check out the girth of the MM plane cereal bits (pictured left)! They’re freakin huge! This is good because as I said earlier, it’s about giving the frostiness it’s due.

Point goes to Marshmallow Matey’s.

Now we’re down to the marshmallows. It’s the primary selling proposition, it’s the core competency. It’s all about the little freeze dried marshmallows.

They are both fairly even. They both are multiracial, multi colored so plenty of Red 40 and Blue 1 and Yellow 6. Just what your child needs to jack up their ADD count. If you kid was recently punished at school for slapping the janitor, you can blame this stuff.

One point to Lucky Charms, one point to Marshmallow Matey’s.

So how well do they both last in milk? Remember as any cerealist would tell you, it’s good to have an equal blend soggy to crispy ratio.

Point to Marshmallow Matey’s. Again it’s the biggness that matters here.

Price: $2.34 per pound.

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