The Weird Way Captain Crunch Makes You Love Him
Flickr/Mike Mozart No surprise: The Brands want you to want them. What's odd are the lengths—often subliminal—they'll go to make you a repeat customer. Researchers at Cornell's Food and Brand Lab recently studied the cereal aisle. It's already been established that boxes are placed to maximize the chances of being bought; the kid cereals are on the lower shelves, for example, while the adult cereals are higher up. The Cornell team went even more granular. They examined the mascots on each box, and measured the angle of their gazes. Go figure, this was a real thing: In 65 cereals from 10 grocery stores, kids' cereals consistently featured mascots with eyes pointing about 9.6 degrees downward, while adult cereal mascots faced at a (negligible) 0.43-degree upward angle. Like a gothic painting, the eyes of the Trix rabbit seem to be following you everywhere. The next question, of course, was: Does that...