October 1, 2015 • 41 mins
PEZ began in Vienna as a mint meant to help people quit smoking. But once American kids got ahold of it, the candy took off and a symbol of childhood - and healthy secondary market among collectors - was born.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from the house stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's guest
producer Noel and this is stuff you should have to do.
Do do do the Pez dition? Nice? I like that.
(00:27):
Another NOL cast as well. Yeah, pretty exciting. It's part
of the Knoll spin Wee, then ole stint We're gonna follow. Uh.
Do you like pets? But I like pets? Do you
like the candy? I? Do you like taste? I like
the taste of Pez. Yes. Describe to me what happens
when you can put a candy PEZ candy in your mound. Well,
(00:49):
I put a PEZ candy, I pull the head back,
the kicker kicks it out pop. Yes, nice, and I
take it from the Pez dispenser with my tooth. Oh
you don't really, you'd like go mouth the mouth with it? Sure? Well,
to tooth to kicker. Okay? Uh? And then I, um, yeah,
(01:11):
what do you do use your hand? Well? I don't
eat petz, but back when I was eight, I would
be delighted when I would pull the head back the
little candy with chewed out now, pick it out with
my hand, put in my mouth. Yeah, I use my teeth. Interesting,
I would feel like I was like going into to
make out with a daffy duck or something if I
did that. Oh that's half the fun. Oh boy. Anyway,
(01:37):
I don't care for the candy though. I wasn't done
describing pez go ahead, sorry, And then I take it
onto my tongue, right, and I start to savor the
flavor of it. Typically I prefer maybe um, well, definitely
one of the fruit flavors. I've never had a mint
pez or chocolate pets, which is new. I would try
(01:58):
the chocolate one, but say, like orange, We'll just go
with orange. I'm sitting there. I let it sit on
my tongue for all of like six nanoseconds, and then
I started to bite into it, and it's very much
like um. This explains why I like pests, especially orange pests.
Once eight almost an entire bottle of orange flavored baby
(02:22):
aspirin for the taste. That's why I like pests. How
old were you then? Would be a kid? It's like
twenty something? Uh did it? Yes? I was a kid?
Well did you? What did it hurt? You know? Nothing
happened to me. We talked about that before. It feel
like because they aren't even it isn't even medicine. I
wonder it's But how could you use a placebo and
(02:45):
a little kid? I mean, I guess it worked, but
certainly there's an age where they're just like I feel
like half of parenting is probably placebo. Probably, well you
would know now, well not yet, Well let me know
she doesn't believe my lies yet. That will come later. Yeah,
I mean, I'm surely kids are pretty dumb, so you
can get them to believe anything. Sure, but there seems
(03:08):
like there would be an age where they wouldn't They
wouldn't make that connection, and a placebo wouldn't work. I
don't think a placebo would work, like say, from birth.
And I don't remember what age you can start giving
kids baby aspirin. Baby don't even children as Anyway. I
like PEZ. I like how it tastes. I like the
experience of eating a pet alright, I don't care for pets.
(03:31):
I also like the shape, the brick, the brick, the
it helps with the taste. I saw we did the
l a podcast pest this last weekend, and I can't
remember her name, but a very nice young lady brought
us some different candies and things. The Lego candies. Well,
you jumped on that bag. It's like you want these
lego brick candies and you're like, yea, give me a
second time, man, I love those things. Yeah, And that's
(03:53):
sort of this. I put those on the same category,
which is just like compressed sugar right in like a
brick form. As a matter of fact, it turns out
the Pez company to the state uses about fifty thousand
pounds of sugar every four days making its Pez candies.
That's right. And here's a factoid for you, all right.
(04:16):
It takes three thousand pounds of pressure to compress the
Pez ingredients, which is not just sugar, into the delightful, tiny,
disgusting brick that you love. I don't think it's disgusting.
I don't like candies. I have another one for you.
They make twelve million tablets a day at their Orange,
Connecticut facility, the headquarters of PETS, and three billion Pez
(04:41):
bricks are consumed in the US alone each year by
people like me who like Pez. Yes, roughly twelve at
a time, because that's how much the standard dispenser holds
and if this kind of thing floats your boat right now,
go check out how Stuff Works brain Stuff series on
YouTube and typically look up the one on pop rocks
(05:02):
that I did a year or two ago. It was
really interesting stuff. Candy manufacturing is fascinating. I don't care
what you say. No, I like manufacturing processes. I just
don't like to eat candy. I got you. You know
what I mean? You just go to the plant watch
it made and then turn down the free samples, like, no,
thank you. I find that disgust. Yeah. They're like, now,
would you like to try some? Yeah? I don't do
(05:23):
that on beer tours, I'll sample that. You mean. I
went to the Maker's mark distillery. Oh did you dip
your own bottle? Yes? No, yes, we definitely have one,
but I don't remember if we. I guess we did
dip it. Yeah, I think that's a thing. But it
was like a mini, so maybe not. Maybe we bought
a mini that was like just a mini to commemorate it,
and they made you buy like a fifth or something
(05:44):
and dip your own bottle and we're like, ma, got
it's fine, because we we'd be like we would want
to open it. Yeah, we didn't dip our own body forgot.
That was exactly the conversation we had. Wow, you guys
put a lot of thought into that one. Anyway, it's
a pretty cool tour, to tell you the truth. I
strongly recommended. I've never done a distillery. I'd like to
do that. There's there's a new one here in Atlanta,
(06:06):
in Avondale Whiskey Distillery. Well, I can tell you go
on any whiskey tour and you will find what Mila
Kunis is talking about with the angels share stuff. It's
a real thing. The evaporating whiskey fills the um whatever
the place where they're aging em barrels, and it's actually
(06:27):
really dangerous, like the place could blow up at any
time because like very much so, we're a sugar factor, right, um.
But the smell is one of the most amazing smells
I've ever experienced in my entire life, like smell good
or just weird great, Like the the half of a
percent of whiskey that is just glorious. It's in the air.
(06:52):
It's amazing. Oh man, that I'm thirsty, all right, So
let's talk pez um in two thousand eleven. This is
something I didn't know. There was a wedding while I
didn't know this part um in the United Kingdom between
a guy named William and a little lady named Kate
Waity Katie? Do people call her that? Some? Some people did,
(07:16):
what like that she's overweight? No? No, that she waited around?
Oh okay? It was like, man, how mean can people get? Yeah?
That would So they made um specialty pez dispensers out
of Prince William and Kate for that and they were expensive,
three d sixty dollars at a charity auction. Clearly that's
(07:37):
the most expensive Pezz dispenser ever sold. Not so, my friend,
what supposedly that is the thirty two thousand dollars in
two thousand and six for an astronaut limited edition Astronaut
themed It was from the two World's Fair and there
were two of them too in existence. Yeah, that's why
it's expensive. And what's neat is that that's that was
(08:00):
That auction took place on eBay, which is very appropriate
that Peest dispensers are sold on eBay because the guy
who founded eBay, what's his name, Pierre Um, Pierre R. Right,
He Um founded eBay and party he was inspired to
found eBay because his girlfriend at the time I think
his wife is his wife now um collected pez and
(08:24):
he thought, hey, this would be a really great We
may not have eBay today if it weren't for petz
peest dispensers electing peest dispensers, which is a relatively new thing.
It really took off in the eighties late eighties. Actually
it wasn't until the late eighties that people really started
collecting peest dispensers. And now I felt, you know, the
tweete Bird episode. I had to go back and look
(08:45):
it up. But once I did, I started to remember, Yeah,
I think Elaine and Jerry and George Ritta George's girlfriend's
piano recital, and Jerry put the tweetie Bird pest dispenser
on this laper on Elane's lap, and Elaine started laughing,
ruined the performance, and then she was later outed when
she laughed again in front of that lady, right, And
(09:05):
then the tweety bird um Pez dispenser also factored into
the plot because Jerry and his friends had an intervention
for another friend who had a drug problem and he
was resisting resisting, and then for some reason Jerry brought
out the Pets dispenser. In the wave of nostalgia that
washed over this guy caused him to admit that he
had a drug problem, but then he became hooked on pest.
(09:27):
Well in nostalgia figures in a lot, Uh, it really does.
Kids from the well, kids of all ages grew up
with pez kids of all ages? What am I circus announcer?
Step on up? What do they call? I was gonna say,
circus ring master, circus barker. Well, there's two different Those
are two different things. I think unless you're in like
(09:48):
a low budget carnival, then it's maybe the same thing. Yeah,
that's I would be. But the barkers, the one who's like,
step on up, well, guess your weight, the people he's
trying to get people to come in. The ring masters,
the one who's like running the show once the show starts.
