Pez

Welcome Pez preservers, Superheroes hounds, Movie Memorabilia moguls, Barbie Doll delighters, Jewelry junkies, Dinosaur diggers, Star Wars students, Die Cast Vehicle virtuosos, and anyone with a drawer or closet stuffed with stuff. Thanks for bringing your personal interests to CQ, your place to show and share with others your collecting passion.

You are proving many of my peers in the antique business totally wrong. First we heard from them that Ebay would be the death of the sellers’ market, lowering the value of collectibles as more and more items were uploaded for sale. Then came the crash of the Beanie Baby craze – and that we were assured, was the death of all collecting, as many novice collectors/ dealers were caught with vast quantities of the B-B’s, mass produced and declared retired.

The latest pronouncement from the antiques selling community is the lack of collecting by younger folks. That’s because they just want new stuff. Well, gentle readers, collecting is alive and growing and we are here because of your desire to learn and share information on collections, whether new, vintage or antique.

As a youngster I collected sports cards, Cracker Jack trinkets, Hoppy toy guns and a wrist watch, comic books, radio premiums, Lionel trains, and plastic models of cars, airplanes and navy ships. Young girls collected dolls, doll houses full of furniture, stuffed toys, trading cards, 45 records and figurines of dogs and horses. (gee, wish I had my stuff now).

Today my collections are useful or decorative, and sometimes considered over the top. Can you have too many ice buckets? Not me. Sill adding to my Depression glass Modern Tone, cobalt blue dish set? Sure, if the price is right and I don’t have the example already.

I’m accused by friends of having more flatware serving pieces than many good restaurants including a pastry server, cake server, asparagus tongs, sugar cube tongs, olive pincher, grape shears, and cheese shaver. But many were picked up on our antique hunting trips to the South and East coasts and considered souvenirs of those adventures. 

 We ignored each prophecy of the impending collapse of the collecting market, by selling antiques and collectibles on the web, and even with a down economy, collectibles still sell. Collecting is collecting and when the bug bites early, collections grow. So I salute your efforts in hunting for your next addition and hope your plan is to share your finds with the Collectors’ Quest community. And if you do upgrade or switch your collecting direction, you can now take advantage of the new feature on Collectors’ Quest and offer your extra items for sale on the CQ Marketplace. See the tab at the top.

It’s Pez Week here at Collectors’ Quest, and I still have fond memories of the Pez Convention that I attended about a year ago. I admit that I wasn’t especially knowledgeable, or even exceptionally interested, in Pez. Of course, after a weekend where every other word is ‘Pez’, you either develop a nervous twitch anytime someone says the word on the outside, or you fall in love with the little open-throated things.

There’s myriad different Pez dispensers out there, and variations on heads, stems, logos, origins, packaging, springs, doohickeys, thingamabobs and whatsits triple that number. I’m not a hardcore Pez collector, though – so while I know about all of that stuff, I find myself focusing on things that I like. If you’re not delving deep into the history of Pez products and concentrating on the things that you find in the checkout aisle, it’s a very cheap collection to begin and maintain. My entire Pez collection is housed in an airtight, plastic container – only because my residence is prone to mold and mice. Thanks, upstate NY, for the flora and fauna that you try to ruin my collections with.

As you’ll see in our Community, people will devote entire rooms, and even entire houses, to Pez displays. Clearly, this is the mark of insanity. That space could easily be dedicated to Batman, after all.

When my mom gave me 4 new Batman Pez dispensers the other day, I cracked open my collection and realized that I have a LOT more than I’d originally thought. The newest Batman Pez set, released in honor of the upcoming movie, includes The Joker, The Riddler, Two Face and Batman himself – all done in classic style. Pez has a general policy of not including the images of real, living people in their general Pez collection, though exceptions have been made for Elvis, the Orange County Chopper guys, and a few other instances. Still, I’m happy to see ‘classic’ Batman stuff instead of newfangled movie stuff. It would also be in pretty poor taste to make a Heath Ledger Pez dispenser at this point, and no one wants to eat out of the neck of Christian Bale anyhow.

