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This page reflects one man's experience with some truly bad candy. The original bad candy guy can be found right here -- credit where credit is due!

The Horror that is Durian

Friends, I am here to tell you -- to warn you -- about some especially bad candy.

The name is "Durian," a seething Trojan horse of vile chemicals masquerading as a tasty bit of sugary goodness. The brand is "Conila," and should you be unlucky enough to find any of their other candies, you are best off dousing them in aviation-grade kerosine and burning them into slag. That, or immolating yourself -- it's a tough call. Durian was procured for my in Plano, Texas, where a good friend lives -- though he's off the Christmas card list now for damn sure.

Durian is a quarter-sized yellowish lozenge, individually wrapped in colorful plastic. An unidentifiable -- to this reporter, at least -- fruit of some kind is featured prominently on the wrapper, along with the mysterious text "DEPKES RI MD: 237113013034." I can only surmise that this is some sort of ID for a chemical weapons program which provided sociopathic flavor chemists with the inspiration for this product.

The ingredients SEEM innocent enough, oh yes: Sugar, glucose syrup, citric acid, "flavour," FD&C Yellow #5 and FD&C Blue #1. But within the catchall "flavour" are some truly hideous concontions, compounds which are capable of producing altered states of mind, nausea, uncontrollible salivation and other symptoms most commonly associated with organophosphate poisoning. Durian should only be available for purchase by adults, and even then there should be a waiting period.

It's not easy to pick out a specific flavor from a candy like Durian, when every self-preservation instinct you have is fighting to make you spit the horrid lozenge in the sink. Good reporting is a secondary consideration to self-preservation -- or in this case, to suicide, which seemed like the best solution for several minutes after tasting the "candy" in question. But I can say the 2 flavors which seemed most prominent in Durian are gasoline and onions.

When consumed, Durian produces a heady vapor which rapidly suffuses itself throughout one's nose and mouth. The petrochemical-like aftertaste lingers on for a good 30 minutes after the Durian has departed, having been ejected from the mouth and into the toilet, where it can go about the business of spoiling the sewers for the rats and roaches. No amount of beverages would cleanse the palate of the taste.

The terrorists at Indofood Prima, of Surabaya, Indonesia should all be rounded up and dragged in front of some war crimes tribunal at The Hague for making and distributing this culinary atrocity. Perhaps in Indonesia this sort of thing passes for candy; I am loathe to make value judgements about other cultures, but in this case I feel secure in saying that the UN should begin carpet bombing the Indofood factory immediately in the interests of humanity's continued survival.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is good candy and 10 is Agent Orange, Durian gets a very loathsome 7.5.