I feel like i'd be the barker. Would you need
to be the ringmaster? You'd have to wear a straw
boater hat and like striped suits. Yeah, I'd be the barker,
(10:10):
and you'd be the guy that like swings from things
with his teeth, strong teeth as opposed to my little
weak teeth when I fell off and there's some of
my teeth jammed into the trapeze bar. Still, well, you
like a Loonington's cartoon, now, yeah, but imagine it in
reality even worse it is. Uh, I feel like we
(10:34):
should take a break and regain our composure. All right,
we'll be back right after this. All right, so we're back,
(10:56):
and I think we should uh start in the traditional
way that when we handle our culture casts and talk
about history, because well though I thought it was a
pretty interesting history. Actually, yeah, I love this article. Edward
Hass the third he was an Austrian. Um he was
He made sweets. He was a confection ere. Well, his
(11:18):
family was in the grocery business, and he was successful
in that. But yeah, his heart was in candy like yours.
His heart was in candy. It was also in hygiene.
I get the impression that he was very strong germophobe.
Well it's probably good when you're running a candy factory. Yes,
you know. He was also anti smoking, and he decided
(11:40):
he went to a chemist, uh pharmacist, and said, hey,
give me some really strong pepperman essence. And he used
that with some sugar and made mints, basically a proto
altoid um, and put him in little tins and marketed
him as quitting smoking or smoking cessation a. Basically, if
(12:00):
you're trying to quit, you needed something to put in
your mouth, just chew one of these Pez mints. That's right.
And he got the name Pez from the abbreviation the
German word for peppermint, which is uh. It starts with
three consonants, which is always fun. Come on, you took German,
you know Germany? Well, I mean I would just say, uh,
(12:21):
fefa mints. I would say, I like that better. That
sounds like the remix version. But it does start with
two p's and an F. But shorten that and take
out letters from the beginning, middle, and end and you
get peasy. So uh, like you said, he said, you
(12:41):
can either use this to try and quit smoking as
a sort of an early version of nicarett gum, even
though I had no nicotine in it that we know of,
Or you can use it if you do smoke, to
make your breath fresh, because no one wants to smell
you stinky smokers. Uh. And we'll see, well, will wrap
them up in like a little candy bar at first,
(13:03):
and that's how we sold him for like a year.
Well yes, um, they were also sold in tins, right,
and he invent in PEZ and that's when they first
set the market. Um. But again I get the impression
that he was a germophobe and he didn't want everybody
to put their grubby hands into the same Pez tint
and touch the other ones that other people were putting
(13:25):
in their mouths. And he probably imagined all the poop
and bacteria and who knows what on those people's hands,
sausage touching his beloved Pez. So we thought there has
to be a better way to dispense Pez. We need
some sort of I don't know, PEZ dispenser, that's right.
And so there was an employee at his company, Oscar Uxa,
(13:48):
and you know what Oxcar Uxa does. He's a dispenser genius.
And he says, hey, how about this, Why don't we
make a dispenser that looks like a cigarette lighter because
this is his first smoking and I'll have a little
contraption on here that kicker that'll spit out one at
a time. And he said it's genius. Right. Edward Hoss
(14:11):
kicked the Kleenex boxes off of his feet and stood
up and hugged oscar Oosa. Yeah. And by the way,
they're selling them in tens again now in Peppermint with
a little throwback retro looking um. One of the Pez
ladies Pez girls. Yeah, the Pez girls, which were supposedly
like this very sexy thing to sell Pez. Did you
(14:33):
see them? Yeah? They look like bell hops. Oh yeah,
they're they're basically drawn like pin up girls, except not
nearly as racy. Um. And they have a little bell
boy hats. Sure a lot of them did. Um. And
they went from the forties, I think, all the way
up until the early eighties they used Pez girls to
market Pez. Do you know what they reminded me of
was um back in the day when you would have
(14:55):
like be at a club and a and a woman
would come around, see yeah, stick it ahead. Yeah. They
would have a little tray around that was hung around
their neck with cigars and cigarettes and mints and uh,
who knows what else Pez. I guess Pez. I guarantee
you Pez was in there. You're probably right. So um.
So they were a hit among adults in Europe big times. Yeah,
(15:17):
they did. They did the trick. The Yeah, they were
already pretty popular. But when once they packaged them into
these um cigarette lighter dispensers, like they really cemented themselves
as like iconic candy. People say, look, you just pop
it open and then candy comes out and you put
your teeth on. It's right, it's wonderful pop off. So
(15:38):
they went they went nuts for the stuff. And then
he said, you know what, let me expand the United
States is where it's at. Two. Uh. He found out
that kids in America, we're delighted over this because I
guess kids in America were like adults in Europe at
the time, um, and they'd love the way these things
popped out, plus and power dobably made them feel a
(16:00):
lot like they were smoking. You think probably I never
got the tie to the lighter. It was completely lost
on me. So you like flick a lighter. We got
it now, But I never had made that association until
I knew this. Okay, so imagine a Peest dispenser without
the head. Oh yeah, that's what the original. Can imagine
(16:21):
that because I used to take the heads off my Okay,
all right, but so that's the original Peest dispensers, which
are called regulars now the first one before they started
adding heads very much resembled like a nice slim lighter.
So if you're a kid like this kind of thing,
like there's a there's the manual thing where you're flicking
a lighter. Then there's the oral fixation that's satisfied by
(16:43):
putting the mint into your mouth, and it's mimicking smoking,
which is one of the reasons why it was one
of the ways it was marketed. The idea was that
it would it would alleviate that desire for those those
Freudian fixations that you had when you were a smoker,
if you were trying to quit, if you're a little
kid and you wanted to smoke, but you just couldn't
get your hands and cigarettes yet a good way to
(17:05):
do this didn't have arms right in the fifties, Yeah, probably.
I saw candy cigarettes the other day in the store.
By the way, I thought those were they make this? Yeah,
I thought they were completely gone. Okay, if you want
to know a candy that I think is abhorrent and disgusting,
candy cigarettes. Gum cigarettes are awesome. Do you remember those
(17:25):
the kind where you puff them? Oh, those are great.
The candy cigarettes, they're just like sticks of candy that
are disgusting. No, I'm talking about the gum that would
blow out face smoke. I love that they still make those.
But the gum cigars, I think we're gross. They have
some weird chemical taste to them. I never saw that
they were not one and the same, which is surprising.
(17:47):
And they still make those, and they still make big
league chew yes like it's it's amazing that they can, still,
like with good conscience, market tobacco products to children, and
that they're allowed to. I remember um probably the greatest
tasting gum of all time, big red No. No, it
(18:07):
was a Rambo gum that was sold to commemorate Rambo three. Yeah. No,
it had like a It was marketed as like black
raspberry or something like that, but it didn't taste like
that at all. It had it. I've never tasted anything like,
you know, usually like you run into a taste years later,
like there's only ten tastes or ten cents, you know. Um,
(18:29):
this was I've never experienced it before after and it
was the best tasting gum ever. But it was in
the big League chew pouch and it was big league
t shirts, so clearly It was made by the same
company for the makers of Rambo, but the flavor they
used was perfect sweat and gunpowder and you could get
it for like one summer. What did it have a
cartoon version of of stallone on it? No, it was
(18:51):
a photo of him with like the very famous rocket
launcher from Rambo three um and uh it was just
a picture of it on the Big League two pouch. Yeah,
and I loved it. I guess they had to market
it that way because first blood gum didn't go over
so well. Exactly tastes just like blood. Uh Man, I'm
(19:12):
wondering all kinds of things. Well, hold on, hold on,
we're getting ahead of ourselves. Oh no, we're getting super distracted.
That's what it is. In the fifties, kids very surprisingly
liked Pez but they were like, this is pretty strong mint.
And I'm a little kid, sure like fruity flavored stuff. Yeah,
I like the dispenser, but gonna get your game going
with the candy exactly, And and Hass and company listen
(19:35):
big time. So they kept Mint Pez still, but they
started releasing lines of of fruit flavored ones and kola.
They had one called Chlorophyll Coffee flavored a yogurt one
that probably was just European. What is the chlorophyll? I
couldn't get a read on what that was like um,
and I looked. I think it's like a UM, it's
(19:58):
a mint. It's a definitely in flavor. Um. Did they
just use the wrong word. There's another There's a gum
out there that has a similar sounding names. It's just
like a very bright like mint, not peppermint. It's not
as sweet. It's mintier um. But yeah, chlorophyll is interesting.
(20:18):
But they had other stuff too, like orange and I
think cherry maybe something like that. Traditional flavors, but not peach.
There's a fun trivia effect for you. They have had
peach flavors, but it was never released in the US. Yeah,
I'm a weirdo. I don't like peach flavors or peaches.
So since they realized that kids are going bonkers for
this candy, UM, which bonkers, that was another good candy too.
