To the Lucky Charms R&D Team:

Hello! My family and I love your product — especially the luck it brings me. Odds are, I bet you get this type of letter all the time, so I’ll just cut to the chase. While I have long relied on your hardened mallows for a serotonin boost at the breakfast table as much as a rush of dopamine at the roulette table, I see a few missed opportunities I hope I can tip you off on.

Lord knows your horseshoes, rainbows and shooting stars are proven ironclad luck makers, though I’d like to share with you a few additional charms bound to help me settle my scores around town. Starting with an obvious one — the Pot O’ Gold. Maybe I’m missing something here, but it’s pictured on the front of your box – why isn’t it floating in my bowl?

Every morning after spending some time and serious money playing online poker with the kids, I finger through a box of Lucky Charms probing for a Pot O’ Gold sugar nugget lucky enough to keep the bookies from breaking both kneecaps. I comb and I comb, but no matter how many deformed bits of brown I dig through, there’s no gilded pot to be found. All I can do is look down at the faces of my children and say, what are you looking at?

I make it a priority to teach my children that life isn’t a big game of trying hard and doing your best. I pray they’ll come to understand that it’s better to be lucky than good, and even better than that to be good at luck. Because as we both know, luck doesn’t just come along by chance. It’s not some hocus-pocus fluke. No. Good luck is the product of a good luck ethic.

After getting the kids off to the park to pick 4-leaf clovers for the day, I swing by the local cockfight and then head to the horse track. The key to me not losing borrowed money is my lucky underwear. Classic white briefs, if you must know. This is another missed opportunity I don’t quite comprehend. Lucky underwear is a common thread in achieving luck. Please add the white briefs marshmallow. And, I’m embarrassed for you to even have to bring this up, but the lack of a little horsey/jockey marshmallow in your lineup is as sorely missed as my left pinky.

The lies I told myself to justify losing my kids college tuition in scratch tickets alone – ha! There’s nothing you can do but shake your head and laugh as you blindly lay down another wild bet and constantly look for ways to acquire more luck. It’s a game of attrition. The more you look for luck, the less time you have for unlucky things.

This may come as a surprise, but I have a love for gambling. When I’m not on a bender in Vegas, I spend most nights bunkered inside a seedy underground card room while my kids are safe in the adjacent room playing craps. But not without my lucky jackknife I don’t. I’ve fought off dozens of cold streaks and angry thugs with it. And I feel the addition of a steel shank to the Lucky Charms family is long overdue.

What is luck, really? Some days you have it, most days you don’t. And on those days, you need even more of it. It ebbs and flows like the tide of the sea. You dip your toe in for the cool rush, and before you know it, a tsunami crushes the skull of your financial well-being and possibly your head if you don’t pay the piper. That’s when you begin to wonder, are my Lucky Charms magically delicious? Or are they just delicious? Deep down you know they’re infused with lucky magic, but sometimes you lose sight of the truth when you lose your house and family and kidney due to illegal sports betting.

Robbing banks isn’t for everyone. It’s for people experiencing a small string of crummy luck. Now just spit-balling here, but I wonder if a machinegun marshmallow doesn’t make a lot of sense? And a little security guard man could be fun, too. Listen, with all due respect, I don’t want to tell you how to run your business, but I will if you don’t meet my demands.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter in light of it being postmarked from San Quentin State Prison. I hope you find it lucky and not rude. Please consider making the aforementioned additions and greatly improving my odds of winning back my family from the bruisers who are holding them hostage.

Expectantly,

Greg