Pez Dispensers
04.21.06 By Lorraine Newberry
Several weeks back someone on our forum posted about Pez dispensers, which started me thinking about them. While I’m not an avid Pez collector, I do have a few lying around. There’s a Santa from a long ago Christmas, and the Incredibles characters my kids clamored for in the grocery store one day. My favorite is Gonzo, you know, from the Muppets? He sat on my desk at work for five years, a little bit of color and whimsy in my dull, gray cubicle.
I doubt the powers that be at the Pez company had any idea of the craze they were starting when they launched Pez candy dispensers almost 60 years ago. From the time the candy was brought to the market in Austria in 1927 until 1948, it was kept in small tins. In 1948, however, the company created dispensers, consisting of a body that held the candy and pushed a piece forward when the top was opened. The company added heads to the dispensers in order to make them more appealing to children. Pez candy and dispensers were introduced in the United States in the early 1950s.
Today’s Pez dispensers include feet at the bottom in order to give the dispenser more stability when it is standing up. Dispensers without feet tend to be older and worth more, but collectors should beware of dispensers that have had the feet shaved off to make the piece appear older.
If you’re a Pez dispenser collector or maybe just have a few Pez dispensers and want to find out more about collecting them, there are tons of great sites on the web that you can visit. Check out the Pez Collector’s News website, where you’ll find a list of dispensers and their values, photos of Pez dispensers and can subscribe to a newsletter. Also, take a look at the resource center at Pop-a-pez, where you’ll find plenty of useful information for collectors. In addition to other valuable information, the Collecting Pez site has a page showing the different components of a Pez dispenser and how they’ve changed over the years.
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Article Tags: candy, dispenser, Pez, Pop-a-pez================
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