(20:41):
I don't know what that is. It came out in
the eighties. It was great. UM. They they decided to
try to make pez a little more parent friendly because
even back in the fifties, I think parents were like,
I don't want you teaching my kid to smoke with
this candy. So they said, well, let's change it from
a cigarette lighter into something different, a toy, and we'll
(21:02):
add like a beloved cartoon character on there. How about that?
And it was genius because what he did was he
combined candy with a toy, uh, and not only a toy,
but a collectible, and it was it was genius for kids.
That was all they needed. Um, they were pretty cheap
and so kids could buy them. They could like go
(21:22):
around and probably finding money on the ground in a
given day to go buy a little pet dispenser, right,
or build like a like a soapbox racer and sell
it to the rich kid in the neighborhood, buy a
bunch of pez did you fund Yeah, that's another thing too.
I didn't like the the stick that you had to lick,
(21:43):
but the sugar was just great. So the sugar stick
that you dipped into the sugar, the sugar stick didn't
have enough flavor for me. Yeah, it just I was
thinking about fund it the other day when I was
driving for some reason. It was just remarkable to me
that they would just make a sugar stick that you
dip in different flavors of sugar and you would then
eat the sugar off the stick and then eat the
(22:03):
sugars right. Well, they they didn't even try back then.
Like it's like smacks used to be called sugar smacks,
and then they changed to the honey smacks, and they're like,
let's just go with smacks. That wasn't just called smacks,
I believe. So it's not sugar smacks. No, it hasn't
been sugar smacks for years. I don't need much cereal.
Like they would get chased out of the grocery aisle
whenever they tried to restock that if they still call
(22:25):
it sugar smacks. I just don't mess with Captain Crunch.
Peanut butter, that's all I gotta say. Captain Crunch has
one out now. I saw on the cereal all the
other day. It's sprinkled donuts Captain Crunch, and it looks awesome. Yeah.
I just the peanut butter is so good. Even though
it tears of the roof of your mouth, it's worth it.
But that's a fatal flaw, don't you think not to me? Ali,
I'll get a box of that, like every three or
(22:47):
four years. I'll get a box of that, like when
Emily's out of town dinner time, because if she would
come home and see that, she'd be like, what are
you doing this in our house? Are you a child? Yeah?
I just have to save those moments, all right. So
it's ninety. Um Has is super rich because he's selling
(23:07):
tons and tons of these dispensers. He sells the company
and uh, they move well. The manufacturing of the dispensers
is actually now in China and Hungary and like UM
Slovenia I think, to the Central Europe and now Asia
as well. But the actual candies are and have been
(23:27):
for a very long time made, to believe you already
said at a plant in Orange, Connecticut. UM and they
kept it going. Pez was always a privately owned company.
I don't think it's ever been public UM. But they
kept the whole thing going even after Hassa departed, and
that was helped very much by this this um explosion
(23:51):
in collecting that came from the late the mid mid eighties,
I would say. And as a result, um Pez itself
added feet to the dispensers so that they can be displayed.
From that point not and they realized, like white people
are collecting these. There's like a secondary market that's generated
exactly um and so they added feet to it. So
(24:12):
now a Pezz dispencer can stand up. But that was
introduced in seven. So if you see feet on your
Pezz dispencer, you know that it's at least un on.
All right, So let's take another quick break here and
we will come back and talk a little bit more
about the odd collecting of Pez dispensers. So, Chuck, people
(24:48):
started collecting pezz dispensers partly because they came of age
at a time about the mid eighties when they were
high on cocaine and had a lot of disposable come
and we're nostalgic for their childhood. Yeah, I have a theory,
and it's not like I'm sure everyone knows this, but
(25:08):
I think pest dispensers became collectible because you can't throw
throw it away like you would eat the candy and
what are you gonna do? As a kid, you can
be like, let me throw away this Garfield toy. Now, well,
not only that, you can know you put it on
your chef, right, your chef, You're like standing still, chef,
stop making that stew weird. So I can put this
penticipencer on the bullion. These can wait. Um, but thet
(25:32):
the whole thing is they're reloadable like that. You get
the little U the little packet of twelve, pop it
in there and you want more, like if it's uh,
it's one of those same deals like collect all four.
But this is not all four. This is constantly new
licensing deals being cooked up, everything from Looney Tunes to
(25:52):
Star Wars to Hello Kitty. Which was the other stoke
of genius was partnering up with these uh I kind
of brands and cultural icons to uh to say, hey,
a Chewbacca head on this thing, like they're grown adults
little by that. Right. The thing is is Lucasfilm. Uh
definitely charges a pretty penny, or did before they sold
(26:14):
the Disney and now it's even more. I'm sure to
license anything from Star Wars. Right. So, PEZ also very
frequently came up with their own stuff as well. Uh,
there were the Pez Pals. There was a very famous
misstep called make a Face Pez, which is like a
tiny Mr. Potato head where you could put on different
eyes and mouth and stuff. But of course these things
(26:34):
were a major choking Hatzard and Actually, there's a lore
among Pez collectors, who are called pez heads that if
you look at some of the nineteen seventy nineteen seventy
three Indian chiefs that were released, their head dresses um
are marbled. They have marbled color, and they're saying that
those are ground up make a face um dispensers that
(26:57):
they reused in the head dresses. That sounds like a
peaz enthusiast conspiracy theory, but it's pretty cool. And another
one that they released was a series for the bi
centennial that includes the funniest character of all time, in
my opinion, the colonial soldier with a head wound. Okay,
I thought you can save the Paul Revere. I think
(27:19):
there is a Paul Revere. No there is, which is
I thought would be a pretty weird there's a Paul
Revere Daniel Boone who looks like he has like a
a well formed bee hive on his head rather than
a coonskin cap. Uncle Sam, Yeah, there's a Betsy Ross uh.
And then there's the wound, the head wound soldier. He's
got like that white gauze on his head with a
little blood dot coming through, and he looks just kind
(27:42):
of out of it. It's a really weird peasant spencer.
That was probably my favorite, although I like a lot
of the the Halloween themed ones from the seventies. Some
of those glow in the dark, which is pretty neat,
Like Mr Skull. Did you see him? Their Doctor Skull?
I think I think he's probably my favorite. Or the
Pumpkin from the seventies on the green stem is probably
(28:03):
the best pezz dis spencer of all time. Well, there
have been four hundred more than four hundred and fifty
dispenser since nineteen including three different Santas, and the Santa
is the best selling of all time, which makes sense,
of course, especially the first one because he was his
His dispenser wasn't just a little peas spencer. It was
(28:24):
like the whole body. But then they're like this is
way too expensive. Yeah, they're like a bunch of people
just buy it with the head. Yeah, And they did
the Salvador Dolly tribute. I don't know if it's a tribute.
I bet it was. Um is my favorite in the
psychedelic hand. It was a hand with a green eyeball
and it's just very cool looking. Yeah, like I would
(28:46):
I would want one of those. Of course, I wouldn't
pay thousands of dollars for it. I'd like to just
find one on the street. And it's pretty neat. Though. Yeah,
do all of them cost that much? But what that
specific collectible? No? But I mean would say they ranged
in the hundreds and it's real. But what was interesting
about this? Um? I think Patrick Kiger pointed out, like
(29:08):
it's compared to a lot of other collecting hobbies, this
is Pez dispensers are relatively cheap. You can get into
him pretty easily with you know, a minimal amount of money. Um.
One of my favorite Pez dispensers is the Pez Gun series.
First it was a ray gun, and then they made
(29:29):
it into a handgun, and then when Star Wars came
out in like, they released another space gun that looked
an awful lot like Han Solo's gun, but it wasn't
really sem um, but the kid would put the gun
in his mouth and pull the trigger to dispense the
can Wow. Yeah really yeah, unbelievable. They have had some
(29:55):
kind of weird ones over the years, like the Airline
Pilot and Stewardess, which I don't know is that a
big seller? I don't know. Well this was back in
the day. I think when they were they were revered
figures and culture. Yeah, the pilots weren't drunks, and the
flight attendants weren't flight attendants. They were stewardesses, and they
were you know, fancy clothes, and but they have like
(30:17):
hard chiseled features. They look like they look like real people.
They look like pilots and flight attendants from the Mother
Road during the depression or something, you know, like really
chiseled features. And actually, apparently the Pets Company says that
they very infrequently do real life humans. Those those bicentennial
figures were the first humans they ever did a real
(30:40):
life humans, I should say, And they didn't even do
fictitious ones very often, like a stewardess or the pilot um,
because they just found that the human face wasn't nearly
as interesting as say, like a bubble man. Yeah, you know,
in two thousand and six they issue the first ever
Pets dispensers of living humans when they decided to pay
(31:01):
tribute to the fellas from Orange County. Chopper makes me
so sad that goes down in history is the worst
one ever. But I mean, those were the first guys
to ever have living Why why a licensing deal? And
it opened the floodgates after that, After that it was on.
