October 5, 2019 • 42 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. Explore Pez history and culture with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, friends. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday, and you're
gonna enjoy it a little bit more if you listen
to this Stuff you should Know. Select episode from October
two thousand fifteen, How Pez Works. I love these pop
culture episodes. Everyone Pez. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
A production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:28):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Noel And this is stuff
you should have to do. The peas at nice. I
like that another Null cast as well. Yeah, pretty exciting.
It's part of the Null spint. We then old stint.
(00:51):
We're gonna fell it. Uh. Do you like pest? I
like Pez? Do you like the candy? I? Do you
like to taste? I like the taste of Pez. Yes.
Describe to me what happens when you can put a
candy has candy in your mouth? Well, I put a
PEZ candy, I pull the head back, the kicker kicks
(01:11):
it out. Pop. Yes, it's 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 tooth tooth to kicker, okay uh and then I, um, yeah,
what do you do? Use your hand? Well, I don't
eat PEZ, but back when I was eight, I would
(01:35):
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, let's half the fun. Oh oh boy. Anyway,
(01:55):
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
(02:15):
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 nano seconds, and
then I started to bite into it, and it's very
much like um. This explains why I like pets, especially
orange pests. And once eight almost an entire bottle of
(02:38):
orange flavored baby aspirin for the taste. That's why I
like pests. How old were you then, would be a kid?
It was like twenty something, Yes, I was a kid.
Well did you what did it hurt? You know, nothing
happened to me. We talked about that before. It feels
like because they aren't even it isn't even medicine. I
(02:59):
wonder it's just a placebo. But how could you use
a placebo and a little kid? I mean, I guess
it work, 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,
(03:22):
so you can get them to believe anything. Sure, but
there seems 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 of placebo would work, like say, from birth,
And I don't remember what age you can start giving
kids baby aspirin. Baby, I don't even children aspirin anyway.
(03:42):
I like pez I like how it tastes. I like
the experience of eating a pets, all right. I don't
care for pets. I also like the shape the brick,
the brick that 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 very nice young
lady brought us some different candies and things. The Lego candies. Well,
(04:04):
you jumped on that bag. It's like, you want these
lego brick candies and you're like, yeah, give me a
second time, man. I love those things. Yeah, And that's
sort of this. I put those on in 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
(04:27):
pounds of sugar every four days making its Pez candies.
That's right. And here's a factoid for you, all right.
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.
(04:49):
They make twelve million tablets a day at their Orange,
Connecticut facility, the headquarters of Pets, and three billion PEZ
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.
(05:11):
And if this kind of thing floats your boat right now,
go check out how Stuff works brain Stuff series on YouTube,
and specifically look up the one on pop rocks 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
(05:33):
made and then turn down the free samples like no,
thank you. I find that disgust. They're like, now, would
you like to try some? Yeah? I don't do 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,
(05:54):
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 man need to commemorate it, and they
made you buy like a fifth or something and dip
your own bottle. And we're like, man, it's fine because
we'd we'd be like, we would want to open it that. Yeah,
we didn't dip our own. Body forgot. That was exactly
the conversation we had. Wow, you guys to put a
(06:14):
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, Avandale 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
(06:37):
whiskey fills the um whatever the place where they're aging
em barrels, and it's actually 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 good
(06:59):
great eat like the the half of a percent of
whiskey that is just glorious. It's in the air, right,
it's amazing. Oh man, now I'm thirsty. All right, So
let's talk pez Um. In two thousand and eleven, this
(07:19):
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? What like that she's overweight? No? No, that
she waited around? Oh okay, it's like, man, how mean
(07:40):
can people get? Yeah? That would be. So they made
um specialty pez dispensers out of Prince William and Kate
for that, and they were expensive, three sixty dollars at
a charity auction. Clearly that's the most expensive pez dispenser
ever sold. Not so, my friend, what uh? Supposedly that
(08:01):
is the thirty two thousand dollars in two thousand and
six for an astronaut limited edition Astronaut deemed 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 Um was that auction
took place on eBay, which is very appropriate that peest
(08:22):
dispenses 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 he thought, hey,
this would be a really great We may not have
(08:44):
eBay today if it weren't for Pez 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 of the Tweetie Bird episode.
