What column type should be used to store serialized data in a mysql db?

Question

What column type should be used to store serialized data in a mysql db? I know you can use varbinary, blob, text. What\'s considered the best and why?

Edit: I unders

Answer 1

I found:

varchar(5000)

to be the best balance of size/speed for us. Also, it works with the rails 3 serialize data (varbinary) was throwing serialize errors intermittently.