As noted above, I bought one of the pods. I came home, looked at a couple of videos that really didn't tell me much other than "beware the cacao bean pod and the bitterness within" but assured me that pretty much everything within is edible in its raw state.
One of my daughters and I opened up the pod to find the nested rows of slimy cacao bean pods within. We both gave it a smell ... unripe banana came to mind. Both of us popped a pod in our mouths. "So many fruits!" the 6-year-old says. "Pineapple! Banana!" I chime in with "mango!" "Yeah!" and she giggles. The flesh was sweet and sour with pan-tropical fruit flavors. I wouldn't call it "amazing" so much as pleasantly interesting, but a bit of a pain in the ass for such little reward. There's not too much of this mucilaginous flesh on each pod, and not much of it wants to come off as you suck the bean in your mouth.
Having explored the extent of the fleshy part, I decided to just bite into the bean, bitterness warnings be damned. And ... well, first, I was expecting a crunchy texture and snap of a shell of something, but it was like biting into a half-cooked bean: both mealy and gritty but no danger of damaging dental work. My first impression was actually, again, that of a bean: earthy, nutty, dark. A little bitterness kicked in as I chewed, but not all that much. As I continued chewing, it grew somewhat, and the half-developed impression of dark chocolate started coming into focus. I actually liked the bean itself fine. Perhaps my cacao fruit was atypical, but I enjoyed the contrast of the sweet, fruity, bright outside with the somewhat bitter, dark, nutty bean. I enjoyed it enough I ate about eight more.
Is it something I need to buy again? If I do, it'll be to show the kids how chocolate is made, and use it for fermentation. It's certainly not cost effective, but it would be a fun project.