Adrianne: This is Underunderstood. 

Billy: Hey guys. 

Regina: Hey. 

John: Hey Billy. 

Adrianne: Hi Billy. 

Billy: So I’ve asked you all to purchase something before we record today. Did you guys all get it? 

Regina: Yes. 

John: Got it right here. 

Billy: And what is it?

John: We’ve each got a box of Cap’n Crunch. 

Regina: Crunchitize me, Cap’n.

[Commercial clip: Crunchitize me, Cap’n! Welcome to my house!]

Billy: Okay. Thank you all for doing the homework assignment. 

Adrianne: You’re welcome. 

John: No, thank you. 

Regina: Yeah, thank you. 

Billy: When’s the last time each of you had Cap’n Crunch? 

Adrianne: I’m not sure I’ve ever had Cap’n Crunch. 

John: I think it’s probably been at least 20 years, maybe 15 years. 

Regina: No way. it’s probably been like, five years for me. 

Billy: Okay. Well for me it’s definitely less than a year, but I just want you all to go ahead now and open it up and pour yourself some Cap’n Crunch. 

Regina: Oh, I don’t have a bowl. 

Adrianne: I don’t have a bowl either. 

Billy: Wow. Okay guys. 

John: I have a bowl. I have a bowl. I have a spoon. I also have a half gallon of milk in front of me.

Regina: Of real milk? Like dairy milk?

John: Of dairy milk. 

Billy: Oh my God, you guys.

Adrianne: Are we supposed to eat it? 

Billy: Yeah, go ahead. Pop. Pop some crunch. 

Regina: It’s so good. 

John: I’m going to pour some milk on mine. Hang on.

Regina: Oh, it’s so good. Oh my God. 

Billy: So John and Regina, you’ve both have had it before. 

John: Yep. 

Billy: Is it how you remember it as a child? 

John: More or less, yes. 

Adrianne: Does it seem smaller? 

John: Well, well wait. It seems smaller and it also, I think I remember the Cap’n Crunch as a kid, like leaving more of a film in my mouth. 

Regina: That’s what I was going to say. I feel like my mouth used to hurt after or something. 

Billy: So this is actually a known phenomenon. It’s called Cap’n Crunch mouth. Cap’n Crunch mouth is definitely a thing. 

John: I didn’t know that. 

Billy: But you’re saying you’re not experiencing much of that? 

John: No. 

Billy: And what was the other thing you said? 

John: It’s smaller.

Billy: Okay. Interesting. Both very interesting observations, and just to be clear, I didn’t prompt you with anything, right? 

John: No. 

Billyz; All I said was, buy some Cap’n Crunch.

John: Yeah. 

Adrianne: Is this a mind illusion? 

Billy: As you three know, one of our most popular episodes started with a question from my sister, the 9/11 photo story. So I’ve been bugging her a lot since, just asking her, does she have any other questions that maybe she can’t find the answer to on the internet that could be used on a podcast?

Adrianne: I’m desperate for ideas. 

Billy: It will exactly. I mean, as the younger sibling, I’m kind of an expert at taking her ideas and receiving all of the attention for them. And the other day she finally texted me and she said, I have something it has to do with Cap’n Crunch. And it came from her husband, Pete. Okay.

Pete: So, so I’m 33 and I’ve never had Captain Crunch until roughly a month ago. 

Billy: Uh, when, when would never, you’ve never had what 

Pete: Captain Crunch. 

Billy: I’m sorry. You mean Cap’n Crunch? 

Pete: Cap’n. Cap’n Crunch. 

Billy: Okay. 

Pete: So we were watching a Try Guys video the other day, a couple of weeks ago, and they were reviewing like all the different types of cereals from best to worst. They were ranking them. 

[Clip: Good morning kids. It’s me, Eugene the tiger, and in this episode of The Ranking, we are ranking cereal.]

Billy:  Try guys, of course, are the viral YouTube stars formerly of BuzzFeed. You guys know the Try Guys, right? So Eugene from the Try Guys ranked Cap’n Crunch as the number two cereal out of the 23 that he tried.

John: Behind what? 

