SAN DIEGO -- You're sitting on your sofa watching a game on TV and eating pistachio nuts. Bear with me here; you'll probably relate to this. Most of the nuts are open, so you have no trouble shelling them by Braille and popping the meat into your mouth without taking your eyes off the screen. Then you pick up a nut that doesn't feel like it's open. You glance down and scrutinize the nut to see if there is enough of a crack between the shell halves to insert a fingernail. When you look back up, you realize you've missed a key play. And in the process, you probably broke a fingernail. Then and there you decide that pistachios are too much of a distraction to make a good TV snack. Now there comes onto the scene a new brand of pistachios, cleverly named "Everybody's Nuts!" (yes, we can all relate to that, too), with a remarkable guarantee: They're always open.

The "Everybody's Nuts" folks are just hoping you'll be skeptical enough of that promise to keep buying box after box, looking for the one closed nut that slipped through. And what happens if you do find one that's not open? Congratulations, you just won a free box of "Everybody's Nuts!" pistachios.

"'Everybody's Nuts!' are big, open pistachios," said Kelly Fallquist, senior marketing manager for the company of the same name (sans the exclamation mark), a subsidiary of Paramount Farms in Lost Hills, CA. "We want people to know that we guarantee that these pistachios are going to be open, and if a customer finds a closed nut, send it back to us (along with proof of purchase) and we will send you a free box, because be believe strongly in our guarantee and in our product."

Not just any pistachio can go in the "Everybody's Nuts!" box. To make the cut, the nuts must not only be open, they must also be big. Only "the largest pistachios" are selected, Ms. Fallquist said. "We specially sort them to get the largest pistachios available so you don't get any of the small ones."

They also come in various flavors. The flagship is roasted and salted, but for the health-conscious there are roasted unsalted. There are also a European roast and a salt-and-pepper flavor.

"There has been so much attention paid to almonds" lately but not much to pistachios, said Sonya Grigoruk, the company's public relations manager. "So this is something unique and new we are doing with the line. I don't think anybody has really taken a pistachio line and done much with it in terms of new flavors or new packaging in quite a while."

Another marketing angle is the insertion of a comic strip in each box (shades of Fleers), featuring a pistachio cartoon character names Stach who is also featured in the brand logo. There are 50 different cartoons in all (collect 'em and swap 'em) "all about the adventures of Stach," said Ms. Fallquist.

"The other thing we want people to know is all the health benefits of pistachios," she added. They are "nutrient dense, a good source of fiber, antioxidents, lutein, B-6 -- I mean there are so many great health benefits [in addition to] the great flavors and unique guarantee, and we are putting a lot of money behind it from the marketing standpoint."

Everybody's Nuts has been shipping its products to test markets in Denver, St. Louis, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh since June. A national rollout is planned for January. As in the test markets, it will be accompanied by an outdoor advertising campaign "along with radio and massive sampling events," Ms. Grigoruk said.

The nuts are "a fresh product" and are "sold in the produce department," she added.