I had to go back and look it up. But
once I did, I started to remember, Yeah, I think
(09:05):
Elaine and Jerry and George Ritta George's girlfriend's piano recital,
and Jerry put the Tweetie Bird pest dispenser on his
lap or 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 then
the Tweetie bird um Pez Dispenser also factored into the
(09:26):
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. Well in nostalgia
figures in a lot. Uh, it really does. Kids from
(09:49):
the well, kids of all ages grew up with pez
kids of all ages? What am my circus announcer? Step
all on up? What do they calls? I was gonna say,
circus himself, Barker, ring master, your circus Barker. Well, there's
two different Those are two different things. I think unless
you're in like a low budget carnival, then it's maybe
the same thing. Yeah, that's I would be. But the
(10:10):
Barker is the one who's like, step on up, we'll
guess your weight. The people he's trying to get people
to come in. The ring master is 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 ring master. You'd have to wear a straw boater
hat and like striped suits. Yeah, I'd be the barker,
and you'd be the guy that like swings from things
(10:31):
with his teeth. Do strong teeth as opposed to my
little 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 should
(10:52):
take a break and regain our composure. All right, we'll
be back right after this. All right, So we're back,
(11:27):
and I think we should uh start in the traditional
way that when we handle our pop culture casts and
talk about history, because well I thought it was a
pretty interesting history. Actually, yeah, I'd love this article. Eduard
Hass the third he was an Austrian. Um he was
he made sweets. He was a confection ere. Well, his
(11:49):
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
(12:11):
he went to a chemist, uh, pharmacist, and said, hey,
give me some really strong peppermint essence. And he used
that with some sugar and made mints basically a proto
altoid um, and put him in little tins and marketed
them as quitting smoking or smoking cessation aids. Basically, if
(12:31):
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,
(12:52):
fefa mints. I would say, I like that better. That
sounds like the remix version. But it does start with
two p's in 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
(13:12):
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, we'll we'll wrap
them up in like a little candy bar at first,
(13:34):
and that's how we sold him for like a year.
Well yes, um, they were also sold in tins, right,
and he invented 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 in
(13:56):
their mouths. And he probably imagined all the poop and
bacteria who knows what on those people's hands German 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 of his company, oscar Uxa,
(14:19):
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 for smoking conson 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
(14:42):
kicked the Kleenex boxes off of his feet and stood
up and hugged oscar Usa. 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 girls. Yeah, the Pez girls, which were supposedly like
this very sexy thing to sell Pez. Did you see them? Yeah,
(15:05):
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 had 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. You know what
they reminded me of was um back in the day
when you would have like be at a club and
(15:27):
a and a woman would come around. Yeah, cigarettes 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 they did. They did the trick the Yeah, they
(15:50):
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 the candy comes out and you
put your teeth on it. It's right, it's wonderful pop off.
So they went, they went nuts for the stuff. And
(16:12):
then he said, you know what, let me expand the
United States is where it's at. 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 love the way these things
popped out. Plus it probably made them feel a lot
like they were smoking. You think, probably I never got
(16:36):
the tie to the lighter. It was completely lost on me.
So you like flick a lighter? I 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 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.
(16:59):
The first 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 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.
(17:22):
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 do that. I didn't have arms, right,
but in the fifties, yeah, probably, I saw candy cigarettes
the other day in the store. By the way, I
(17:43):
thought those work. Believe 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, the kind
where you puff them? Oh, those are great. The candy cigarettes,
they're just like sticks of candy that are disgusting. No,
(18:03):
I'm talking about the gum that would blow out fist 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. 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,
(18:25):
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 was a Rambo gum that
was sold to commemorate Rambo three. Yeah. No, it had
(18:46):
like a It was marketed as like black raspberry or
something like that, but it didn't taste like that at all.