Billy: Cinnamon Toast Crunch was number one. 

John: Strong first choice.

Billy: Capn’ Crunch number two, Cinnamon Toast Crunch number one. But Pete had never had Cap’n Crunch much like you, Adrianne. 

Adrianne: And we’re the same age. 

Billy: There you go. So the next time Lisa and Pete were at the grocery store, they pick some up. 

Pete: I sort of had expected Cap’n Crunch to be the same size as other cereals. I sort of thought it would be the same size as like a Frosted Mini Wheat, sort of like standard cereal size. Oh, I dunno. I just, when you look in the box, it’s like, it’s like a rectangular shape. And so I imagine that one Cap’n Crunch would fit in a spoon comfortably. But imagine my shock when I opened the Cap’n Crunch to discover that it was about a quarter of the size I expected it to be.

Billy: Okay. 

Pete: We eat a lot of Peanut Butter Puffins.

Billy: Okay. 

Pete: Have you ever had a Peanut Butter Puffin before? 

Billy: Yeah. It’s like, uh, the yuppie Cap’n Crunch. 

Pete: Yeah. That’s the exact size that I thought Cap’n Crunch was going to be. I thought Cap’n Crunch was going to be both the size and texture of a Peanut Butter Puffin.

John: Well, hang on. 

Pete: It is not.

Billy: Sorry. Yeah. You’d like to jump in here? 

John: Yeah. Hang on. Yeah. I’m looking at the box. It shows a spoonful of them. Yeah. And next to that spoon, right next to it, it says “enlarged to show texture.”

Billy: Well. Sure. But who reads the fine print? 

Adrianne: The Peanut Butter Puffins box has a spoon on it and there are two Peanut Butter Puffins in it, so that suggests that the Peanut Butter Puffin is twice as large as the Cap’n Crunch unit.

Billy: All right. I think it’s actually much bigger than a piece of Cap’n Crunch.

Adrianne: Really? 

Billy: Yeah. But anyway, Pete wouldn’t stop talking about this. 

Pete: It’s a square,  and you would think based on… and the image on the box we looked at earlier, I think he’s fitting, it definitely looks bigger on the box in the spoon than it, than it is in your hand or in your real life spoon.

Billy: Well, he is like a little cartoon man. 

Pete: Yeah, I know, but still.

Billy: So that’s not the question I’m trying to answer here. Obviously Pete thought Cap’n Crunch was going to be more like the cereal he normally buys at Trader Joe’s, and it was not. Nothing strange there. But then my sister had some.

Lisa: So I ate a lot of Captain Crunch as a kid.

Billy: You mean Cap’n Crunch? 

Lisa: I’m pretty sure it’s still pronounced Captain Crunch despite the apostrophe. 

Billy: Okay, well I’ll research that.

Lisa: Anyway, at first I made fun of him for thinking it would be so big, but the more I was eating it, the more it did seem kind of small to me too. It just, it kind of seemed like a slightly mini version of what I remembered it to be. Um, and I remember it being kind of like, um, I don’t know, more mouth-hurty. 

Billy: Oh, really? You didn’t have the mouth, the mouth pain? 

Lisa: No. We’re about halfway through our box and it has not scratched my mouth yet. 

Billy: So Lisa logs onto Google and she searches for this, and suddenly she finds that it’s not just her and Pete saying that Cap’n Crunch is now smaller and less abrasive.

Lisa: And it seemed like a lot of people on the internet areed that Cap’n Crunch is definitely smaller, but I couldn’t find any actual sources to back it up. 

Adrianne: Is this just that thing where things that you see as an adult seem smaller than they did when you were a kid because you were smaller?

Billy: It’s possible. But this is definitely very much a thing, specifically with Cap’n Crunch. So I did what she did and I started looking on the internet. I found a lot of tweets. 

John: I’m seeing some now too. Yeah. 

Billy: Here’s one. The Sammy Joe show says “A very serious question: Did Cap’n Crunch pieces get smaller or did I get bigger?”

