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Everyone Loves PEZ!
The only problem was loading it. You had to hold open the dispenser sleeve and load the candy one by one. Once it was filled you could offer candy to your friends, and when done leave it on display for all to admire. The dispenser head could be any of a number of cartoon characters, animals or holiday symbols. Talk about being the life of the party! History of PEZ So how did this fabulous toy come into being? In 1927 Austrian Edward Haas started making peppermint candy breath mints in brick shape as an alternative to smoking. They were placed in tins and called PEZ, which comes from the German word for peppermint. They took the first, middle and last letter from pfefferminz to come up with PEZ®. In 1948 the first ”hygienic dispenser” or “regular” came to market. To strengthen their appeal to smokers they were designed to look like lighters. Pink for women and blue for men. Soon they were made in many colors. In 1952 the Haas food manufacturing company introduced PEZ® to the U.S. Sales were sluggish at first so Haas decided to target the toy market and children. He introduced fruit flavored candy and character-headed dispensers. Soon PEZ® was millions of homes. In 1970 Haas food manufacturing changed their name to PEZ Candy Inc. Their slogan was “A treat to Eat in a Puppet That’s Neat!”
The first U.S. plant was built in New York and imported candy from Europe. The operation moved to Orange, Connecticut in 1973. In 1987 PEZ added feet to their dispensers, little tabs at the bottom of the dispenser that allows it to stand on their own. By 1990 the PEZ plant doubled in size and was running seven days a week twenty four hours a day. Over three billion PEZ candies are consumed annually in the U.S. alone and sold in 60 countries around the world all without advertising. Quite a success story! PEZ has come in many different flavors. The first U.S flavors were cherry, lemon, orange and strawberry. Cherry was discontinued and replaced with grape because of concerns that children would confuse it with cough medicine, so if you want cherry, go to Canada. Spain produces apple and raspberry. Chocolate PEZ is produced in Hungary and Thailand. Other PEZ flavors include blue raspberry, sour watermelon. There is a vitamin enriched PEZ and a Kosher PEZ. Other unusual flavors include chlorophyll, cinnamon, eucalyptus flower, licorice, menthol, lime and anise. Production of these flavors stopped because they didn’t sell. Collectible Value By now the Pack rat in you is asking if PEZ dispensers are worth collecting, and the answer is yes. A locking cap box trademark regular sold on eBay in 2002 for $6,575. A big top elephant dispenser netted $3,600 at auction. PEZ items are very collector friendly. The dispenser’s age can be determined by the patent number that is molded on to the stem. Every time PEZ Company made a design change they patented it. These changes were frequent, making it easy to estimate the age of the dispenser. The dispenser also has an IMC tag “injection mold code” which tells a collector the country the dispenser was made in. This code has two numbers: the first number is the country the second number in brackets is the specific facility in that country. So, for example, if you have a dispenser with a patent number 2620061 and an IMC number 4[1] it was made in 1952 in Austria at facility one. PEZ also turns over manufacturing errors (dispensers that were produced in the wrong colors for example) to collectors at conventions. Discontinued dispensers are sought after most such as bicentennial, circus, eerie specter, guns, mobsters, Olympic and smurfs. One of the most sought after was a 50’s space gun that shot PEZ® and production was stopped because it was deemed a safety hazard. The rarest dispenser of all is thought to be the make-a-face MR. Potato Head PEZ® dispenser discontinued after just three months because it had small plastic parts that could be hazardous to children. If you buy a PEZ, condition is key. Collectors use abbreviations to determine condition hh as mib ,nf, moc ,momc. These abbreviations, in order, mean mint in bag, no feet, mint on card, and mint dispenser on mint card. Dispensers were packaged in bags or in a plastic bubble on a card. PEZ trade mark is PEZ in capital letters built out of PEZ bricks--it must have that trade mark. PEZ does not keep track of dispenser production numbers so it is hard to know how many are out there. As a rule, PEZ does not put the likenesses of real people on their dispenser heads with one interesting exeception--the Tuetel family from Orange County Chopper, a custom motorcycle manufacturer featured on the tv reality show American Chopper. There are also historical figures such as Davey Crockett and Bettsy Ross but these are not really based on the real people. There is a PEZ museum located at 214 California drive in Burlingame California. There are several PEZ conventions held in every state throughout the year. There is an abundance of information on the internet and several books written on collecting. —Frank ®PEZ is a registered trade mark of PEZ Candy, Inc.
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Here's some fun PEZ links: An article about the Orange County Cycles PEZ projects. Snopes on the controversy on whether PEZ ever depicted real people. The Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia Yankee Grocery, a great site for PEZ collectors and enthusiasts. |
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PEZ
in the U.S.