I saw Mister Bullwinkle Pez at a Central Illinois antique mall just a few weeks back. He was standing in a glass case at eye level with his price tag turned around so I could not read it. It was placed below its footless brown stem. I asked the store clerk to open the case and let me have a look.

She handed me the little fellow and to my surprise the tag read $300 with no decimal point. While I know some details of the history of this famous candy, having purchased a dispenser or three and replacement packs as a youth, I had no idea that these holders that were invented in 1947 by Oscar Uxa to dispense the candies first formulated in 1927 by Edward Haas and sold as a substitute for smoking, were so expensive to collect.

I wanted to know more about this Bullwinkle and how he got here, so I asked

“Mr. Bullwinkle, tell me about yourself.”

“I was put together in the early 1960’s, well after my early ancestors were suffering from worn springs and broken hinges. I was sent to a penny candy store in Madison, Wisconsin near a grade school, and not far from the University. You know that type of store, run by an old lady with gray hair and big hands. I think she felt a need to sample each product for freshness. She sold all sorts of little goodies, candy bars and ice cream cones. Even some minor school supplies, if you forgot your number 2 pencil.”

“I sat with other Bullwinkles and some other characters left over from previous shipments. A young boy purchased me, stuck me in his corduroy pants pocket and took me to school. I was his constant companion for several weeks going to school, scout meetings and on his paper route.”

“Then one day we were back to the candy store after school and my owner bought a new version, a Batman Pez head with slick molded wings. I knew right away that I was old news. I was relegated to his underwear drawer. Oh, I did go with him again for a few days when Batman had a broken wing, but was back in the drawer after he bought a football player with pennant logo of the Green Bay Packers on the stem. My boy was growing up.”

“I was left behind when he went off to collage. I was with Batman, the football player and several other assorted dispensers including a Mickey with lots of scratches, suffered when my boy kept him in the same pocket with a can opener on his house key ring .”

“So, were you in the drawer till now, how did you get to Illinois?” I asked.

“The boy’s mom finally got the clue that he was not moving back home when he got married. She put me and my brothers at a yard sale. A couple from Northern Illinois was in Madison for a football game at the UW. They came by and wanted me.

They had started a collection that included some from his youth. I spent many years behind the rec room bar in their basement sitting in a holder just made for me and my companions.”

“I was moved with the man’s belongings when they got a divorce, and spent several years in a cold garage, some of my companions that had candy left inside, got chewed up in that garage, and had to be thrown out. That was about three years ago when he finally opened the box to look us over.

He had seen a book on Pez dispensers by Shawn Peterson from Krause Publishing, at a local store.”

“I was sent to an auction. The lady from this booth bid on many of my friends but only won two of us. I knew she really loved me, I cost her $140 plus a buyer’s fee. Now I’m sitting here. Did you want to buy me?”

“No, I have too many collections already. You need a good home.”

“I sure enjoyed living with that couple – they had me on display for all to see, I was their star, with my footless brown stem, and large rack of horns.” Their friends talked of watching the Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show and saw the likeness to the real star of that show. I want to be a star again”

I thanked Bullwinkle for sharing his story. The nice lady that worked in the mall came back to the booth to put Bullwinkle in the locked case. I whispered before I left the booth, “Bullwinkle, you will always be the star.”

Stephen Wright, the deadpan absurd comedian, has been honing his skills for a few years, preparing to release a new comedy album. I Still Have A Pony, his new album, comes twenty-two years after his first - and only - album, I Have A Pony. While the new album is very well received (and with the inactive Wright, an ideal medium for his comedy), in that 22 year gap comedy seems to have fallen away from the comedy album. Stand-up shows on cable TV, Video releases, and HBO specials have become the prime way for comedians to share their wares with the world, unabashed and unedited.

Radio, TV, and movies, of course, had a huge impact on getting a comedian’s name out, but those three mediums were restricted by their ‘public’ nature, and between FCC oversight and the Code, they were limited in what could be included. Movies and TV presented a white-bread view of comedy — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but recordings were treated more as a publication, like books and magazines, and thus allowed a wider variety of comedy to flourish.