Mrav51 says, “Is it just me or, or has Cap’n Crunch gotten smaller through the years? #thingsyouremember 

autumnbrogooky: “My brother literally just barged into the room to tell me that they made pieces of Cap’n Crunch smaller.” 

bageltony: “We noticed recently we think they made Cap’n Crunch smaller so it doesn’t tear the roof up quite as much as it used to.”

Adrianne: The roof!

Billy: Did Cap’n Crunch gets smaller or did I get bigger? Do you see that? Do you see all these people saying this? Like what is happening here? 

Adrianne: It seems like they made it smaller and people noticed. 

John: It seems like a trend. 

Billy: Exactly. And Lisa and Pete seemed to think so too, and it was surprising to me that they came to me with this mystery because they are both extremely technically savvy and thorough.

One thing, just kind of as an aside, since we were talking about cereal and we were talking about like what Pete watches on YouTube and what podcasts he listens to. He mentioned the McElroy brothers who do, my brother and my brother and me. You guys know them, of course.

John: of course. I think we all listen to it.

Billy: Yes. Well, they’re big fans of theirs, and I just want to include as an example of the lengths they’ll go to to solve a problem that they encounter online. One thing they said about their dedication to the McElroy brothers.

Pete: I mean I even spun up a VM recently so that I can monitor their McElroy.family  webpage for updates so that I can buy tickets to their next tour as soon as they’re posted. So I spun up a Linode VM. Um, it’s only like half working, but it’s almost there. 

Billy: Wait, really??

Pete: Yes. Really. 

Billy: Do you know of anyone else who has done this? 

Pete: I hope not because they’ll get tickets before I do. 

Billy: Wow.

Pete: Yeah. 

John: Hearing this, I’m actually kind of surprised that they weren’t able to find the answer to this themselves. 

Billy: Yeah, me too. 

John: Like I’m surprised Pete hasn’t built a bot or something to track the size of Cap’n Crunch over time. 

Billy: Yeah. So I guess it’s up to us. It’s up to me to solve this mystery. So I want to know: has Cap’n Crunch changed? Is it less abrasive, but specifically has it gotten any smaller? 

John: Who makes Cap’n Crunch?

Adrianne: The Cap’n. 

Billy: Yeah, the Cap’n.

Adrianne: We got to talk to the Cap’n. 

Billy: No, it’s, it’s actually made by the Quaker Oats company, which is owned by Pepsi-Co. Anyway, I think we actually play out with Pete just complaining into the void about the size. 

Pete: I mean, Billy, it’s ridiculous. The size of Cap’n Crunch is ridiculous. If we’re being honest. It’s so small, Billy. It’s so small. I mean, I get that it’s the size of a Cheerio, but, but it’s the shape of a rectangle. It should be the same size as Frosted Mini Wheats. That’s what it looks like. If anything, we should be suing them for false advertising. I mean, can we, can we all agree though? Billy, do you think that Cap’n Crunch is a small cereal? For what it is? Like, I don’t have a box of Kix in front of me, but I feel like even a single kix is, is larger than a single Capn’ Crunch and that seems ridiculous. Kix are small!

Adrianne: Coming up, Billy gets to the bottom of the bowl. 

Pete: You know what? Actually, Billy, have you had Puffins recently?

Billy: No. 

Pete: Puffins really tear the crap out of my mouth.

Billy: Hello friends. 

Regina: Hi.

John: Hello Billy. 

Adrianne: What’s up.

Billy: It’s been about a week since we last spoke, I think, and let me just say, I am up to my eyeballs in Cap’n Crunch knowledge. 

John: Gross. 

Billy: First thing I did, obviously, let’s try to go straight to the captain. I went on Cap’n Crunch’s website and at the very bottom they have an 800 number.

Adrianne: They actually have this number on the box too. 

Billy: Oh, really?  great. Well, I called that number. Oh, I should explain. I am just calling customer service. I didn’t ask for permission to record them because I knew they would say, no, I just recorded my end. Uh, and I’ve replaced their voices with the voice of the teacher from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts.

Regina: Oh, the only logical way to do it.

Billy: Hi. Um, my name is Billy. I just had a question about the size of Cap’n Crunch. Would you maybe be able to help me with that?

