WHICH CELEBRATIONS ARE WORTH CELEBRATING?

NEWS AND INVESTIGATIONS

Which Celebrations are Worth Celebrating?

he selection chocolate box. A celebration staple. Whether you’re a Roses at anniversaries or a Heroes for St. George’s Day, we all have a special tub and we all have a favourite treat within. For this magazine, Wessex Scene are investigating which of the chocolates in a Celebrations tub comes out on top, and which ones truly are worth celebrating.

Firstly, it’s important to note the discrepancies in the number of each chocolate that was available in the box. We bought our box at Portswood Sainsbury’s (£5 but only £3.99 in ALDI) with the hope of having equal number of all the available chocolates: Milky Way, Bounty, Mars, Snickers, Twix, Galaxy, Galaxy Caramel, and Maltesers Teaser. We were shocked by the results. While we understand there is usually less of the Galaxy chocolates (bougie and expensive), we were not expecting such a low amount of Bounty’s, especially when we often see these red tubs strewn with such chocolates, months old. What else were we to discover?

THE EXPERIMENTS

As well as finding out the most popular from our fellow students, we subjected the chocolates to a number of specialist experiments, each testing out something that affects our everyday enjoyment of snacks. The experiments we devised ran as follows:

· Trial by Fire (which chocolates lasted best when subjected to the oven) · Melty Blind Taste Test (which tastes the best once its texture is removed) · Freezer Test (which were the most succulent after getting iced) · Senseless Sniffing (which one was the most desired based on smell alone) · Free Fall (which survived multiple three-story drops) · Bag Test (which remained molecularly sound after spending the day in a bag)

In this graph, the x-axis is time, measured in 30 seconds intervals, and the y-axis is level of destruction. As we can see, after ten minutes, both the Galaxy and the Maltesers Teaser were not visually disfigured by their time in the oven. The Galaxy Caramel didn’t take long to become a splodge (predictable) but surprisingly, it was the Mars that created the biggest pool. However after melting, the Milky Way, Bounty, Galaxy, and Mars lost their appeal and were not unanimously voted as ‘still tasty’.

For this test, we melted down each chocolate and spoon fed it to our subject. They would rate the taste out of ten (ten being literal perfection), with the fragilities of textures out of the question. While they made some guesses as to what each were, the Mars, Milky Way and Galaxy Caramel all got confused with each other. From this test, we saw that pure chocolate comes out on top.

WORDS BY JAGO LAWS-ROBINSON and EMILY DENNIS

Most chocolate boxes are enjoyed during the later months, but what also comes with the winter? Cold weather. The best Celebrations chocolate would have to be enjoyed whether it’s come straight from the box or been sat in the freezer for nine hours. Our four test subjects rated how well they thought the chocolate had frozen, though there are some discrepancies with the results as one test subject has very invalid opinions. Generally, the chocolates with a chewier caramel did not fare very well from their time in the freezer.

This experiment required test subjects to wear a blindfold and listen to loud Dwarven rock music. The only sense they were required to use was the sense of smell and, after smelling around the chocolates, they would say which ones they desire based on said smells. For some bizarre reason, Snickers had the most desirable smell, with all test subjects pointing it out as one they really wanted (one even cockily claiming it was a Galaxy despite that not being true). The ‘Free Fall’ experiment required the chocolates (in their wrappers) to be thrown from a third-storey window into the paved garden below, three times. After the third go, we unwrapped them and assessed the damage. A score of ten is not very good in this experiment, as it means the chocolate was completely disfigured. Most surprisingly, the Galaxy Caramel did not survive. At first glance, it looked fine, and then it slowly fell apart before our very eyes. The Maltesers Teaser and Mars fared the best in this experiment, with only minor damage and chipping sustained.

The best snacks are ones that travel well. For this test, we put all the chocolates into a small net bag, and then threw it in the bottom of a rucksack for an entire day. It took trips with books, bottles, and even a Sainsbury’s shop. We judged how much damage each bar sustained, with ten being lots of damage. As we suspected, the Galaxy Caramel spurt its goods into its wrapper, and the other softer chocolates became very squished and disformed. The Maltesers Teaser sustained no damage whatsoever.

THE RESULTS

So, after all that, which Celebrations are worth celebrating? Well, that’s a question.

Judging on which chocolate fared the best across all of the experiments, our conclusion is pointing towards the answer that has been staring at us this whole time.

You. The public. You already know.