There’s No Good Way To Eat A Jolly Rancher OITNB Shank

Weird things happen at San Diego Comic-Con. I witnessed a group of bearded strangers share a travel-sized sunscreen bottle and help each other rub it on their pink cheeks. I saw a man dressed in what looked like a scuba suit and a $15,000 augmented reality visor propel himself 10 feet in the air outside of a brewery. I’m sure there are a lot more moments to come, but the highlight of preview night was attempting to eat a shank-shaped Jolly Rancher off a prison tray in a prison lunchroom.

The TV Diner exhibit at San Diego Comic Con, located just across the bridge walkway from the convention center, features three rooms each with a theme: Game of Thrones, Orange is The New Black, and Luke Cage. But these perfect Instagram sized sets aren’t just for pictures, they are for eating.

"Food is the hardest thing to get here at SDCC,” said Nader Ali-Hassan, a marketing executive at Comcast who worked alongside viral YouTube chef Byron Talbott to develop the menu. "I thought it was all going to taste like airplane food, but it’s really good.”

Greeted with drinks and smiles, Player.One sat down to test out all the meals in the Orange Is The New Black Dining Room. As we shared dishes, there was one clear stand out: Sansa’s lemon cake (Pro-tip: take off the lemon. It’s not candied). On the other end of the spectrum (pun intended), was Chang’s Frito Fritters.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” our multimedia editor Zulai Serrano splurted out as she bit into what tasted like a crunchy, but stale, corn and sriracha flavored scone--in true prison fashion. The jerky of the beast that killed Robert Baratheon was surprisingly decent, not too chewy not too tough. And that cherry pie that splattered on the wall in OITNB Season 1... can’t ever go wrong with cherry pie.

Luke Cage’s tray was the most appealing, as far as a full meal goes. The vegetable lo mein had a nice kick to it and it’s hard to fuck up anyway (I owe a dollar to Pop’s swear jar), a spring roll and fortune cookie, especially when there’s a motivational “Always Forward” note tucked inside.

But the stand out snack here, or should I say weapon, is undoubtedly the jolly rancher prison shiv. And if you can’t figure out how to eat it, like me, just pretend to murk an unsuspecting victim at your table (hehe).

“It’s a mold. I envisioned it being perfectly connected, but it actually looks like 4 jolly ranchers. The mold was built so it wouldn’t be perfect. It looks like someone licked it together, as disgusting as that is," said Ali-Hassan. "It’s definitely the coolest thing, but it’s the one thing nobody is really eating because I’m not sure how you would.”

Go for it, but be forewarned, you’ll have sticky hands for the rest of the night. Also, don’t forget to save your trays! How many journalists does it take to figure out that’s why the plastic is underneath the food?

The diner is open from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. through July 22 at the Petco Interactive Zone at 100 Park Boulevard.