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Billy: I’m trying to figure out if Cap’n Crunch has changed sizes ever in its history, uh, specifically if it’s smaller than it used to be. 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

The, the, the individual pieces of the cereal. 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Billy: Okay. No problem. Thank you very much. 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

[hold music]

Adrianne: She put you on hold. 

Billy: Okay. Yeah, so at this point, she put me on hold. I should also explain this isn’t their hold music. Their hold music was some kind of, it sort of sounded like a Huey Lewis or something. 

Regina: Yeah. We don’t have money for that. 

Billy: Right. We couldn’t afford Huey Lewis, so I paid $5 for this track on audiojungle.net. Anyway, when she comes back, she explains that her system isn’t showing that there has been any change to the size of the cereal. 

Regina: What is the system like? Where would that be logged in a customer support system? 

Billy: I don’t know. And so I tried to get to the bottom of this. 

Regina: Let me check the back end. 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Billy: Oh really? So you’re able to go and, and look back into the history of the size of the cereal.

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Billy: Oh, interesting. Uh, how, how far back are you able to look, if you don’t mind me asking? 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

I started to ask a lot of questions and I think the person on the other end started to get suspicious. 

Adrianne: Like maybe you are calling from a rival cereal brand? 

Billy: Maybe. 

Regina: Or maybe you were recording the call. 

Billy: Right? Yeah. They were just like, why are you asking so many questions? 

John: Do you get this a lot, Billy? 

Billy: What? Why am I asking so many questions? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ever since, ever since I was little.

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Billy: Yeah. I’m a reporter. I’m working on a story. 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

[hold music]

Regina: Uh oh.

Adrianne: Now you get the press team. 

Billy: Yes. As soon as I revealed that I’m put back on hold and when she returns, I’m stonewalled. So she takes my info, she gives me an email address and she says that all media questions are handled via that specific email and I have to reach out to them. 

John: It seems discriminatory. 

Billy: I know, it’s a very hostile time to be a journalist. So I’m suspicious that this is going to be fruitful, but I email the address anyway, but I’m instantly sort of feeling impatient.I know this is going to take awhile. So I decided to call the 800 number back from a different phone.

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Adrianne: It’s the same person!

Billy: Well, I didn’t know if it was the same person. I was unsure and I got worried like what if it was the same person? What if they recognized my voice? So I kind of just panicked and I put a little twang on my voice. Oh God, I don’t know. Hi. Yes. Um, I had a question about Cap’n Crunch.

John: Oh god.

Regina: Oh no.

Billy: Hi, yes. I had a question about Cap’n Crunch.

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, I was just wondering how far back you could go in terms of, Oh God, if you had the ability to see the history of Cap’n Crunch and perhaps if it’s changed? 

Adrianne: It’s like Billy went back wearing a fake mustache.

Billy: I’m pretty sure it was a different person.

They basically say it didn’t change. You shouldn’t have noticed they’re getting smaller, but then they say, at least not in the last several years, which is how far back, whatever kind of system they’re using as a reference, is able to go back. 

Adrianne: What is this system? 

Billy: They have some kind of database where they can look up basic questions it seems like, but I can’t get them to confirm how far back customer support can look into product changes specifically. But the person does offer me this. Apparently in 2017, according to them, Cap’n Crunch stopped using hydrogenated oils, and when I ask why, they said it was to improve the product based on feedback from customers. 

Adrianne: The customers were like, you know what? There’s just too much hydrogenated oils in this thing.

Regina: Wait, could I hear you say hydrogenated oil in your accent? 

Billy: Hydrogenated oils.

Adrianne: Ugh, god.

John: Well, you can just pull that up on command, huh? 

Billy: I can just slip into it pretty easily. 

John: Great. 

Billy: Anyway, we continued on. Okay, so if, if people think it’s become smaller, that seems to maybe be a misunderstanding, then. 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Billy: So she starts to say that maybe it’s a perceptive thing and it just seems larger when you’re a kid. 

[Peanuts nonsense noises]

Billy: Um, okay. Well, thank you very much. Uh, I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out. 