There's like a kiss collectors set. Well, of course because
(31:22):
Gene Simmons and he'll put his face on anything. Um.
There was what else, Well, people get turned down a
lot um. You said that other little fact sheet. Kim
Kardashian wanted a pet dispenser. Um, they said no, Yeah,
they turned down people all the time because apparently everybody
wants one. I would suggest just go make your own
babble heead because you can get that done. It sounds
(31:43):
the same. Well, you could just put candy in your
bubble heads. There are newsletters, there's a pez Collector's news,
there are conventions, and there is even a museum that
a husband and wife started in California that started out
weirdly as a museum for computers and Pezz dispensers. I know,
(32:07):
I think they were a computer sales company. Oh. I
thought they displayed like vintage computers. I think they Yeah,
it was a computer dealer and they they were selling computers,
and just to kind of make the place look a
little more interesting, they also displayed pees dispensers and they
found that people were way more interested in coming to
see the Pez dispencers and weren't buying computers, so they
(32:29):
transitioned over to a straight up Pez museum, the pez
um or the Museum of Pez Memorabilium, Berlingame, California. Yeah,
and you can pay some money to go in there
and look at all their rare and vintage peest dispensers.
They have one. He paid three grand for the pineapple
wearing sunglasses because in the early seventies thing. Yeah, it's
(32:51):
nothing special to look at, but again it's rarity. They
didn't make many of them because it was ugly. Probably, Yeah,
that's kind of cute. Did you did you like the
California raisins? Yes, okay, that explains it. Have you seen
straight out accounting? Uh? No, not yet. It's a good
Oh you haven't seen that yet. I haven't been to
any movies. You should. The California raisins appear by mentioned.
(33:16):
They're mentioned in a surprising way. I look forward to
seeing that on television. You should go see it, man, Yeah,
all right, we'll go see it in the movie here.
What else? Uh? They tried vitamins for a little while. Yeah,
I didn't think that was a bad idea. Put a
little vitamin c in there, parents might be more willing
to throw up some money for the for the kid.
(33:38):
But um, they said, no, we're not in the vitamin business.
Let's just stick to the sugary pressed candy. No. And
the guy who said that was a guy named Scott mcwinnie,
And Scott mcwinnie was president. He started out I think
General Mills or something or General Foods, and um he
moved his way over to Pez in the nineties or
(33:59):
the eighties, No, the eighties, because that quote was from
he was president of Peza and he um, much to
his chagrin, got into a um a war, basically an
economic war with the guy who was known as the
Pez Outlaw. Yeah, you dug this up. This was really interesting. Uh.
The article what was it called. It was a terrible
(34:21):
title like Michigan farmer makes four million dollars in Pezz
dispensers in three years or something. It's a terrible title.
Should have been called the Pez Outlaw. But it was
in Playboy and it was pretty good long form reporting. Yeah,
basically what happened was in the nineties a dude uh
named Steve glee U G l e W. Found out that, hey,
(34:44):
over in Canada, they're selling different dispensers that you can't
get here in the United States. So let me go
over there, let me buy some of these and resell
them to collectors. And it worked, and all of a sudden,
the light bulb went off and he said, at think
I can actually make money getting Pez dispensers from other countries.
(35:05):
And he found a hook up that mysterious woman who
approached him from the Eastern Bloc wherever she was from, Yeah,
and he ended up. He and his son Joshua Um
started making trips to Central Europe, um oftentimes right along
the border of like war torn Croatia, and found these
factories where Pez is being made, and found very bribable
(35:27):
factory workers who would take like molds and make um
new PEZ dispensers to his liking. And then he would
sell them as like basically like Pez freaks or or
one offs or something, and for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
But he would spend a quarter or maybe a dollar
on each and he supposedly made quite a bit of money.
(35:48):
He claims four million. Yeah, I believe it. For if
they made the number of trips that they were making.
I think that he did. His downfall was that he
overextended himself. He took out a massive own and uh
basically hired a factory to make a bunch of misfit
Pez dispensers and downfall, and Mark mcwinney took him on
(36:11):
and started releasing basically Pez's own version of these counterfeit
weirdo dispensers at a lower price and drove the dude
out of business. This could be a little documentary easy,
you know easy. Also that reminds me. Have you ever
seen the Jellybelly documentary? Oh, it's so sad, but it's
(36:31):
so good. What's it called? I don't remember. Just look
up Jellybelly documentary and weird owls in it. Oh wow, yeah,
Well then I definitely won't see it. No, you really should, man,
it's a great documentary. It's just it's very sad. And
that one and the show Biz Pizza one documents to Yeah,
I used to love show biz. You will love this documentary.
(36:52):
I like show biz more than Chucky cheese. Even there's
a huge backstory to it that you were unaware of.
Can I read you this one? Xta. This is from
the story about the Pez Outlaw. Uh. A nineteen toy
convention changed Steve's life forever. As he tells it, a
mysterious woman opened her jacket and showed him a silver
globe PEZ holy grail for PEZ collectors. She whispered to
(37:16):
him in broken English, there are many more where I
come from. Let's go great. Do you believe that? And
then she get the field she was like two guys
in overcoats and sunglasses came in like hurried her away.
He said, but but what's your name? Or two centambites
came out of the woodwork and like pulled her down
to hell. Ivanka. Uh yeah, it's a pretty good article.
(37:40):
Look up stupid title Michigan Farmer, PEZ playboy and it'll
bring it up. I think long Form had it at
one point, speaking of Ivanka, should I talk about Donald Trump?
Probably not all right? Um. I was surprised when I
found out I found mention of like PEZ this was
being nostalgic. I was like, definitely not for me. Then
(38:04):
I went to Pez dot com and clicked on Collector's
Corner and they have well, they have pictures of like
every every single one they've released over the years, year
by year, and I definitely felt nostalgic. And I don't
even think of PEZ is factoring in largely into my
childhood at all. Same here, but I was a little nostalgical.
It's cute, So go to PEZ dot com and check
(38:25):
out the collector's corner and I think you will waste
a lot of time there. Uh. And I think that's
it because Chuck just grabbed the listener mail email, which
is usually a signal for me to shut up because
it's mean to me. After the mics aren't recording any
low please uh. And if you want to know more
about PEZ, type that word in the search bar how
(38:46):
stuff Works dot com and uh, it's time for listener mail.
IMNA call this. You guys are right screw college. Remember
when we a little soapbox moment? Was this from the animator? Yeah?
I thought this is good. Hey, guys, want to shoot
you a quick email to thank you for mentioning the
idea that you don't need to go to college for
(39:06):
some professions on the How Publicists Works episode. It really
struck a chord with me. I'm an animator and I
desperately wish it would be treated as a trade, which
it is, and not as a high art form that
requires a fancy, one hundred thousand dollar degree. Most of
what I learned I actually learned on the job. Got
almost nothing from my college classes, while the contacts I
(39:27):
made in college were very valuable down the road. And
nothing is quite as nice is moving out and being
on your own in art school. It came with a
hefty price. It is now ten years later. I've been
working steadily this whole time, and I'm still paying off
my college student loans and I make a good amount
of money. That's just sad. And I know so many
people were in the same position without but without steady work. Uh.
(39:48):
And she says that she worked at adult Swim for
a while too. By the way, Uh, there's a stigma
about not going to college, and I think it's part
of the reason so many people are being crushed by
student loan debt. Now it's a very American stigma too.
It's not I like that all around the world, stupid Americans.
I think there's probably a lot of these kinds of
jobs that don't need college degrees out there, like podcaster,
(40:10):
and it might be cool to hear a podcast on
that sometime. I'm not sure what you call it. Maybe
how not going to college but landing a nice job
and making a living anyway and sticking it to your
parents works. Maybe just do one on student loans or something. Anyway,
thanks for keeping the company while I animate keep it up.
You guys are top notch, and that is Margie. Thanks Margie,
(40:33):
that was a great email. Agreed. We appreciate that. And
that's not college altogether. Sometimes it's very useful. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just not the end all be all for everyone
on the planet to have to go to college. Yeah,
I know it's true. There, I mean, it's true, and
I think that there hopefully is a large awakening going
on because a lot of people say that the current bubble.
(40:54):
If you're looking around for the next bubble student loans, yep, uh, yeah,
we should do something about that. Sometimes, let's do it.
And actually Margie gave us her um the U R
L for her blog. It's m A R J I
B O R D N E R dot blogspot dot com.
So I imagine you can go check out her stuff
there when don't you think? Yes, sir? Nice. So if
(41:18):
you want to get in touch with Chuck or me
or both of us, or even noel Um. You can
tweak to us at s y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast to how stuff works
dot com and has always joined us at home on
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more
(41:40):
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should know from the house stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's guest
producer Noel and this is stuff you should have to do.
