Trying Durian, The Smelliest Fruit In The World

What does “like a box of chocolates” mean?

Tasting durian for the first time, one friend reaches for a famous comparison: «It’s a box of chocolates, but a bad box of chocolates. You don’t know what you’re gonna get.» The idiom “like a box of chocolates” means you can’t predict what you’ll get, one bite sweet, the next one foul. It fits durian perfectly.

The phrase comes straight from the 1994 film Forrest Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Americans now use it for any unpredictable situation, a new job, a blind date, an exotic fruit. A friendly, everyday way to say “who knows?”