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Next time you wander down the cereal aisle with your
shopping cart, ask yourself this: Why on Earth are all the
cartoon mascots--Fred Flintstone, Cap’n Crunch, the Trix
Rabbit, and so on--staring directly at your crotch?
As it turns out, there’s a reason for that. Cereal boxes aimed
at children are specifically designed so that the eyes of the
mascots look downward, making direct eye contact with the
sugar goblins that they are hoping to seduce.
In a study of over 65 cereals and 86 mascots across 10
different grocery stores in New York and Connecticut,
Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab studied the characters on the
front of cereal boxes. What they found is that all characters
and people on cereal boxes --whether Lucky the Leprechaun,
or Michael Jordan on a box of Wheaties--are designed to
make eye contact with the intended consumer. In fact, they
have almost exactly the same focal point: they are staring
out from the box at a spot about four feet away, which is the
average distance from the shelf of a customer walking down
a supermarket aisle.
That makes sense. Cereal makers aren’t throwing mascots on
their boxes for fun. It’s to create a psychological connection
between a shopper and that box of dehydrated fruits and
wheat flakes. But in the case of children’s cereals, this fourfoot stare is actually aimed at a much lower focal point.
Cornell’s researchers found that the eyes of spokescharacters
on cereal boxes marketed to kids were aimed downward at a
9.6 degree angle; characters on adult boxes tended, on the
other hand, to look straight ahead.
CHARACTERS ON CEREAL BOXES
MARKETED TO KIDS WERE AIMED
DOWNWARD AT A 9.6 DEGREE ANGLE.
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