It had 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, this
was I've never experienced it before after and it was
the best tasting gum ever. But it was in the
(19:06):
big league chew pouch and it was big league to shreds,
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 a photo
of him with like the very famous rocket launcher okay,
the rocket from Rambo three um, and uh it was
(19:29):
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
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
(19:53):
liked pez but they were like this is pretty strong mint.
And I'm a little kid sure like fruity flavor and stuff. Yeah,
I like the dispenser, but gonna get your game going
with the candy exactly, and and Hass and company listen
big time. So they kept mint pez still, but they
started releasing lines of of fruit flavored ones and cola.
(20:16):
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
a mint. It's a definitely mint flavor. Um. Did they
just use the wrong word. There's another there's a gum
(20:37):
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.
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
(20:59):
peach flavor, 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 with bonkers. That was another good candy too,
But I don't know what that is. It came out
in the eighties. It was great. Um. They they decided
to try to make Petz a little more parent friendly
(21:22):
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
add like a beloved cartoon character on there. How about that?
And that's fine. It was genius because what he did
was he combined candy with a toy, uh, and not
(21:43):
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 around and probably finding money on
the ground in a given day to go buy a
little pet dispenser, right, or build like, uh, like a
soapbox racer and sell it to the rich kid in
(22:04):
the neighborhood buy a bunch of pez did. Yeah, that's
another thing too. I didn't like the the stick that
you had to lick, 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
(22:25):
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 sugars right. Well, they they didn't
even try back then. Like it's like that 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
(22:47):
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 I whenever they tried to restock that.
If they still call it sugar smacks, I just don't
mess with Captain Crunch peanut butter. That's all I got
to say. Captain Crunch has one out now. I saw
in the cereal all the other day. It's sprinkled donuts
Captain crunch and it looks awesome. Yeah, I just the
(23:08):
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
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?
(23:30):
Have to save those moments, all right. So it's a
ninety Um hass is super rich because he's selling 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,
(23:51):
to the Central Europe and now as well. But the
actual candies are and have been 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
(24:15):
going even after Hassa departed, and that was helped very
much by this this um explosion 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 dispenser so that they can be displayed from that
point not and they realized, like white people are collecting these,
(24:36):
there's like a secondary market that's generated exactly UM, and
so they added feet to it. So now a PEZ
dispencer can stand up. But that was introduced in seven.
So if you see feet on your Pez dispencer, you
know that it's at least un on. All right, So
let's take another quick break here and we will come
(24:56):
back and talk a little bit more about the odd
collecting of Pezz dispensers. So, Chuck, people started collecting Pezz
(25:25):
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 income, and we're nostalgic
for their childhoods. Yeah, I have a theory, and it's
not like I'm sure everyone knows this, but I think
pets dispensers became collectible because you can throw them, throw
(25:49):
it away like you would eat the candy, and what
are you gonna do As a kid. You can be like, okay,
let me throw away this Garfield toy. Now, well, not
only that, you can put it on your chef, right,
your chef, you're if you're like, dance still, chef, stop
making that stew weird so I can put this. Participants
around the bully of base can wait. Um. But the
the whole thing is they're reloadable, like you get the
(26:12):
little uh, 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 Star
Wars to Hello Kitty. Which was the other stroke of
(26:32):
genius was partnering up with these uh iconic 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 the Disney and now it's
even more I'm sure to license anything from Star Wars, right.
(26:55):
So Pez also very frequently came up with their own
stuff as well. 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 were a major choking hazard. And actually
there's a lore among Pez collectors who are called Pez
(27:17):
heads that if you look at some of the nineteen
nineteen seventy three Indian chiefs that were released, their head
dresses are marble, they have marbled color, and they're saying
that those are ground up make a face um dispensers
that they reused in the head dresses. That sounds like
a Pez enthusiast conspiracy theory, but it's pretty cool. And
(27:41):
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 the head wound. Okay,
I thought you can say the Paul Revere. I think
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
(28:03):
a well formed beehive on his head rather than a
queenskin cap an 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
of out of it. It's a really weird Pezzi spencer.
That one is probably my favorite, although I like a
(28:24):
lot of 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
the best Pezzis spencer of all time. Well, there have
been four hundred more than four and fifty dispenser since,
(28:47):
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 dispenser wasn't just
a little Pezzis menser. It was like the whole body.