Do do do the Pez dition? Nice? I like that.
(00:27):
Another NOL cast as well. Yeah, pretty exciting. It's part
of the Knoll spin Wee, then ole stint We're gonna follow. Uh.
Do you like pets? But I like pets? Do you
like the candy? I? Do you like taste? I like
the taste of Pez. Yes. Describe to me what happens
when you can put a candy PEZ candy in your mound. Well,
(00:49):
I put a PEZ candy, I pull the head back,
the kicker kicks it out pop. Yes, nice, and I
take it from the Pez dispenser with my tooth. Oh
you don't really, you'd like go mouth the mouth with it? Sure? Well,
to tooth to kicker. Okay? Uh? And then I, um, yeah,
(01:11):
what do you do use your hand? Well? I don't
eat petz, but back when I was eight, I would
be delighted when I would pull the head back the
little candy with chewed out now, pick it out with
my hand, put in my mouth. Yeah, I use my teeth. Interesting,
I would feel like I was like going into to
make out with a daffy duck or something if I
did that. Oh that's half the fun. Oh boy. Anyway,
(01:37):
I don't care for the candy though. I wasn't done
describing pez go ahead, sorry, And then I take it
onto my tongue, right, and I start to savor the
flavor of it. Typically I prefer maybe um, well, definitely
one of the fruit flavors. I've never had a mint
pez or chocolate pets, which is new. I would try
(01:58):
the chocolate one, but say, like orange, We'll just go
with orange. I'm sitting there. I let it sit on
my tongue for all of like six nanoseconds, and then
I started to bite into it, and it's very much
like um. This explains why I like pests, especially orange pests.
Once eight almost an entire bottle of orange flavored baby
(02:22):
aspirin for the taste. That's why I like pests. How
old were you then? Would be a kid? It's like
twenty something? Uh did it? Yes? I was a kid?
Well did you? What did it hurt? You know? Nothing
happened to me. We talked about that before. It feel
like because they aren't even it isn't even medicine. I
wonder it's But how could you use a placebo and
(02:45):
a little kid? I mean, I guess it worked, but
certainly there's an age where they're just like I feel
like half of parenting is probably placebo. Probably, well you
would know now, well not yet, Well let me know
she doesn't believe my lies yet. That will come later. Yeah,
I mean, I'm surely kids are pretty dumb, so you
can get them to believe anything. Sure, but there seems
(03:08):
like there would be an age where they wouldn't They
wouldn't make that connection, and a placebo wouldn't work. I
don't think a placebo would work, like say, from birth.
And I don't remember what age you can start giving
kids baby aspirin. Baby don't even children as Anyway. I
like PEZ. I like how it tastes. I like the
experience of eating a pet alright, I don't care for pets.
(03:31):
I also like the shape, the brick, the brick, the
it helps with the taste. I saw we did the
l a podcast pest this last weekend, and I can't
remember her name, but a very nice young lady brought
us some different candies and things. The Lego candies. Well,
you jumped on that bag. It's like you want these
lego brick candies and you're like, yea, give me a
second time, man, I love those things. Yeah, And that's
(03:53):
sort of this. I put those on the same category,
which is just like compressed sugar right in like a
brick form. As a matter of fact, it turns out
the Pez company to the state uses about fifty thousand
pounds of sugar every four days making its Pez candies.
That's right. And here's a factoid for you, all right.
(04:16):
It takes three thousand pounds of pressure to compress the
Pez ingredients, which is not just sugar, into the delightful, tiny,
disgusting brick that you love. I don't think it's disgusting.
I don't like candies. I have another one for you.
They make twelve million tablets a day at their Orange,
Connecticut facility, the headquarters of PETS, and three billion Pez
(04:41):
bricks are consumed in the US alone each year by
people like me who like Pez. Yes, roughly twelve at
a time, because that's how much the standard dispenser holds
and if this kind of thing floats your boat right now,
go check out how Stuff Works brain Stuff series on
YouTube and typically look up the one on pop rocks
(05:02):
that I did a year or two ago. It was
really interesting stuff. Candy manufacturing is fascinating. I don't care
what you say. No, I like manufacturing processes. I just
don't like to eat candy. I got you. You know
what I mean? You just go to the plant watch
it made and then turn down the free samples, like, no,
thank you. I find that disgust. Yeah. They're like, now,
would you like to try some? Yeah? I don't do
(05:23):
that on beer tours, I'll sample that. You mean. I
went to the Maker's mark distillery. Oh did you dip
your own bottle? Yes? No, yes, we definitely have one,
but I don't remember if we. I guess we did
dip it. Yeah, I think that's a thing. But it
was like a mini, so maybe not. Maybe we bought
a mini that was like just a mini to commemorate it,
and they made you buy like a fifth or something
(05:44):
and dip your own bottle and we're like, ma, got
it's fine, because we we'd be like we would want
to open it. Yeah, we didn't dip our own body forgot.
That was exactly the conversation we had. Wow, you guys
put a lot of thought into that one. Anyway, it's
a pretty cool tour, to tell you the truth. I
strongly recommended. I've never done a distillery. I'd like to
do that. There's there's a new one here in Atlanta,
(06:06):
in Avondale Whiskey Distillery. Well, I can tell you go
on any whiskey tour and you will find what Mila
Kunis is talking about with the angels share stuff. It's
a real thing. The evaporating whiskey fills the um whatever
the place where they're aging em barrels, and it's actually
(06:27):
really dangerous, like the place could blow up at any
time because like very much so, we're a sugar factor, right, um.
But the smell is one of the most amazing smells
I've ever experienced in my entire life, like smell good
or just weird great, Like the the half of a
percent of whiskey that is just glorious. It's in the air.
(06:52):
It's amazing. Oh man, that I'm thirsty, all right, So
let's talk pez um in two thousand eleven. This is
something I didn't know. There was a wedding while I
didn't know this part um in the United Kingdom between
a guy named William and a little lady named Kate
Waity Katie? Do people call her that? Some? Some people did,
(07:16):
what like that she's overweight? No? No, that she waited around?
Oh okay? It was like, man, how mean can people get? Yeah?
That would So they made um specialty pez dispensers out
of Prince William and Kate for that and they were expensive,
three d sixty dollars at a charity auction. Clearly that's
(07:37):
the most expensive Pezz dispenser ever sold. Not so, my friend,
what supposedly that is the thirty two thousand dollars in
two thousand and six for an astronaut limited edition Astronaut
themed It was from the two World's Fair and there
were two of them too in existence. Yeah, that's why
it's expensive. And what's neat is that that's that was
(08:00):
That auction took place on eBay, which is very appropriate
that Peest dispensers are sold on eBay because the guy
who founded eBay, what's his name, Pierre Um, Pierre R. Right,
He Um founded eBay and party he was inspired to
found eBay because his girlfriend at the time I think
his wife is his wife now um collected pez and
(08:24):
he thought, hey, this would be a really great We
may not have eBay today if it weren't for petz
peest dispensers electing peest dispensers, which is a relatively new thing.
It really took off in the eighties late eighties. Actually
it wasn't until the late eighties that people really started
collecting peest dispensers. And now I felt, you know, the
tweete Bird episode. I had to go back and look
(08:45):
it up. But once I did, I started to remember, Yeah,
I think Elaine and Jerry and George Ritta George's girlfriend's
piano recital, and Jerry put the tweetie Bird pest dispenser
on this laper on Elane's lap, and Elaine started laughing,
ruined the performance, and then she was later outed when
she laughed again in front of that lady, right, And
(09:05):
then the tweety bird um Pez dispenser also factored into
the plot because Jerry and his friends had an intervention
for another friend who had a drug problem and he
was resisting resisting, and then for some reason Jerry brought
out the Pets dispenser. In the wave of nostalgia that
washed over this guy caused him to admit that he
had a drug problem, but then he became hooked on pest.
(09:27):
Well in nostalgia figures in a lot, Uh, it really does.
Kids from the well, kids of all ages grew up
with pez kids of all ages? What am I circus announcer?
Step on up? What do they call? I was gonna say,
circus ring master, circus barker. Well, there's two different Those
are two different things. I think unless you're in like
(09:48):
a low budget carnival, then it's maybe the same thing. Yeah,
that's I would be. But the barkers, the one who's like,
step on up, well, guess your weight, the people he's
trying to get people to come in. The ring masters,
the one who's like running the show once the show starts.