So I got an answer, but it wasn’t an official answer. And. I don’t know if I can trust it. I don’t know how far back this mysterious system goes. You know, Quaker wasn’t bought by Pepsi-Co until 2001 and once I go through the official channels to get an answer, it’s kind of crickets. Days go by. I haven’t heard anything, so it’s pretty clear at this point, I need to take matters into my own hands. 

Step one, obtain a vintage box of Cap’n Crunch. I search on eBay, on Craigslist. I venture into cereal enthusiasts message boards. Nowhere can I find an old box of Cap’n Crunch with the cereal still in it. There’s plenty of vintage boxes on eBay, but none of them have the cereal. It turns out most collectors, they might display a small portion of their collection, but usually if they have a big collection, the rest are flattened and stored away, sort of like comic books, but there has to be someone who has done something like this before that can give me advice. There has to be someone who has taken an old version of a food product and compared it to the present day version. And I found that person. His name is Jason and he’s a candy expert.

John: What? 

John: That doesn’t seem the same? 

Billy: They’re sugar. I mean, hold on, it’s ringing. 

Jason: Hello? 

Billy: Hello? 

Jason: Yeah. Billy? 

Billy: So Jason runs the incredibly comprehensive website collectingcandy.com. He knows a lot about candy 

Jason: These days I’m a confectionary historian and pundit. I’m sort of the arbiter of candy history. 

Billy: I didn’t tell him what the question was about before calling him, so I shifted the conversation towards Cap’n Crunch. How familiar would you say you are with Cap’n Crunch? 

Jason: It’s for me, for a guy who’s really into the brand history of things, it’s a, it’s pretty good to chew on. It’s nice. You know, you can definitely bite into some Cap’n Crunch history. 

Billy: When would you say is the last time you bit into actual Cap’n Crunch?

Jason: Yesterday morning I had the Cotton Candy Crunch. 

[laughter]

Billy: Oh, okay, so it’s fair to say you have it frequently. You’re pretty familiar with it. 

Jason: I wouldn’t say, you know, I wouldn’t say I have it frequently necessarily. 

Billy: It’s funny that you guys laugh at the cotton candy thing because he was so passionate about cotton candy flavoring… so he’s been hanging onto boxes as a special edition cotton candy Cap’n Crunch.

But the problem is that all the special flavors of Cap’n Crunch are the ball shape, like the berries. They don’t make the classic pillow shape in any special flavor. 

Regina: Oh weird.

Billy: Those are very streamlined. It’s just classic Cap’n Crunch if you want it in that shape and texture. 

John: Wait is peanut butter crunch not the pillows?

Billy: No. 

John: Huh. 

Billy: And both peanut butter Cap’n Crunch and Crunch Berries come in an XL variety, which Quakers customer support had pointed out to me earlier, but in those cereals, they only ever enlarge the round pieces, so that’s not related to our mystery. Cotton candy Cap’n Crunch isn’t related to our mystery, and peanut butter Cap’n Crunch isn’t related to our mystery, because it’s always round.

Adrianne: like Jupiter.

Regina: What? Are you supplying Jupiter as a point of reference for round things?

Adrianne: No…

Billy: Yes, it’s round like Jupiter. 

Adrianne: Wait, John, didn’t you just say something about Jupiter?

John: No.

[Laughter}

Adrianne: I thought you were saying, like, even the Jupiter, special… 

Regina: He said even the peanut butter one.

Adrianne: Oh, I thought you said Jupiter.

[laughter]

Billy: There is a special edition called cosmic crunch, which is a fan favorite, so…

Regina: okay.

Billy: Again, special flavors don’t come in the classic pillow shape, so I try to direct the conversation back towards that. 

So my question actually pertains to the pillow shape, sort of classic Cap’n Crunch.

Jason: By all means.

Billy: When would you say this is the last time you’ve had that?

Jason: Um, that was this week. Yeah, I had it this week because my last bowl of cotton candy crunch was a little low and I topped it off with regular Cap’n Crunch.

Billy: Okay. Jason, well, you told me that you don’t have it frequently, but you’ve had it within the last week. So I think by most people standards that’s relatively frequently.

