In 1952, Americans saw the inauspicious introduction to an Austrian mint in a handy dispenser. Long popular in the homeland, the pocket candy lost something in translation. The marketing cure for this was successful beyond all expectations.
PEZ was created in Austria in 1927 as a peppermint candy and breath mint sold in a clever package which dispensed the candies one at a time. Highly successful in Europe, it became the fashionable adult candy of its time. But its launch in America found a disinterested public.
Soon PEZ would be reinvented for the American market as a children’s candy with fruit-flavored candies replacing the staid pfefferminz of old. The dispensers were redesigned and given colorful heads in the shapes of popular cartoon characters, and American children quickly claimed the new candy as their own.
Today, PEZ is available everywhere from national box store chains to the corner convenience store, and Americans can see a dispenser without it evoking a few childhood memories. This ability to reconnect us, either with our own childhoods or with our national past, is central to collectibility in any field, and a PEZ dispenser holds a rich postwar legacy in its tiny plastic container.
— Excerpt from Toys & Prices, PEZ section, introduction. Edited by Sharon Korbeck & Elizabeth A. Stephan, published by Krause Publications
In this wiki, anyone can add their knowledge about PEZ and PEZ dispensers.
PEZ wiki currently holds information on:
- PEZ Company
- PEZ dispensers
- Giant dispensers
- PEZ community
- PEZ flavors
There's also a list of dispensers. It's ever incomplete, but at last count it listed 527 models. Also included is a list of the sets the dispensers appeared in.
Is your favorite dispenser listed yet? If not, just click edit and add your knowledge to the PEZ wiki.