I feel like i'd be the barker. Would you need
to be the ringmaster? You'd have to wear a straw
boater hat and like striped suits. Yeah, I'd be the barker,
(10:10):
and you'd be the guy that like swings from things
with his teeth, strong teeth as opposed to my little
weak teeth when I fell off and there's some of
my teeth jammed into the trapeze bar. Still, well, you
like a Loonington's cartoon, now, yeah, but imagine it in
reality even worse it is. Uh, I feel like we
(10:34):
should take a break and regain our composure. All right,
we'll be back right after this. All right, so we're back,
(10:56):
and I think we should uh start in the traditional
way that when we handle our culture casts and talk
about history, because well though I thought it was a
pretty interesting history. Actually, yeah, I love this article. Edward
Hass the third he was an Austrian. Um he was
He made sweets. He was a confection ere. Well, his
(11:18):
family was in the grocery business, and he was successful
in that. But yeah, his heart was in candy like yours.
His heart was in candy. It was also in hygiene.
I get the impression that he was very strong germophobe.
Well it's probably good when you're running a candy factory. Yes,
you know. He was also anti smoking, and he decided
(11:40):
he went to a chemist, uh pharmacist, and said, hey,
give me some really strong pepperman essence. And he used
that with some sugar and made mints, basically a proto
altoid um, and put him in little tins and marketed
him as quitting smoking or smoking cessation a. Basically, if
(12:00):
you're trying to quit, you needed something to put in
your mouth, just chew one of these Pez mints. That's right.
And he got the name Pez from the abbreviation the
German word for peppermint, which is uh. It starts with
three consonants, which is always fun. Come on, you took German,
you know Germany? Well, I mean I would just say, uh,
(12:21):
fefa mints. I would say, I like that better. That
sounds like the remix version. But it does start with
two p's and an F. But shorten that and take
out letters from the beginning, middle, and end and you
get peasy. So uh, like you said, he said, you
(12:41):
can either use this to try and quit smoking as
a sort of an early version of nicarett gum, even
though I had no nicotine in it that we know of,
Or you can use it if you do smoke, to
make your breath fresh, because no one wants to smell
you stinky smokers. Uh. And we'll see, well, will wrap
them up in like a little candy bar at first,
(13:03):
and that's how we sold him for like a year.
Well yes, um, they were also sold in tins, right,
and he invent in PEZ and that's when they first
set the market. Um. But again I get the impression
that he was a germophobe and he didn't want everybody
to put their grubby hands into the same Pez tint
and touch the other ones that other people were putting
(13:25):
in their mouths. And he probably imagined all the poop
and bacteria and who knows what on those people's hands,
sausage touching his beloved Pez. So we thought there has
to be a better way to dispense Pez. We need
some sort of I don't know, PEZ dispenser, that's right.
And so there was an employee at his company, Oscar Uxa,
(13:48):
and you know what Oxcar Uxa does. He's a dispenser genius.
And he says, hey, how about this, Why don't we
make a dispenser that looks like a cigarette lighter because
this is his first smoking and I'll have a little
contraption on here that kicker that'll spit out one at
a time. And he said it's genius. Right. Edward Hoss
(14:11):
kicked the Kleenex boxes off of his feet and stood
up and hugged oscar Oosa. Yeah. And by the way,
they're selling them in tens again now in Peppermint with
a little throwback retro looking um. One of the Pez
ladies Pez girls. Yeah, the Pez girls, which were supposedly
like this very sexy thing to sell Pez. Did you
(14:33):
see them? Yeah? They look like bell hops. Oh yeah,
they're they're basically drawn like pin up girls, except not
nearly as racy. Um. And they have a little bell
boy hats. Sure a lot of them did. Um. And
they went from the forties, I think, all the way
up until the early eighties they used Pez girls to
market Pez. Do you know what they reminded me of
was um back in the day when you would have
(14:55):
like be at a club and a and a woman
would come around, see yeah, stick it ahead. Yeah. They
would have a little tray around that was hung around
their neck with cigars and cigarettes and mints and uh,
who knows what else Pez. I guess Pez. I guarantee
you Pez was in there. You're probably right. So um.
So they were a hit among adults in Europe big times. Yeah,
(15:17):
they did. They did the trick. The Yeah, they were
already pretty popular. But when once they packaged them into
these um cigarette lighter dispensers, like they really cemented themselves
as like iconic candy. People say, look, you just pop
it open and then candy comes out and you put
your teeth on. It's right, it's wonderful pop off. So
(15:38):
they went they went nuts for the stuff. And then
he said, you know what, let me expand the United
States is where it's at. Two. Uh. He found out
that kids in America, we're delighted over this because I
guess kids in America were like adults in Europe at
the time, um, and they'd love the way these things
popped out, plus and power dobably made them feel a
(16:00):
lot like they were smoking. You think probably I never
got the tie to the lighter. It was completely lost
on me. So you like flick a lighter. We got
it now, But I never had made that association until
I knew this. Okay, so imagine a Peest dispenser without
the head. Oh yeah, that's what the original. Can imagine
(16:21):
that because I used to take the heads off my Okay,
all right, but so that's the original Peest dispensers, which
are called regulars now the first one before they started
adding heads very much resembled like a nice slim lighter.
So if you're a kid like this kind of thing,
like there's a there's the manual thing where you're flicking
a lighter. Then there's the oral fixation that's satisfied by
(16:43):
putting the mint into your mouth, and it's mimicking smoking,
which is one of the reasons why it was one
of the ways it was marketed. The idea was that
it would it would alleviate that desire for those those
Freudian fixations that you had when you were a smoker,
if you were trying to quit, if you're a little
kid and you wanted to smoke, but you just couldn't
get your hands and cigarettes yet a good way to
(17:05):
do this didn't have arms right in the fifties, Yeah, probably.
I saw candy cigarettes the other day in the store.
By the way, I thought those were they make this? Yeah,
I thought they were completely gone. Okay, if you want
to know a candy that I think is abhorrent and disgusting,
candy cigarettes. Gum cigarettes are awesome. Do you remember those
(17:25):
the kind where you puff them? Oh, those are great.
The candy cigarettes, they're just like sticks of candy that
are disgusting. No, I'm talking about the gum that would
blow out face smoke. I love that they still make those.
But the gum cigars, I think we're gross. They have
some weird chemical taste to them. I never saw that
they were not one and the same, which is surprising.
(17:47):
And they still make those, and they still make big
league chew yes like it's it's amazing that they can, still,
like with good conscience, market tobacco products to children, and
that they're allowed to. I remember um probably the greatest
tasting gum of all time, big red No. No, it
(18:07):
was a Rambo gum that was sold to commemorate Rambo three. Yeah. No,
it had like a It was marketed as like black
raspberry or something like that, but it didn't taste like
that at all. It had it. I've never tasted anything like,
you know, usually like you run into a taste years later,
like there's only ten tastes or ten cents, you know. Um,
(18:29):
this was I've never experienced it before after and it
was the best tasting gum ever. But it was in
the big League chew pouch and it was big league
t shirts, so clearly It was made by the same
company for the makers of Rambo, but the flavor they
used was perfect sweat and gunpowder and you could get
it for like one summer. What did it have a
cartoon version of of stallone on it? No, it was
(18:51):
a photo of him with like the very famous rocket
launcher from Rambo three um and uh it was just
a picture of it on the Big League two pouch. Yeah,
and I loved it. I guess they had to market
it that way because first blood gum didn't go over
so well. Exactly tastes just like blood. Uh Man, I'm
(19:12):
wondering all kinds of things. Well, hold on, hold on,
we're getting ahead of ourselves. Oh no, we're getting super distracted.
That's what it is. In the fifties, kids very surprisingly
liked Pez but they were like, this is pretty strong mint.
And I'm a little kid, sure like fruity flavored stuff. Yeah,
I like the dispenser, but gonna get your game going
with the candy exactly, And and Hass and company listen
(19:35):
big time. So they kept Mint Pez still, but they
started releasing lines of of fruit flavored ones and kola.
They had one called Chlorophyll Coffee flavored a yogurt one
that probably was just European. What is the chlorophyll? I
couldn't get a read on what that was like um,
and I looked. I think it's like a UM, it's
(19:58):
a mint. It's a definitely in flavor. Um. Did they
just use the wrong word. There's another There's a gum
out there that has a similar sounding names. It's just
like a very bright like mint, not peppermint. It's not
as sweet. It's mintier um. But yeah, chlorophyll is interesting.
(20:18):
But they had other stuff too, like orange and I
think cherry maybe something like that. Traditional flavors, but not peach.
There's a fun trivia effect for you. They have had
peach flavors, but it was never released in the US. Yeah,
I'm a weirdo. I don't like peach flavors or peaches.
So since they realized that kids are going bonkers for
this candy, UM, which bonkers, that was another good candy too.