“Party” albums were those raunchy records played when entertaining guests, bringing the likes of Rusty Warren, Woody Woodbury, Nipsey Russell, Flip Wilson, and others into the public eye. The type of comedy most popular for these albums, relying on not-too-subtle sexual innuendo, lampooning of alcohol and drug abuse, and focus on racism, was a bit too much for mainstream record labels at first. Smaller labels, like Rusty’s Jubilee, Woodbury’s Stereoddities, and Nipsey’s Borderline, were willing to take the risk and made names out of these night club shows. While I don’t plan on playing any of these albums for the kids any time soon, these records actually appear quite enlightened compared to the bland sexism, racism, and empty optimism of the generic, unoffensive comedy seen in entertainment at the time. In the 1960s, Rusty’s albums talked openly about the realities of sex, Woody Woodbury’s “Booze Is The Only Answer” albums showed the dark side of drinking, and Nipsey Russell’s humor highlighted racial stereotypes. Comedy made the issues more palatable — not enough for TV, but enough to enter society’s peripheral vision at a time when speaking positively about sex and decrying racism could turn bad quickly.

Naughty albums weren’t the only funny albums, though. Albums were also a vehicle for more everyday forms of comedy, from stand-up to song parodies. The earliest stand-up-style comedy album I own is Reginald Gardiner’s Trains, a 2-disk “comic monologue” (script here) originally released in the 1940s. As extensions of comedy radio programs and movie soundtracks, records were released to expand the range of influence beyond the horizon. Variety shows, both on TV and radio, mixed comedy with their main program, showcasing performers like Spike Jones and the City Slickers. These musical comedians spawned a genre — the parody song — that has been the mainstay of Dr Demento’s show for decades. “Weird” Al Yankovic, Stan Boreson, and Alan Sherman made names for themselves creating entire albums of witty, funny songs, both set to the tune of popular songs and to original tunes. Whether the top on your Christmas list is your two front teeth or a hippopotamus, the songs themselves were originally released on 78rpm albums and have been played over and over this time of year on radio stations for the past fifty years.

In recent years, starting in the late sixties and progressing along with the spread of other media, the wide variety of comedy that once dominated records had come to TV, film, and radio. The censorship that had restricted the more public media was becoming less prevalent, and Flip Wilson got his own TV shows, Rusty Warren did her comedy on daytime talkshows, and The Smothers Brothers stood up to their network over censorship.

While it might have looked like comedy albums died out about the time VHS took root, this isn’t the case. Modern comedians like David Cross and John Leguizamo have made their mark with new albums, and the ‘blue collar comedy‘ movement owes its roots to comedy albums released as a first stepping-stone. As those small labels noted in the 1950s, recording a stand-up act is a lower-cost, lower-risk prospect than producing and mixing a musical album, giving comedians a way to reach an audience without having to secure a high-price TV special, or fit their show into 8 minutes on an Evening At The Improv type show. From funny songs to stand-up acts to political satire, the comedy album is around and kicking. Stephen Wright still has his horse, and he remembers how to get his comedy to the world.

The rights surrounding digital property are a hotly contested, widely debated subject that’s recently infiltrated all of our lives, even if we wouldn’t even touch a computer for fear that the demons running on the little wheels inside might be released. You should be so lucky to work at the desk in a library - that’s one of the more realistic things you’ll hear during the course of a day.

We’re enduring writers’-strike-compelled reruns on the television because of digital property rights, the RIAA monopoly is pretty much punching people in the groin across the world should they suspect them of even the most remote form of music piracy. What does a rabid, excited music collector like me DO about all of this?