Jason: Point made.

John: Is this man okay?

Regina: I’m worried for him. 

Billy: I promise you, he is very well. He has an Instagram. You can follow it. 

John: I thought you were about to say he has insulin.

Adrianne: He’s been hoarding packages of the cotton candy flavor insulin.

Billy: No, he has Instagram. He’s on Instagram. You can follow him. He seems very delightful. Anyway, so I ask him, has Cap’n Crunch cereal changed? Are the pieces smaller? Are they less scratchy? 

Jason: So I don’t know for sure. Um, do I think it’s possible? Yes, it’s absolutely possible. Um, I will say this as sort of the guy for candy, um, I get a lot of people say, ah, these candy bars have shrunk and all these Reese’s peanut butter cups have shrunk.

Um, I do think there is a psychological tendency in memory to think that things were bigger when we were kids. Not saying that people don’t shrink things down, because that also occurs.

Billy: Jason isn’t just speaking generally here, because he actually has specific experience with this. It turns out that Jason actually has directly compared products like this before.

Jason: Uh, you know, I did an article once where I had all these unopened bars of things from 1980 and I literally opened up like a Snickers bar from 1980, a Reese’s peanut butter cup from 1980 and I did side by side comparisons and they were the same size.

Adrianne: Myth-busted.

Billy: Yeah, but it’s not always that way. Jason said that he did a similar test on crispy M&M’s and found that they had changed and are generally smaller now, and there are plenty of other well-documented examples of popular food products changing their size.

Jason: Doritos rounded off the corners of the tortillas, right? To make them safer to eat.

Billy: Oh, really? 

Jason: Yeah. I do remember growing up with Doritos that could literally just cut a cut a slice through your mouth. Um, but yeah, so they, they consciously made the corners of Doritos soft, or not soft, but rounded.

Billy: This is from Wikipedia: in the costliest redesign in Frito-Lay history, in 1994 the company spent $50 million to redesign Doritos to make the chips 20% larger, 15% thinner, and rounded the edges of the chip. 

Adrianne: $50 million. Is that what you said? 

Billy: $50 million. 

Regina: Wow. 

Adrianne: So it’s expensive to switch things up.

Regina: I mean, especially if you’re manufacturing at that scale.

Billy: Exactly. So that could maybe be an indicator that there would definitely be some kind of clearer paper trail if Quaker foods had gone through the trouble of changing Cap’n Crunch. 

Regina: it would be in the system. 

Billy: You would think it would be in the system. So that could indicate that it’s just all in our collective imaginations that it’s become smaller and Jason thinks that’s just as likely. 

Jason: I do know that people can collectively have a misconception about something. You know, it’s like the Berenstein bears, right?

Billy: Right, exactly. The Mandela effect. 

Jason: Yes!! The Mandela effect!

Billy: Yep.

Jason: So there was a, there was a flavor of nerds, not to segue off, but there was a flavor of nerds from the late eighties called hot and cold nerds that people would talk about, people would reference, “You know, you remember hot and cold nerds? It was one side was peppermint, the other side was hot cinnamon,” and everyone was calling them hot and cold nerds. They were on the Wikipedia, hot and cold nerds. I made it my mission to try to find hot and cold nerds, and it took me a few years and I would find little bits and pieces, but I finally found them. When I finally found them, they weren’t called hot and cold nerds. They were hot and cool Nerds, and no one remembered that they were called cool.

John: Huh.

Regina: That’s interesting.

Billy: So at this point, I almost give up. But I decided to bump the thread with Quaker foods, and I tell them that I have a deadline and I need to know the answer, and they get back to me pretty quickly. They say, “we CAN confirm that the size of the individual pieces in Cap’n Crunch have not changed and certainly not gotten smaller.” And then they said, “given the tight deadline, unfortunately, we are not able to participate in an audio interview, but if you’d like, we can send you a quick note from the Cap’n himself via email.”

Regina: Oh my God, yes. 

Billy: Thank you. So this seems like it could be an answer, right? They said, “we can confirm that the size of the individual pieces of Cap’n Crunch have not changed and certainly not gotten smaller.” But do you guys find anything suspicious about this email from Quaker foods? 

