Diana Pico is a sandy-orange colored, granulated bag of sugary tartness. For such a small package, one serving of Pico can do a suprising amount of damage to your tongue, throat and gums.
The packaging is a misleading group of confusing imagery. First, due to it's small size, you are led to believe that, in such small quantities, one is generaly safe from any harm the Pico may inflict. Then there is the picture of a peanut wearing a sombraro, giving the unlucky purchaser the univerally reassuring sign of "thumbs up." Since Pico tastes nothing like peanuts, nor does it appear to be a peanut derivative, one must wonder where this design concept originated. And why the sombraro? We aren't even sure what exactly to call the candy itself. Is it called "Diana Pico?" Or did Diana just design/create/manufacture the Pico? Or is Diana the happy peanut with the silly hat? We want answers!
One thing's for sure: Pico is all about pain... in large quantities. The granuals melt into a sugary mass upon mixing with saliva on your tongue, and for the first few moments, actually taste rather good, if not extremely sour. But then the burning commences. It begins at the base of your throat, and spreads throughout your mouth until you either spit it out (yes), or swallow (no). But still the pain spreads. You may continue to spit or attempt to drink something, anything, in a vain effort to put an end to the tortuous pain. You'll gasp and claw at your throat, pleading for help. And then you'll die.
Chalk up another victim to Pico.
As an extremely uninteresting sidenote to the Pico story, we refer to Pico as "pico (thwppt!)," the (thwppt!) to be pronounced by sticking you tongue out and making a spitting sound. The 7-11 we found Pico at was inhabited by a rather friendly clerk who, upon our request, tried a small amount of Pico with us. He too spit out his share, saying "This is disgusting, this Pico (thwppt!)" Everytime he said Pico from then on, he would tack a (thwppt!) on to it. After the hundredth time of saying "Why would someone buy Pico (thwppt!)?" or "Are you going to try more Pico (thwppt!)?" or just "Pico (thwppt!)," his little form of humor became as amusing as this story, which is, to say the least, not at all. There. I'm sorry I told you.