Please also note the following basic rule of Living on Planet Earth, which reads as follows : if your friends or family ever see that you own a single Pez dispenser, you’ll get them as gifts for the rest of your life. It’s a cheap, interesting thing to give, and it’ll usually be handed over to you with an inquisitive ‘Do you already have this one?’ Inasmuch, the collection will perpetuate itself, much akin to rabbits, or a rash.

Some of the greatest Pez sets come in quartets, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Incredibles – the latter of which is missing Violet, my favorite character (who remains a favorite only because she was voiced by my crush object, Sarah Vowell). Pez is also a rare example of a product that features both Marvel and DC characters – two things that are usually kept at a certain distance, lest they touch and another poorly-written crossover occur.

I have a special love for The Psychedelic Eye, a dispenser from 1967 which came in a wide variety of colors. Mine is a green eye in a black hand, on a purple stem, and while I don’t know if it’s especially rare or unique, it makes the Muppet Pez uncomfortable, and that’s enough for me. They have a strange relationship with hands.

The glowing skull and Darth Vader are other favorites, because evil makes things taste that much better. Never did Emperor Palpatine anticipate that I’d be eating candy out of the Death Star, a machine of genocide and planetary destruction. Alas, the only thing that this Death Star is destroying is my craving for strawberry Pez. It’s not Alderaan, but it’ll do, and for a dollar, it’s a guiltless purchase.

Serious Pez collectors should already know that the Wall-E and Eve dispensers were released exclusively in Europe, and if you live in the US and want to get them, they’re ONLY available from Pez.com. Also, expect a Star Trek Original Crew (with Starship Enterprise) in October.

While maybe not in the true Pez spirit, here’s my formal request for Gorillaz, Metalocalypse, Venture Bros and Hellboy Pez. It’s a collection with no end in sight, and as long as neat things exist, Pez will cut off their heads and stick them on plastic stems stuffed with candy for our enjoyment.

Check out The Community for more Pez than you can comfortably imagine, including mine.

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.”

Please enjoy this selection of interviews that I’d recorded at this year’s Pez Gathering, and be sure to check out parts one and two of the Pez Gathering coverage. The interviewees are comprised of the various attendees on the 8th floor of the Westin, who gladly gave their Pez recollections and opinions.

My answers?

The first Pez that I actually bought intentionally was a Batman Pez, though I think I had some kind of unfortunate Looney Tunes Pez from years before. My mom and I went to the local Rite-Aid to pick up a prescription for my recently-removed wisdom tooth agony, and in the last few moments of clarity that I had before I grew dizzy with pain, I told myself ‘dammit, I need something fun today!’ And that is when I started my Pez collection. That evolved only into characters that I liked and were easily accessible at retail, such as the Star Wars and Simpsons Pez items.

The most I ever spent on a Pez item was ten dollars, at the Pez Gathering, for the Psychedelic Eye Pez. If I were to collect Pez, I’d start with the vast array of these, all colored differently.

And my holy grail of Pez? I think that I’d like the rare soft-head Joker Pez, only because I’m a big fan of The Joker.

Listen up!

Also, please enjoy this selection of photos taken by Chris Cooney, who visited the Pez Gathering with me!

(Be sure to check out part one of this Pez trilogy of posts!)

The Pez company has always considered itself a candy company before it has considered itself a collectible or toy company. Pez, created by Eduard Haas in 1927, actually began as peppermints (or ‘pfefferminz’, shortened to Pez), designed to aid in the cessation of smoking and to freshen breath. The packaging of these mints evolved from a simple tin to a long metal box meant to mimic the placement and appearance of a lighter next to a pack of smokes in a pocket, as it remains today. As the nature of the product moved towards candy and childrens’ novelty items, more flavors were added to the assortment and flip-top heads were added to the item. Flavors have included chlorophyll, eucalyptus, lime, cinnamon and even a vitamin pill. Some Pez is even produced to be Kosher.