Regina: It’s the “certainly not gotten smaller” that’s weird to me.

John: And you know that the formula has changed because of the hydrogenated oils.

Billy: Well, exactly. I just didn’t trust this. I’m sorry. They were all very nice to me, but I don’t trust them. So I decide the only way to know for sure is to get my hands on an old box from the ‘90s. And I asked Jason if he has a plug.

Jason: It’s the only way to be sure, Billy.

Billy: So, I mean, would you happen to know where I could possibly obtain a vintage unopened box of Cap’n Crunch? 

Jason: You know, one guy, um, who you could talk to, um, would be, um. This guy is awesome. You know, he’s absolutely a fantastic cereal guy. Yeah, there is. Okay. His name is Gabe Fonseca.

Billy: So I reached out to Gabe.

Gabe is like a juggernaut in the cereal collecting community, but he’s also a successful TV writer and producer, and he gets back to me and he says, “I’m just really swamped with a project right now. I’d love to help you, but I can’t until the new year.” But I’m looking at his YouTube page right now, and I found a video where he opens a box of Cap’n Crunch from the ‘90s.

Adrianne: No!

Billy: Yeah! Yes.

Gabe [in YouTube video]: In the 90s they had triple crunch, with three separate bags inside each with a popular flavor: Crunch Berries, Regular, and Peanut Butter. Let’s take a look. 

Billy: It’s triple crunch, so it’s not just like regular Cap’n Crunch. It’s, there’s one skinny sleeve of regular Cap’n Crunch, one of crunch berries, and one of peanut butter crunch.

But it’s the same Cap’n Crunch that my sister would be remembering from the ‘90s and he opened an unopened box of it with the bag unopened. 

Gabe [in YouTube video]: Here you can see original crunch Berry cereal with just red berries.

Billy: It looks bigger. 

Adrianne: Oh yeah, that looks definitely bigger. Like at least two times bigger. This is a smoking gun.

Billy: I know, but he said he couldn’t help me out. 

John: Okay. I have an idea. In this photo, in the screenshot from this video, you can clearly see a side view of a bunch of the pillows here, but you can also see there are some like absolute features of the box that we know the scale hasn’t changed on. So like the ridges on the top of the bags are all the same, probably the same height. 

Billy: I would venture to guess that he kept this box. He doesn’t seem like he would throw away a box.

John:  Okay! Yes!! All he has to do then, since this box is right against these things, is measure the captain’s head for scale, and then you compare that to the height of one of these pillows.

Regina: Why doesn’t he just measure one? 

John: Well, he doesn’t have the cereal anymore. I don’t know. I think this is enough information to measure the size of a, of a crunch. 

Billy: Okay, well let me do that. I’ll email him right now.

[music break]

Billy: All right, so Gabe got back to me. Within an hour, he responded 

John: that was faster than I’ve ever responded to an email. 

Billy: I know.

Regina: Even the easy ones. 

Billy: I know, he must really be procrastinating a deadline right now. He said, “Looks like 1.375 inches from the top of his hat to his chin.” So he gave me the exact measurement of Cap’n Crunch’s head on the top tab of the box.

John: Of his box from the ‘90s.

Billy: Exactly.

So let me share this image with you. 

John: Okay. Nice. Gabe.

Billy: Yes. So he put a clear ruler over the top, you can see the exact measurement of it. So I took the photo he sent with the measurement and I overlaid that over the top of the screenshot of him from the video where he’s holding up the box where he still has a cereal.

The cereal is right behind it, sort of on the same plane. So I, I overlayed his image on the YouTube image. So once I did that, I moved it and I also overlaid my own measurement of a current piece of Cap’n Crunch. So here is my Photoshop.

John: Oh wow. 

Billy: And. They are both almost exactly a half of an inch. There’s obviously some slight variation from piece to piece in any box, but the variation is so small and the changes between the two pieces I measured is so small that it seems like if you were able to take out all of the pieces from both boxes and average it out, that the difference between them, if anything, would be extremely minimal.