But then they're like this is way too expensive. Yeah,
they're like I betch you of people just buy it
with the head. Yeah, and they did the Salvador Dolly tribute.
(29:10):
I don't know if it's a tribute. I bet it was.
UM is my favorite in psychedelic hand. It was a
hand with a green eyeball and it's just very cool looking. Yeah,
like I would I would want one of those. Of
course I wouldn't bay thousands of dollars for it. No,
I'd like to just find one on the streets. And
it's pretty neat though. Yeah, do all of them cost
that much? But what that specific collectible? No? But I
(29:35):
mean I would say they range in the hundreds and
it's really rare. But what was interesting about this um?
I think Patrick Kiger pointed out, like it's compared to
a lot of other collecting hobbies, this is dispensers are
relatively cheap, not too bad. You can get into them
pretty easily with you know, a minimal amount of money. Um.
(29:58):
One of my favorite dispensers is the pez gun series.
Oh really, First there was a ray gun, and then
they made it into a handgun, and then when Star
Wars came out in Like Night, they released another space
gun that looked an awful lot like Han Solo's gun,
but it wasn't really them, um, but the kid would
(30:21):
put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger
to dispense the candy. Wow. Yeah, really yeah, unbelievable. They
have had some kind of weird ones over the ears,
like the airline pilot and stewardess, which I don't know,
is that a big seller. I don't know. Well, this
(30:41):
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 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,
(31:03):
like really chiseled features. And actually, apparently the Pets Company
says that they very infrequently do real life humans, that
those those bicentennial figures where the first humans they ever
did a real 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
(31:25):
human face wasn't nearly as interesting as say, like a
bubble man. Yeah, you know, in two thousand and six
they issued the first ever pets dispensers of living humans
when they decided to pay tribute to the fellas from
Orange County Chopper. It makes me so sad that goes
down in history as the worst one ever. But I
(31:45):
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 collector set. Well, of course because 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
(32:06):
other little fact sheet. Kim Kardashian wanted a peest 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 bubblehead because you can get that done.
It sounds the same. Well, you could just put candy
in your bubble head. There are newsletters, there's a pez
(32:27):
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 Pez dispensers.
I know, I think they were a computer sales company. Oh,
I thought they displayed like vintage computers. I think they Yeah,
(32:50):
there 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 Peest dispensercane, gotcha. And
they found that people were way more interested in coming
to see the Pezz dispencers and weren't buying computers, so
they transitioned over to a straight up Pez museum, the
pez um or the Museum of Pez Memorabilium, Berlingame, California. Yeah,
(33:14):
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
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
(33:38):
California raisins? Yes, okay, that explains it. Have you seen
straight out of Compton. 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. Wow,
they're mentioned in a surprising way. I look forward to
seeing them on television. You should go see it, man, Yeah,
(34:00):
all right, le't go see it in the movie there.
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.
But um, they said, no, we're not in the vitamin business.
Let's just stick to the sugary pressed candy. No. And
(34:22):
the guy who said that was a guy named Scott mcwinnie.
Scott mcgwinnie was president. He started out, I think General
Mills or something in General Foods, and um he moved
his way over to PEZ in the nineties or the eighties, No,
the eighties, because that quote was from He was president
of PEZ little and he um, much to his chagrin,
(34:43):
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 title,
like Michigan farmer makes four million dollars in PEZ dispensers
in three years or something. It's a terrible title. Should
(35:04):
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 Gleieu g l e W found out that, Hey,
over in Canada, they're selling different dispensers that you can't
get here in the United States. So let me go
(35:28):
over there, let me buy some of these and resell
them to collectors. And it worked, and all of a sudden,
the lightbulb went off and he said, I think I
can actually make money getting Pez dispensers from other countries.
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
(35:51):
started making trips to Central Europe um oftentimes right along
the border of like war torn Croatia, and found these
factories or pezz is being made and found very bribable
factory workers who would take like molds and make um
new Pezz dispensers to his liking, and then he would
sell them as like basically like Pez freaks or or
(36:13):
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.