(20:41):
I don't know what that is. It came out in
the eighties. It was great. UM. They they decided to
try to make pez a little more parent friendly because
even back in the fifties, I think parents were like,
I don't want you teaching my kid to smoke with
this candy. So they said, well, let's change it from
a cigarette lighter into something different, a toy, and we'll
(21:02):
add like a beloved cartoon character on there. How about that?
And it was genius because what he did was he
combined candy with a toy, uh, and not only a toy,
but a collectible, and it was it was genius for kids.
That was all they needed. Um, they were pretty cheap
and so kids could buy them. They could like go
(21:22):
around and probably finding money on the ground in a
given day to go buy a little pet dispenser, right,
or build like a like a soapbox racer and sell
it to the rich kid in the neighborhood, buy a
bunch of pez did you fund Yeah, that's another thing too.
I didn't like the the stick that you had to lick,
(21:43):
but the sugar was just great. So the sugar stick
that you dipped into the sugar, the sugar stick didn't
have enough flavor for me. Yeah, it just I was
thinking about fund it the other day when I was
driving for some reason. It was just remarkable to me
that they would just make a sugar stick that you
dip in different flavors of sugar and you would then
eat the sugar off the stick and then eat the
(22:03):
sugars right. Well, they they didn't even try back then.
Like it's like smacks used to be called sugar smacks,
and then they changed to the honey smacks, and they're like,
let's just go with smacks. That wasn't just called smacks,
I believe. So it's not sugar smacks. No, it hasn't
been sugar smacks for years. I don't need much cereal.
Like they would get chased out of the grocery aisle
whenever they tried to restock that if they still call
(22:25):
it sugar smacks. I just don't mess with Captain Crunch.
Peanut butter, that's all I gotta say. Captain Crunch has
one out now. I saw on the cereal all the
other day. It's sprinkled donuts Captain Crunch, and it looks awesome. Yeah.
I just the peanut butter is so good. Even though
it tears of the roof of your mouth, it's worth it.
But that's a fatal flaw, don't you think not to me? Ali,
I'll get a box of that, like every three or
(22:47):
four years. I'll get a box of that, like when
Emily's out of town dinner time, because if she would
come home and see that, she'd be like, what are
you doing this in our house? Are you a child? Yeah?
I just have to save those moments, all right. So
it's ninety. Um Has is super rich because he's selling
(23:07):
tons and tons of these dispensers. He sells the company
and uh, they move well. The manufacturing of the dispensers
is actually now in China and Hungary and like UM
Slovenia I think, to the Central Europe and now Asia
as well. But the actual candies are and have been
(23:27):
for a very long time made, to believe you already
said at a plant in Orange, Connecticut. UM and they
kept it going. Pez was always a privately owned company.
I don't think it's ever been public UM. But they
kept the whole thing going even after Hassa departed, and
that was helped very much by this this um explosion
(23:51):
in collecting that came from the late the mid mid eighties,
I would say. And as a result, um Pez itself
added feet to the dispensers so that they can be displayed.
From that point not and they realized, like white people
are collecting these. There's like a secondary market that's generated
exactly um and so they added feet to it. So
(24:12):
now a Pezz dispencer can stand up. But that was
introduced in seven. So if you see feet on your
Pezz dispencer, you know that it's at least un on.
All right, So let's take another quick break here and
we will come back and talk a little bit more
about the odd collecting of Pez dispensers. So, Chuck, people
(24:48):
started collecting pezz dispensers partly because they came of age
at a time about the mid eighties when they were
high on cocaine and had a lot of disposable come
and we're nostalgic for their childhood. Yeah, I have a theory,
and it's not like I'm sure everyone knows this, but
(25:08):
I think pest dispensers became collectible because you can't throw
throw it away like you would eat the candy and
what are you gonna do? As a kid, you can
be like, let me throw away this Garfield toy. Now, well,
not only that, you can know you put it on
your chef, right, your chef, You're like standing still, chef,
stop making that stew weird. So I can put this
penticipencer on the bullion. These can wait. Um, but thet
(25:32):
the whole thing is they're reloadable like that. You get
the little U the little packet of twelve, pop it
in there and you want more, like if it's uh,
it's one of those same deals like collect all four.
But this is not all four. This is constantly new
licensing deals being cooked up, everything from Looney Tunes to
(25:52):
Star Wars to Hello Kitty. Which was the other stoke
of genius was partnering up with these uh I kind
of brands and cultural icons to uh to say, hey,
a Chewbacca head on this thing, like they're grown adults
little by that. Right. The thing is is Lucasfilm. Uh
definitely charges a pretty penny, or did before they sold
(26:14):
the Disney and now it's even more. I'm sure to
license anything from Star Wars. Right. So, PEZ also very
frequently came up with their own stuff as well. Uh,
there were the Pez Pals. There was a very famous
misstep called make a Face Pez, which is like a
tiny Mr. Potato head where you could put on different
eyes and mouth and stuff. But of course these things
(26:34):
were a major choking Hatzard and Actually, there's a lore
among Pez collectors, who are called pez heads that if
you look at some of the nineteen seventy nineteen seventy
three Indian chiefs that were released, their head dresses um
are marbled. They have marbled color, and they're saying that
those are ground up make a face um dispensers that
(26:57):
they reused in the head dresses. That sounds like a
peaz enthusiast conspiracy theory, but it's pretty cool. And another
one that they released was a series for the bi
centennial that includes the funniest character of all time, in
my opinion, the colonial soldier with a head wound. Okay,
I thought you can save the Paul Revere. I think
(27:19):
there is a Paul Revere. No there is, which is
I thought would be a pretty weird there's a Paul
Revere Daniel Boone who looks like he has like a
a well formed bee hive on his head rather than
a coonskin cap. Uncle Sam, Yeah, there's a Betsy Ross uh.
And then there's the wound, the head wound soldier. He's
got like that white gauze on his head with a
little blood dot coming through, and he looks just kind
(27:42):
of out of it. It's a really weird peasant spencer.
That was probably my favorite, although I like a lot
of the the Halloween themed ones from the seventies. Some
of those glow in the dark, which is pretty neat,
Like Mr Skull. Did you see him? Their Doctor Skull?
I think I think he's probably my favorite. Or the
Pumpkin from the seventies on the green stem is probably
(28:03):
the best pezz dis spencer of all time. Well, there
have been four hundred more than four hundred and fifty
dispenser since nineteen including three different Santas, and the Santa
is the best selling of all time, which makes sense,
of course, especially the first one because he was his
His dispenser wasn't just a little peas spencer. It was
(28:24):
like the whole body. But then they're like this is
way too expensive. Yeah, they're like a bunch of people
just buy it with the head. Yeah, And they did
the Salvador Dolly tribute. I don't know if it's a tribute.
I bet it was. Um is my favorite in the
psychedelic hand. It was a hand with a green eyeball
and it's just very cool looking. Yeah, like I would
(28:46):
I would want one of those. Of course, I wouldn't
pay thousands of dollars for it. I'd like to just
find one on the street. And it's pretty neat. Though. Yeah,
do all of them cost that much? But what that
specific collectible? No? But I mean would say they ranged
in the hundreds and it's real. But what was interesting
about this? Um? I think Patrick Kiger pointed out, like
(29:08):
it's compared to a lot of other collecting hobbies, this
is Pez dispensers are relatively cheap. You can get into
him pretty easily with you know, a minimal amount of money. Um.
One of my favorite Pez dispensers is the Pez Gun series.
First it was a ray gun, and then they made
(29:29):
it into a handgun, and then when Star Wars came
out in like, they released another space gun that looked
an awful lot like Han Solo's gun, but it wasn't
really sem um, but the kid would put the gun
in his mouth and pull the trigger to dispense the
can Wow. Yeah really yeah, unbelievable. They have had some
(29:55):
kind of weird ones over the years, like the Airline
Pilot and Stewardess, which I don't know is that a
big seller? I don't know. Well this was back in
the day. I think when they were they were revered
figures and culture. Yeah, the pilots weren't drunks, and the
flight attendants weren't flight attendants. They were stewardesses, and they
were you know, fancy clothes, and but they have like
(30:17):
hard chiseled features. They look like they look like real people.
They look like pilots and flight attendants from the Mother
Road during the depression or something, you know, like really
chiseled features. And actually, apparently the Pets Company says that
they very infrequently do real life humans. Those those bicentennial
figures were the first humans they ever did a real
(30:40):
life humans, I should say, And they didn't even do
fictitious ones very often, like a stewardess or the pilot um,
because they just found that the human face wasn't nearly
as interesting as say, like a bubble man. Yeah, you know,
in two thousand and six they issue the first ever
Pets dispensers of living humans when they decided to pay
(31:01):
tribute to the fellas from Orange County. Chopper makes me
so sad that goes down in history is the worst
one ever. But I mean, those were the first guys
to ever have living Why why a licensing deal? And
it opened the floodgates after that, After that it was on.
