An Investigative Investigation of Things

(Previous Investigations: Part One, Part Two)

Cereal: Part Three

Do Crispix Stay Crispy in Milk? A Timed Experiment
You don't hear much about Crispix cereal anymore. After a big push in the 80s and 90s, they have all but disappeared from the airwaves. I guess they aren't considered a "kids" cereal, but they aren't really an "old people" cereal either. The best old commercial I could find was "Flip for the Crisp of Crispix," which has possibly the worst cereal-themed song I have ever heard:

What I really wanted was the commercial that insisted the cereal stays crispy in milk, as it was the inspiration for this investigation. Crispix is the unusually-shaped cereal that has "corn on one side, rice on the other," and a hollow center. I always liked popping them against the roof of my mouth as I ate. Anyone else do that? Anyone at all? Hm.

Figure 1. Crispix

Anyway, because I never let cereal sit long enough to get soggy, I had to use a timer with a bowl of Crispix for this investigation. I set myself up in a photographable manner, poured the bowl, and started timing, taking a bite to test about every minute. Here are the highlights:

Figure 2. Forty-five seconds. Good start. Nice crunch.

Figure 3. Two minutes. A little bit of softness is setting in, but I wouldn't call it mushy at all.

Figure 4. Four minutes. Definitly softening, but has a firmness when you bite down.

Figure 5. By the 8 minute mark, the cereal still had quite a bite to it, like aldente pasta. I wouldn't call it "crispy" though. But, who ever lets cereal sit for that long anyway?

To find out the answer, below is Figure 6, a graph showing how long five survey respondents take to eat a bowl of cereal:
As you can see, all respondents took much less than 8 minutes to eat a bowl, with one person taking only 60 seconds because "I hate soggy cereal." So really, the whole issue of soggy cereal might not be an issue after all. But for the purposes of this investigation, I call it a success, and proof that Crispix stays crispy in milk, at least for the time that it takes to eat it.

Figure 7. Top and side view.

FACT: Crispix are hexagonal, but only in one dimension.