You know, Pete was saying he thought it should be three to four times bigger. My sister said she remembered it being 50% bigger. It seems like it never was. 

Adrianne: Dammit. Mandela effect. 

Regina: Okay, so did we solve it? 

Billy: I mean, I think so. We got their official statement. We did our own measuring of the size and regarding the mouth feel issue, they said it’s never been crunchier.

Adrianne: so it was all just an illusion. 

John: Okay but with the mouthfeel stuff, you had this theory about removing hydrogenated oils from the ingredients. 

Billy: Yeah, I mean, that is the only change I could find in the ingredients. The only thing that might indicate something that changes the way it interacts with your mouth, but I asked Quaker about that specifically, and this is what they said, “Hey, Billy. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to share that level of detail on ingredients. We recommend that you refer to the product’s packaging for the most current list of ingredients.”

John: Like we hadn’t done that already. 

Billy: Yeah. So they’re kind of dodging that question. But, in terms of the size and the general mouthfeel, I think it’s safe to say it’s basically the same as it ever was.

[ music break ]

So with all of this evidence, I returned to Lisa and Pete to deliver, I guess the bad news, that their conspiracy was wrong. 

Hi. 

Pete: Hi. How are you doing? 

Billy: Good. Are, are you ready for the answer? 

Pete:  I am ready for the answer. 

Billy: I’m sad to say, based on my estimations…

Pete: Billy…

Billy: There has been no noticeable change in size. It’s not exactly one to one..

Pete: Billy!!

Billy: Yes?

Pete: It makes no sense that Cap’n Crunch is this small. You understand that, right?

Billy: I, I know. 

Pete: It seems like an unnatural size for cereal. 

Billy: Okay. But what I’m trying to tell you is..

Pete: I need that media email address. 

Billy: Okay. I’ll, I’ll give it to you. 

Pete: They need to be told. Anyway. Sorry. Continue.

Billy:  I’m glad you’re having an emotional reaction. That’s good. You know, that’s good for radio, but yeah, no. What I’m trying to tell you is, through both the official word from Quaker Foods and from my independent investigation, it seems like there has been no real change to the size of Cap’n Crunch, uh, especially since the ‘90s.

Pete: Interesting. 

Billy: Are you disappointed? 

Pete: I’m shocked. Um, yeah. I don’t know what I’m shocked. Um, I’m just surprised. They just seem small. Um, and they seem like they should be larger. It’s just surprising that they haven’t downsized them. 

Billy: Well, I figured it might be kind of a bummer to be told that this may have all been in your head. So two things. One, Quaker sent me a personal statement from the Cap’n himself.

[Pete laughs… loudly]

Billy: So I’d like to share that with you now. But the second thing is I asked someone very special to do a dramatic reading of it for you. So this is the official statement from Cap’n Crunch with the captain portrayed by podcaster slash cereal enthusiast slash professional voice actor, Justin McElroy. 

Pete: Billy. 

Justin (as Cap’n Crunch): Ahoy there! This is your captain speaking. I heard you think my beloved Cap’n Crunch pieces have gotten smaller. Never! All is well on the rolling seas of milk and my cereal has never been crunchier! The crunch is calling, so I must… Away!

Pete: Oh my god.

Justin (as Cap’n Crunch): Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch.

Pete: [Laughing] Billy, that’s incredible. 

Billy: So there ya go.

Lisa: Is that the best gift you’ve ever been given, Pete?

Pete: It’s amazing.

Regina: Thanks for listening. Underunderstood is reported and produced by Adrianne Jeffries, John Lagomarsino, Billy Disney and me, Regina Dellea. 

Billy: A big thank you to Phil Robibero who did custom art for this episode, and you can see that on underunderstood.com along with all of the images and things we referenced on the show today.

Jason: If you have a burning question that the internet can’t answer yet, shoot us an email. We’re hello@underunderstood.com. We might just look into it. 

Adrianne: You can find us all over the internet on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Reddit where we’re going to start hanging out more. 

Billy: Thanks again. We’ll be gone for two weeks for a brief holiday break, but we will be back in your feeds on January 7th.