There's like a kiss collectors set. Well, of course because
(31:22):
Gene Simmons and he'll put his face on anything. Um.
There was what else, Well, people get turned down a
lot um. You said that other little fact sheet. Kim
Kardashian wanted a pet dispenser. Um, they said no, Yeah,
they turned down people all the time because apparently everybody
wants one. I would suggest just go make your own
babble heead because you can get that done. It sounds
(31:43):
the same. Well, you could just put candy in your
bubble heads. There are newsletters, there's a pez Collector's news,
there are conventions, and there is even a museum that
a husband and wife started in California that started out
weirdly as a museum for computers and Pezz dispensers. I know,
(32:07):
I think they were a computer sales company. Oh. I
thought they displayed like vintage computers. I think they Yeah,
it was a computer dealer and they they were selling computers,
and just to kind of make the place look a
little more interesting, they also displayed pees dispensers and they
found that people were way more interested in coming to
see the Pez dispencers and weren't buying computers, so they
(32:29):
transitioned over to a straight up Pez museum, the pez
um or the Museum of Pez Memorabilium, Berlingame, California. Yeah,
and you can pay some money to go in there
and look at all their rare and vintage peest dispensers.
They have one. He paid three grand for the pineapple
wearing sunglasses because in the early seventies thing. Yeah, it's
(32:51):
nothing special to look at, but again it's rarity. They
didn't make many of them because it was ugly. Probably, Yeah,
that's kind of cute. Did you did you like the
California raisins? Yes, okay, that explains it. Have you seen
straight out accounting? Uh? No, not yet. It's a good
Oh you haven't seen that yet. I haven't been to
any movies. You should. The California raisins appear by mentioned.
(33:16):
They're mentioned in a surprising way. I look forward to
seeing that on television. You should go see it, man, Yeah,
all right, we'll go see it in the movie here.
What else? Uh? They tried vitamins for a little while. Yeah,
I didn't think that was a bad idea. Put a
little vitamin c in there, parents might be more willing
to throw up some money for the for the kid.
(33:38):
But um, they said, no, we're not in the vitamin business.
Let's just stick to the sugary pressed candy. No. And
the guy who said that was a guy named Scott mcwinnie,
And Scott mcwinnie was president. He started out I think
General Mills or something or General Foods, and um he
moved his way over to Pez in the nineties or
(33:59):
the eighties, No, the eighties, because that quote was from
he was president of Peza and he um, much to
his chagrin, got into a um a war, basically an
economic war with the guy who was known as the
Pez Outlaw. Yeah, you dug this up. This was really interesting. Uh.
The article what was it called. It was a terrible
(34:21):
title like Michigan farmer makes four million dollars in Pezz
dispensers in three years or something. It's a terrible title.
Should have been called the Pez Outlaw. But it was
in Playboy and it was pretty good long form reporting. Yeah,
basically what happened was in the nineties a dude uh
named Steve glee U G l e W. Found out that, hey,
(34:44):
over in Canada, they're selling different dispensers that you can't
get here in the United States. So let me go
over there, let me buy some of these and resell
them to collectors. And it worked, and all of a sudden,
the light bulb went off and he said, at think
I can actually make money getting Pez dispensers from other countries.
(35:05):
And he found a hook up that mysterious woman who
approached him from the Eastern Bloc wherever she was from, Yeah,
and he ended up. He and his son Joshua Um
started making trips to Central Europe, um oftentimes right along
the border of like war torn Croatia, and found these
factories where Pez is being made, and found very bribable
(35:27):
factory workers who would take like molds and make um
new PEZ dispensers to his liking. And then he would
sell them as like basically like Pez freaks or or
one offs or something, and for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
But he would spend a quarter or maybe a dollar
on each and he supposedly made quite a bit of money.
(35:48):
He claims four million. Yeah, I believe it. For if
they made the number of trips that they were making.
I think that he did. His downfall was that he
overextended himself. He took out a massive own and uh
basically hired a factory to make a bunch of misfit
Pez dispensers and downfall, and Mark mcwinney took him on
(36:11):
and started releasing basically Pez's own version of these counterfeit
weirdo dispensers at a lower price and drove the dude
out of business. This could be a little documentary easy,
you know easy. Also that reminds me. Have you ever
seen the Jellybelly documentary? Oh, it's so sad, but it's
(36:31):
so good. What's it called? I don't remember. Just look
up Jellybelly documentary and weird owls in it. Oh wow, yeah,
Well then I definitely won't see it. No, you really should, man,
it's a great documentary. It's just it's very sad. And
that one and the show Biz Pizza one documents to Yeah,
I used to love show biz. You will love this documentary.
(36:52):
I like show biz more than Chucky cheese. Even there's
a huge backstory to it that you were unaware of.
Can I read you this one? Xta. This is from
the story about the Pez Outlaw. Uh. A nineteen toy
convention changed Steve's life forever. As he tells it, a
mysterious woman opened her jacket and showed him a silver
globe PEZ holy grail for PEZ collectors. She whispered to
(37:16):
him in broken English, there are many more where I
come from. Let's go great. Do you believe that? And
then she get the field she was like two guys
in overcoats and sunglasses came in like hurried her away.
He said, but but what's your name? Or two centambites
came out of the woodwork and like pulled her down
to hell. Ivanka. Uh yeah, it's a pretty good article.
(37:40):
Look up stupid title Michigan Farmer, PEZ playboy and it'll
bring it up. I think long Form had it at
one point, speaking of Ivanka, should I talk about Donald Trump?
Probably not all right? Um. I was surprised when I
found out I found mention of like PEZ this was
being nostalgic. I was like, definitely not for me. Then
(38:04):
I went to Pez dot com and clicked on Collector's
Corner and they have well, they have pictures of like
every every single one they've released over the years, year
by year, and I definitely felt nostalgic. And I don't
even think of PEZ is factoring in largely into my
childhood at all. Same here, but I was a little nostalgical.
It's cute, So go to PEZ dot com and check
(38:25):
out the collector's corner and I think you will waste
a lot of time there. Uh. And I think that's
it because Chuck just grabbed the listener mail email, which
is usually a signal for me to shut up because
it's mean to me. After the mics aren't recording any
low please uh. And if you want to know more
about PEZ, type that word in the search bar how
(38:46):
stuff Works dot com and uh, it's time for listener mail.
IMNA call this. You guys are right screw college. Remember
when we a little soapbox moment? Was this from the animator? Yeah?
I thought this is good. Hey, guys, want to shoot
you a quick email to thank you for mentioning the
idea that you don't need to go to college for
(39:06):
some professions on the How Publicists Works episode. It really
struck a chord with me. I'm an animator and I
desperately wish it would be treated as a trade, which
it is, and not as a high art form that
requires a fancy, one hundred thousand dollar degree. Most of
what I learned I actually learned on the job. Got
almost nothing from my college classes, while the contacts I
(39:27):
made in college were very valuable down the road. And
nothing is quite as nice is moving out and being
on your own in art school. It came with a
hefty price. It is now ten years later. I've been
working steadily this whole time, and I'm still paying off
my college student loans and I make a good amount
of money. That's just sad. And I know so many
people were in the same position without but without steady work. Uh.
(39:48):
And she says that she worked at adult Swim for
a while too. By the way, Uh, there's a stigma
about not going to college, and I think it's part
of the reason so many people are being crushed by
student loan debt. Now it's a very American stigma too.
It's not I like that all around the world, stupid Americans.
I think there's probably a lot of these kinds of
jobs that don't need college degrees out there, like podcaster,
(40:10):
and it might be cool to hear a podcast on
that sometime. I'm not sure what you call it. Maybe
how not going to college but landing a nice job
and making a living anyway and sticking it to your
parents works. Maybe just do one on student loans or something. Anyway,
thanks for keeping the company while I animate keep it up.
You guys are top notch, and that is Margie. Thanks Margie,
(40:33):
that was a great email. Agreed. We appreciate that. And
that's not college altogether. Sometimes it's very useful. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just not the end all be all for everyone
on the planet to have to go to college. Yeah,
I know it's true. There, I mean, it's true, and
I think that there hopefully is a large awakening going
on because a lot of people say that the current bubble.
(40:54):
If you're looking around for the next bubble student loans, yep, uh, yeah,
we should do something about that. Sometimes, let's do it.
And actually Margie gave us her um the U R
L for her blog. It's m A R J I
B O R D N E R dot blogspot dot com.
So I imagine you can go check out her stuff
there when don't you think? Yes, sir? Nice. So if
(41:18):
you want to get in touch with Chuck or me
or both of us, or even noel Um. You can
tweak to us at s y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com. You can send
us an email to Stuff podcast to how stuff works
dot com and has always joined us at home on
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more
(41:40):
on this and thousands of other topics because it how
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