The Official Rankings: Starburst Flavors

Let's own up to a simple fact, shall we? It's a BuzzFeed world. For the same reason why CNN has been covering the Zimmerman trial while virtually ignoring the situation in Egypt and the extradition attempts of Snowden, we're going to be a little loose around here every now and then. That doesn't mean we've suddenly gone soft - we're a bunch of math nerds, after all - but rather we know that occasionally you want to think about something other than sports.

So in that vein, we're starting the series with a topic that has been discussed around our office for some months: What is the best Starburst flavor?

First, we took a poll at the numberFire HQ. Then we consulted a group of teenagers, sorority girls, supertasters, a food critic, and several random people at bars across lower Manhattan. After running some numbers, doing some crunching with two-way analysis of variance and other serious tools used to answer serious questions, here now are the rankings. Argue with us at your peril.

#4: Yellow

If there was one consistent response to our query - other than "Who cares? Why are you even asking me this?" - it was that Yellow is terrible. What can one say about Yellow that hasn't already been said about Isiah Thomas' career as a GM?

It's interesting to note however that there is a subclass of people that fight so hard for the flavor that they're willing to put their personal credibility on the line by having Yellow at #1. I call them lemon people. They're the ones who get lemon sorbet instead of actual ice cream. They probably down Lemonheads like M&M's and have an irrational attachment to the Tour De France. They go hard, but they're aligned with the worst, the bottom of the barrel that everyone else rightfully sees as the rotten apple of the bunch. Yellow sinks the entire pack like a vacuous black hole of competence, comparable to only one person in the sports world.

Sports equivalent: Mark Sanchez

#3: Orange

Orange hits you hard with the flavor upfront. It doesn't skirt the subject or try to slow play you; it is what it is and if you don't like it, tough. It's in your face, sweet as hell, and like Red, lightyears away from the fruit it ostensibly represents.

What kills orange, of course, is that everyone with a tongue knows what an actual orange tastes like. We've all had hundreds of them during halftime of youth soccer games, juiced them repeatedly to rid our bodies of toxins, and had them along marinated beef in Chinese dishes so inauthentic that it makes baby Yao Ming cry. The flavor is so far off that it kills even the most fleeting air of candy authenticity. It's a fraud, a sugary lie. And when thinking of frauds, only one name stands out.

Sports equivalent: Alex Rodriguez

#2: Red

A little more argument here. More than a few people think of the red flavor as tasting like medicine, some sort of horrific combination of sugary candy and Benadryl. Others find the flavor to be the least congruent with the fruit it's trying to represent, but then again, how many of us sit around eating cherries outside of a milkshake context? Others swear by it, so much that it actually won the plurality of first-place votes. It's like some sort of bizarro non-BCS team that is flirting with #1 but gets downvoted by huckster pariahs like Paul Finebaum.

The people who fight for Red do so with a strong passion, unseen by any flavor other than Yellow. At the end of the day, it's too bad they're wasting all that effort rooting for the silver medalist, an inconsistent and binary performer who often seems to have more haters than fans. It's either the best or the worst, with little in-between; who else can make our mouths fall agape then shake our heads in disgust in a shorter time frame than..

Sports equivalent: Alexander Ovechkin

#1: Pink

The overwhelming winner, Pink, is really a titan in this competition. Whether it's because strawberry is an easier flavor to synthetically produce or whether there's some sort of Stroup effect with the calm, accepting hue of the candy itself, Pink is the run away #1 overall pick in this competition.

Tart without making your eyes well up like a Warhead left in the sun, sweet without giving you type-one diabetes like Orange, Pink has got it all. It's the All-American that kisses the babies, shakes the hands, and then dunks on a fifteen-foot hoop. The blue-blood of the group, it's a goody-goody that also delivers, pack-in and pack-out. Getting it done, year after year - say hello to..

Sports equivalent: Peyton Manning

Disagree? Fight it out below.