Pez collectors may seek out one of every produced Pez, or one of every variation, or even factory items in unusual colors that were made as tests. The variations can become enormous in number – slightly different colorations in plastics are considered variations, as are different colored stems on the same heads, whether or not they have ‘feet’ (and whether or not those feet are thin or thick, marking different manufacturing periods), the hinge mechanisms that hold the heads in place, and even if they’re printed with an upside-down ‘R’, indicating that they were produced in a different factory. In many Pez displays, you’ll see what ostensibly appear to be the same Pez a dozen times in a row, but more often than not, these are very subtle variations of the same Pez, and not identical to the serious collector. So yeah, it can be pretty intense.

Many collectors were present and selling off excess items from their collections – doubles that they’d come across, or in an attempt to fund the next huge Pez purchase. When asked about the ‘Holy Grail’ of Pez items, the general consensus was that the early Pez Make-a-Face set was a much-desired item, similar to a very small Mr. Potato Head. The item didn’t see a long production time due to the small parts presenting themselves as choking hazards, meaning that only few sets were made. In October of 2005, a Pez Make-a-Face set (still sealed on its card) as sold for almost $3500, and one was present at the convention, propped up proudly at the head of a double bed.

Additionally, I was informed of the legend of the ‘Crazy Fruit’ Lemon Pez. ‘Crazy Fruit’ was one of the earliest series of Pez dispensers, which was supposed to feature four different fruit-heads – pear, pineapple, orange and lemon. However, the lemon never made it into official production, and only one test-shot was ever made, presumably. Somehow, this item made it into the hands of a collector, who also doesn’t recall how she came to possess it. Some collectors regard this as the most prized item in all of Pez collecting, but others only consider officially released Pez items as canonical.

Did you know that the giant Pez dispensers play music and dispense a whole pack of Pez at once, instead of a single Pez-tablet? Present at the Gathering was a whole room of giant Pez, from the Simpsons to Wolverine and the Ninja Turtles and even a Lost In Space robot. I wasn’t previously sold on these oversized items, but if you show me ANYTHING playing the Imperial March, I’m sold.

One or two collectors were also interested in metal dies used in the manufacture of the dispensers, as well as older packs of the candy, and even rare dispensers and pins produced especially for these conventions. Anything that has anything to do with Pez, even remotely, is fair game for the Pez collectors. It even seems that Pez takes a fairly open stance regarding copyright issues and the collectors who choose to use Pez items on original t-shirts, customized Pez items, and the use of Pez imagery in art and other fan-centric items. Red Conroy, Pez collector and aficionado who attended the Gathering all the way from Canada, had a specialized Pez given to him with his portrait in place of the usual Pez head. Small Pez earrings, done with stunning accuracy to the original designs, were present.

A representative from Pez appeared at this year’s gathering, and his comments revealed that Pez is becoming much more conscious of the whole collector culture that surrounds their product line. Pez has often been many years behind pop culture, releasing such things as Ninja Turtles Pez years behind the peak of their popularity. This year, however, Pez has already produced items from brand new licenses such as Meet the Robinsons and Ratatouille, marking a newly found attention on the dispensers themselves. While most of the more subtle variations aren’t intentional and the product of manufacturing processes, it would seem like more variations were on the way. The representative declined to answer any further questions, unfortunately.

The online resources and fanbase for Pez items are also vast. Most notably, it’s always been rumored that eBay was started as a Pez trading site. While not exclusively for Pez, the fiancee of eBay’s creator was a Pez trader and collector, and the Pez rumor was started purely as a PR move. The databases, fan sites and mailing lists are extensive, though, and contain a wealth of information about Pez. More than you thought possible. Like, if the complete works of Shakespeare were all about Pez, and a few chapters were added about the comedy of Bubbleman, you’d have most of it. But not all of it.

Stay tuned for an audio exploration of the loves of the Pezfolk! For now, check out this gallery from the Gathering.