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
(36:34):
over extended himself. He took out a massive loan and
uh basically hired a factory to make a bunch of
misfit Pezz dispensers and downfall and Mark mcwinney took him
on and started releasing basically Pez his own version of
these counterfeit weirdo dispensers at a lower price and drove
(36:57):
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
so good. What's it called? I don't remember, Just look
up jelly Belly documentary and weird owls in it. Oh wow, Yeah,
well then I definitely won't see it. No, you really should, man,
(37:17):
it's a great documentary. It's just it's very sad. And
that one and the show Biz Pizza one documentary right
to Yeah, I used to love show biz. You will
love this documentary. 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 excerpt? This
is from the story about the Pez Outlaw uh ninety
(37:41):
convention changed Steve's life forever. As he tells it, a
mysterious woman opened her jacket and showed him a silver Globeez,
holy grail for Pez collectors. She whispered to him in
broken English, there are many more where I come from.
That's still great? Do you believe that? And then she
(38:02):
I get the feeld. She was like two guys and
overcoats and sunglasses came in like hurried her away. Yeah,
he said, but but what's your name? Or two centmbites
came out of the woodwork and like pulled her down
to hell Ivanka. Uh yeah, it's a pretty good article.
Look up stupid title Michigan Farmer Pez Playboy and it'll
bring it up. I think long Form had it at
(38:24):
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 dispensers being nostalgic.
I was like, definitely not for me. Then I went
to PEZ dot com and clicked on collectors Corner and
(38:45):
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 out the
Collector's Corner and I think you will waste a lot
of time there, agreed. Uh, And I think that's it
(39:08):
because Chuck described 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 part how stuff works dot
com and uh, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
(39:28):
call this. You guys are right screw college. Remember when
we had 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
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
(39:51):
it is, and not as a high art form that
requires a fancy, one 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 made
in college were very valuable down the road. And nothing
is quite as nice as 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
(40:13):
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.
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,
(40:36):
It's not 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,
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
(40:56):
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,
that was a great email. Agreed, we appreciate that. And
that's not about college altogether. Sometimes it's very useful. Yoh yeah,
(41:17):
it's just not the end all b l for everyone
on the planet didn't 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.
If you're looking around for the next bubble student loans, Uh, yeah,
we should do something about that. Sometimes, let's do it.
(41:38):
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 blog spot
dot com. I imagine you can go check out her
stuff there when you think yes, sir. Nice. So if
you want to get in touch with Chuck or me,
or both of us, or even Noel, you can tweak
(42:00):
to us at s y SK podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com. You can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us sort at home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio viaus at the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where ever you listen to
(42:22):
your favorite shows.
Hello, friends. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday, and you're
gonna enjoy it a little bit more if you listen
to this Stuff you should Know. Select episode from October
two thousand fifteen, How Pez Works. I love these pop
culture episodes. Everyone Pez. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
A production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:28):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Noel And this is stuff
you should have to do. The peas at nice. I
like that another Null cast as well. Yeah, pretty exciting.
It's part of the Null spint. We then old stint.
(00:51):
We're gonna fell it. Uh. Do you like pest? I
like Pez? Do you like the candy? I? Do you
like to taste? I like the taste of Pez. Yes.
Describe to me what happens when you can put a
candy has candy in your mouth? Well, I put a
PEZ candy, I pull the head back, the kicker kicks
(01:11):
it out. Pop. Yes, it's 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 tooth tooth to kicker, okay uh and then I, um, yeah,
what do you do? Use your hand? Well, I don't
eat PEZ, but back when I was eight, I would
(01:35):
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, let's half the fun. Oh oh boy. Anyway,
(01:55):
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
(02:15):
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 nano seconds, and
then I started to bite into it, and it's very
much like um. This explains why I like pets, especially
orange pests. And once eight almost an entire bottle of
(02:38):
orange flavored baby aspirin for the taste. That's why I
like pests. How old were you then, would be a kid?
It was like twenty something, Yes, I was a kid.