I can’t say that fear has gotten the better of me, but I actually abstain from almost all questionable music downloads. As a completist, I find it much more advantageous to legally download an entire album at consistent quality from a single source. That way, you don’t have to deal with possible viruses, fluctuating bitrates, frustratingly cut-off songs and odd blips. When I listen to an album, I want the full aural experience as intended by the artist, even if I don’t have the cover art at hand to read along with. I have, however, developed a three-pronged approach to legally enhance my digital music collection to its fullest potential.- not counting ripping my own CDs and music borrowed from friends. Many recording artists actually advocate this approach - Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and geekcore rapper MC Chris among them - to combat corruptions within the stagnant recording industry and negligible financial returns to the artists themselves.

First, I’ve joined LaLa.com. LaLa is an internet database of sorts in which users catalogue the entirety of their physical music collections on CD, as well as which albums they’d like to have in their collection. The database then anonymously pairs up these people, orchestrates a trade, provides the envelopes and outgoing shipping for the CD in question, and then arranges for a return trade to be made, though not usually from the same user. Within their trading system, everyone gets a fair return, and you receive just as many CDs as you send out - and all you pay is a dollar or so per trade for incoming shipping costs.

Their rules explicitly sending anything but a genuinely produced CD, and also forbid ‘rip and ship’ - making a copy of a CD and then immediately sending it out again in order to obtain a new CD… but it’s certainly a legal venue to test out new music, and the ‘digital property’ laws are not explicit enough to define what you can do with your own property, even if you end up deciding not to keep it. I know that I have boxes of CDs that I bought on a whim and have only found displeasure with, and this is a perfect way to get rid of ‘em and replace them with stuff I actually want, with minimal effort. Also, not being embarrassed while you’re trading in your Celine Dion CDs to the cute chick behind the counter at your local Rhino Records in a bonus.

Of course, there’s also straightforward downloading, which is an amazing, beautiful thing if you’re on a cable modem. If you’re on ol’ 56k dial-up, it’s more like a personal hell. I subscribe to eMusic.com, which is a great service, and has a Mac compatible downloading program that organizes your music into folders for you. They specialize in lots of smaller label, indie stuff, but lack in a lot of major label releases and older albums. That’s okay, ‘cause I’m more of an indie guy - but every so often, I get a hankering to catch up on some musical relic I’d missed up until now and am left sorely disappointed.

Of course, getting 100 songs a month for 20 bucks is a pretty solid deal - twenty cents a for a legally-downloaded song that you can re-download at any point in the future is a great deal. The entire Magic Marker Records catalogue is on there, as well as some live performances by Tom Maxwell, Travis Morrison and Elysian Fields that can’t be found anywhere else (even if they lack these artists’ full length albums). Their download speeds are also super-fast and consistent.

This past weekend, I was searching for a copy of ‘Old and In the Way’ for my mother, but every search I made came up with that dreaded ‘out of print’ status. Even used copies of the CD were roughly 60 bucks, so unwilling to pay the steep price, I perused LaLa and eMusic, and even the dreaded, restrictive iTunes, all to no avail. Finally, I found the complete album, legally downloadable, from MP3Fiesta.com.

Songs from MP3Fiesta cost roughly ten cents each, with a minimum purchase of 20 bucks’ worth. While these songs are not downloadable forever, they’re made available to your account for a period of 48 hours, during which you must download them one by one to your computer. It lacks the smooth interface of eMusic, but the price is half that of eMusic, and the catalogue is more extensive and familiar. I’ve found a majority of positive reviews of the site, though my experience with it is limited - it delivered exactly what I needed when I needed it, when no one else could. I think that qualifies as a success, and it fills in the last possible aspects of my musical desires.

I’m not, however, a fan of iTunes. While their revenue sharing and promotion are potentially more beneficial to the artists in question, I’m not fond of the idea of paying a dollar for a song that I don’t have unlimited access to. Yes, if you have a song that you bought from iTunes, you can only use it on a few of your personal devices - and you need to enter a password any time you choose to transfer it. It just seems overly complicated to need to organize my music collection by how many RIGHTS I have to listen to the music itself. I love you, Apple, but that’s just bad technology.

