The Northeastern Pez Collectors Gathering 2007 : The People
I’ve been to many a convention in my day, from comics to… well, other conventions about comics, with the occasional ex-porn star thrown in there at a booth that none of the nerds really acknowledge but shoot pictures of from beneath their John Constantine-eqsue trenchcoats for later… reference. But I’ve never been to a Pez convention, and by extension, I’ve never been to anything even remotely LIKE a Pez convention. More people should be like Pez people. Not like, ‘have the ability to dispense candy through their esophagi’, but be like Pez collectors, ’cause they’re some wonderful people.
This Pez convention, one of at least seven dedicated Pez conventions that span the United States and on into Austria, happened at the Stamford Connecticut Westin Hotel (a scant 20 minutes from Pez HQ in Orange, CT). A good portion of the Pez Gathering was not held in the ballrooms or the gathering halls of the Westin, but instead the PezHeads (which is what they call themselves, and not some kind of cruel nickname that I placed upon them while they weren’t listening) took over the 8th floor of the labyrinthine hotel. With their personal hotel room doors flung wide open and signs beckoning any passersby inside their realms, it was a completely disarming atmosphere of friendliness and comfort, far surpassing the cantankerous crowdedness of any noisy convention hall. In fact, in the very first room I entered, I sat down in an armchair and talked about Pez for 40 minutes with an enthusiastic collector named Red Conroy, who came all the way from Canada, and whom everyone regarded as a familiar paragon of Pez information.
[Red Conroy and his customized portrait Pez dispenser]
The Pez Hospitality Room, also on the eighth floor, was the first destination for the attendees, where we’d pick up the registration packages and check out the silent auctions for items ranging from rare Pez dispensers to a guitar signed by the Goo Goo Dolls (one of whom is a huge Pez collector), all of which ended at the 7 PM bingo game, costume contest and grand Pez Chopper reveal. A representative from Pez was scheduled to appear, but was caught up in I-95 traffic until later. All other times were dedicated to the ‘room hopping’. During this time, people bought and sold and traded Pez items within the framework of the eighth floor (with a few destinations on floors 7 and 9 also), and ogled other people’s collections.
It was clear that everyone was friends, or at the least, very interested in becoming friends. While rooms had wooden display cases of high-priced, rare Pez dispensers on dressers, cardboard boxes full of cheap starter Pez for a dollar or less, and double beds full of other various Pez items from watches to earrings to shirts and umbrellas and advertisements and vintage photographs, it quickly became obvious that the Gathering was much more about the people and the camaraderie than the Pez items themselves, which is something that I’ve never experienced at any other gathering of interest.
The demographic was very diverse, between young married couples, to young couples with children, to older couples and people who’d just appeared there as solo adventurers. Kids darted around the hallways shooting rare Pez guns at each other and the hallways were quickly littered with Pez candies. Oddly, through the entire gathering, I did not see a single candy enter a single mouth, unless a stray Pez projectile was accidentally shot mouthwards. On the 9th floor, I met the decidedly cool director of the Pezheads documentary. Not only am I huge fan of quirky cultural documentaries, but the conversations within the room turned to James Michener and things other than Pez, which was a breath of fresh air after 11 hours of Pez-speak.
While there is a general consensus about the value of various Pez items, everyone has their own favorites, prized items and stories about how they became involved in Pez. After only a few hours, I found myself $35 lighter and with 25 Pez dispensers on my person. I couldn’t resist a certain $10 dispenser called ‘The Psychedelic Eye’, which is a hand clutching an eyeball at the top of the usual Pez-stalk. The best explanation for this decidedly un-Pez design was ‘it was the drugged-out 70s’, which was good enough for me.
So, we have the Pezheads, but secondary to that aspect of the Gathering is the Pez items themselves. Stay tuned, as I’m now an amateur Pez scholar from my weekend of total Pez-immersion in Pez culture… but mostly, it involves me sticking the word ‘Pez’ in front of everything.
Several weeks back someone on our 