Well did you what did it hurt? You know, nothing
happened to me. We talked about that before. It feels
like because they aren't even it isn't even medicine. I
(02:59):
wonder it's just a placebo. But how could you use
a placebo and a little kid? I mean, I guess
it work, 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,
(03:22):
so you can get them to believe anything. Sure, but
there seems 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 of placebo would work, like say, from birth,
And I don't remember what age you can start giving
kids baby aspirin. Baby, I don't even children aspirin anyway.
(03:42):
I like pez I like how it tastes. I like
the experience of eating a pets, all right. I don't
care for pets. I also like the shape the brick,
the brick that 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 very nice young
lady brought us some different candies and things. The Lego candies. Well,
(04:04):
you jumped on that bag. It's like, you want these
lego brick candies and you're like, yeah, give me a
second time, man. I love those things. Yeah, And that's
sort of this. I put those on in 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
(04:27):
pounds of sugar every four days making its Pez candies.
That's right. And here's a factoid for you, all right.
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.
(04:49):
They make twelve million tablets a day at their Orange,
Connecticut facility, the headquarters of Pets, and three billion PEZ
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.
(05:11):
And if this kind of thing floats your boat right now,
go check out how Stuff works brain Stuff series on YouTube,
and specifically look up the one on pop rocks 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
(05:33):
made and then turn down the free samples like no,
thank you. I find that disgust. They're like, now, would
you like to try some? Yeah? I don't do 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,
(05:54):
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 man need to commemorate it, and they
made you buy like a fifth or something and dip
your own bottle. And we're like, man, it's fine because
we'd we'd be like, we would want to open it that. Yeah,
we didn't dip our own. Body forgot. That was exactly
the conversation we had. Wow, you guys to put a
(06:14):
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, Avandale 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
(06:37):
whiskey fills the um whatever the place where they're aging
em barrels, and it's actually 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 good
(06:59):
great eat like the the half of a percent of
whiskey that is just glorious. It's in the air, right,
it's amazing. Oh man, now I'm thirsty. All right, So
let's talk pez Um. In two thousand and eleven, this
(07:19):
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? What like that she's overweight? No? No, that
she waited around? Oh okay, it's like, man, how mean
(07:40):
can people get? Yeah? That would be. So they made
um specialty pez dispensers out of Prince William and Kate
for that, and they were expensive, three sixty dollars at
a charity auction. Clearly that's the most expensive pez dispenser
ever sold. Not so, my friend, what uh? Supposedly that
(08:01):
is the thirty two thousand dollars in two thousand and
six for an astronaut limited edition Astronaut deemed 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 Um was that auction
took place on eBay, which is very appropriate that peest
(08:22):
dispenses 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 he thought, hey,
this would be a really great We may not have
(08:44):
eBay today if it weren't for Pez 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 of the Tweetie Bird episode.
I had to go back and look it up. But
once I did, I started to remember, Yeah, I think
(09:05):
Elaine and Jerry and George Ritta George's girlfriend's piano recital,
and Jerry put the Tweetie Bird pest dispenser on his
lap or 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 then
the Tweetie bird um Pez Dispenser also factored into the
(09:26):
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. Well in nostalgia
figures in a lot. Uh, it really does. Kids from
(09:49):
the well, kids of all ages grew up with pez
kids of all ages? What am my circus announcer? Step
all on up? What do they calls? I was gonna say,
circus himself, Barker, ring master, your circus Barker. Well, there's
two different Those are two different things. I think unless
you're in like a low budget carnival, then it's maybe
the same thing. Yeah, that's I would be. But the
(10:10):
Barker is the one who's like, step on up, we'll
guess your weight. The people he's trying to get people
to come in. The ring master is 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 ring master. You'd have to wear a straw boater
hat and like striped suits. Yeah, I'd be the barker,
and you'd be the guy that like swings from things
(10:31):
with his teeth. Do strong teeth as opposed to my
little 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 should
(10:52):
take a break and regain our composure. All right, we'll
be back right after this. All right, So we're back,
(11:27):
and I think we should uh start in the traditional
way that when we handle our pop culture casts and
talk about history, because well I thought it was a
pretty interesting history. Actually, yeah, I'd love this article. Eduard
Hass the third he was an Austrian. Um he was
he made sweets. He was a confection ere. Well, his
(11:49):
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
(12:11):
he went to a chemist, uh, pharmacist, and said, hey,
give me some really strong peppermint essence. And he used
that with some sugar and made mints basically a proto
altoid um, and put him in little tins and marketed
them as quitting smoking or smoking cessation aids. Basically, if
(12:31):
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,
(12:52):
fefa mints. I would say, I like that better. That
sounds like the remix version. But it does start with
two p's in 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
(13:12):
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, we'll we'll wrap
them up in like a little candy bar at first,
(13:34):
and that's how we sold him for like a year.
