Mysql CASE - WHEN - THEN - returning wrong data type (blob)

Question

Hi there.

Im creating customizable product attributes in a web store - each attribute can have different type of data, each data type is stored in a separate column using corresponding mysql datatype.

I Have a query like:

SELECT
products.id AS id,
products.sku AS sku,
products.name AS name,
products.url_key AS url_key,
attributes.name AS attribute, 

CASE
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'text' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_text
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'float' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_float
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'price' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_float
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'integer' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_integer
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'multiple' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_text
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'dropdown' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_text
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'date' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_date
    WHEN `attribute_types`.`type` = 'textarea' 
        THEN product_attribute_values.value_textarea
END as value

from (...)

Now, the problem is that when attribute_types.type equals to ?some-type? i want it to return a value as it's stored in product_attribute_values table. Currently I get BLOb every time.

Should I use type-casting or there's some behind-the-scene magic that I dont know about, OR maybe there's some better alternative ?

EDIT:

Everything seems to be OKAY (im checking price that is float) until i add a condition for TEXT (textarea).