All this music and it doesn’t take up any physical space. And who has space when you can’t even find room for a dozen Iron Man busts amid your clutter?

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I cannot recall exactly when I started ‘collecting’ heart objects. I can assure you, It was not by intention. My dear aunt Marion gave me a glass trinket dish one day to put in my bedroom. (She was my favorite aunt, a feisty lady with so much character and a ‘liberated woman’ way before her time.) She is ‘long gone’, but her memory continues on because this glass trinket dish rests on my vanity table.

After I had that one, a few more were added;

one was a gift from a daughter, another a covered porcelain box. This was given as a favor at a wedding shower of a business associate.
While at an antique shop in Florida, I came across this teeny perfume bottle, heart shaped and painted with a flower. It’s just 1-1/2” tall. It was way too charming to pass up!

I came across this milk glass, floral dish at an estate sale and just loved it. My mother-in-law gave me this little double-heart dish, resting on a shell.

My dear friend Cathy gave me this ‘verse’ picture and said it was for my heart collection. I almost protested but then looked around the room. She was right, I was getting hooked!

My dear granddaughter, Allie, saw my collection and made this covered bowl for me at a pottery class.

I believe this glass ‘paperweight’ is a very old one – it has some wear to it, but as with many things in my collection, just makes me happy to know that others enjoyed it before me.

My ‘pride and joy’ are a pair of heart-shaped, pink glass lamps. Purchased at an auction many years back, and won after pretty heavy bidding, I just HAD to have them.

The grandchildren like them because they shed just enough light so they feel ‘secure’ when they sleep at granny’s but not too bright to annoy.

When we were looking for a day-bed for the spare room, we came across this white, iron treasure. It is new and while we love antiques, really filled the need! The back is heart-shaped, of course.

I started to question why I have come to love heart-shaped items so much. And then it dawned on me – my dad’s name was Valentine! Maybe it just makes me feel closer to that charming old coot! And that’s fine with me.

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Community”

When did you begin collecting M&M items — and why?

I got my first piece in 1995 became serious collector about 2001. I’m not sure why… I just found them very cute and saw lots of items each holiday Easter, Valentines day, Christmas, Halloween etc.

How many items do you have in your collection?

Way too many to count! There are thousands of them. I have a room dedicated to the collection — wall to wall ceiling to floor; plus M&M stuff in other parts of the house. Also, I have a 10 X 7 foot warehouse in my back yard full of bins and bins of more & more M&Ms and even bins in the garage and laundry room. Everything I use is M&M, even my office supplies at work.

What’s the most extreme you’ve gone for any item?

Hum not really sure…

I live in NY but have been to Vegas for the 1st M&m’s World store and for the M&M collectors convention (not affiliated with M&M Mars). I’ve even been a human M&M in NY Times Square for the grand opening of M&M’s World. I’ve also been on on a few news channels, including the TV show 20/20, and in a few newspapers.

Here’s a photo of me in my 2006 Halloween costume — an M&M vending machine. It had a glass front coin return dollar slot & looked so real that I won the $300 prize at my job.

Oh, and an artist was recently at my house to take photos & make sketches of me and my collection.

Really? Tell me more about that.

I answered an ad looking for a collector. She wants to ad paintings drawings to her portfolio and wanted to paint a collector with their collection, and picked me because she was fairly local to me and loved the idea of M&M’s since they are so colorful.

Do you collect anything else?

Yes, I collect a magnet from everywhere I visit, and I used to collect Hard Rock Cafe’ shirts from everywhere I went that had one. (As a matter of fact, I was in a “who can get the most shirts” competition with my hubby for those.)

With so many items in your collection, it’s hard for me to imagine there’s much left to collect unless it’s hot-off-the production line — but is there still a ‘holy grail’ item you seek?

I would like to get the pieces I am missing that Danbury Mint put out (they are very expensive).

Well, I hope Santa’s listening. *wink*

To see more of her fabulous collection, check out nutzaboutmnmz in the Collectors’ Quest Community.

(Got your own collection to show off? Join for free!)