Well yes, um, they were also sold in tins, right,
and he invented 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 in
(13:56):
their mouths. And he probably imagined all the poop and
bacteria who knows what on those people's hands German 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 of his company, oscar Uxa,
(14:19):
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 for smoking conson 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
(14:42):
kicked the Kleenex boxes off of his feet and stood
up and hugged oscar Usa. 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 girls. Yeah, the Pez girls, which were supposedly like
this very sexy thing to sell Pez. Did you see them? Yeah,
(15:05):
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 had 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. You know what
they reminded me of was um back in the day
when you would have like be at a club and
(15:27):
a and a woman would come around. Yeah, cigarettes 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 they did. They did the trick the Yeah, they
(15:50):
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 the candy comes out and you
put your teeth on it. It's right, it's wonderful pop off.
So they went, they went nuts for the stuff. And
(16:12):
then he said, you know what, let me expand the
United States is where it's at. 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 love the way these things
popped out. Plus it probably made them feel a lot
like they were smoking. You think, probably I never got
(16:36):
the tie to the lighter. It was completely lost on me.
So you like flick a lighter? I 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 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.
(16:59):
The first 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 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.
(17:22):
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 do that. I didn't have arms, right,
but in the fifties, yeah, probably, I saw candy cigarettes
the other day in the store. By the way, I
(17:43):
thought those work. Believe 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, the kind
where you puff them? Oh, those are great. The candy cigarettes,
they're just like sticks of candy that are disgusting. No,
(18:03):
I'm talking about the gum that would blow out fist 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. 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,
(18:25):
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 was a Rambo gum that
was sold to commemorate Rambo three. Yeah. No, it had
(18:46):
like a It was marketed as like black raspberry or
something like that, but it didn't taste like that at all.
It had 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, this
was I've never experienced it before after and it was
the best tasting gum ever. But it was in the
(19:06):
big league chew pouch and it was big league to shreds,
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 a photo
of him with like the very famous rocket launcher okay,
the rocket from Rambo three um, and uh it was
(19:29):
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
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
(19:53):
liked pez but they were like this is pretty strong mint.
And I'm a little kid sure like fruity flavor and stuff. Yeah,
I like the dispenser, but gonna get your game going
with the candy exactly, and and Hass and company listen
big time. So they kept mint pez still, but they
started releasing lines of of fruit flavored ones and cola.
(20:16):
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
a mint. It's a definitely mint flavor. Um. Did they
just use the wrong word. There's another there's a gum
(20:37):
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.
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
(20:59):
peach flavor, 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 with bonkers. That was another good candy too,
But I don't know what that is. It came out
in the eighties. It was great. Um. They they decided
to try to make Petz a little more parent friendly
(21:22):
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
add like a beloved cartoon character on there. How about that?
And that's fine. It was genius because what he did
was he combined candy with a toy, uh, and not
(21:43):
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 around and probably finding money on
the ground in a given day to go buy a
little pet dispenser, right, or build like, uh, like a
soapbox racer and sell it to the rich kid in
(22:04):
the neighborhood buy a bunch of pez did. Yeah, that's
another thing too. I didn't like the the stick that
you had to lick, 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
(22:25):
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 sugars right. Well, they they didn't
even try back then. Like it's like that 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
(22:47):
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 I whenever they tried to restock that.
If they still call it sugar smacks, I just don't
mess with Captain Crunch peanut butter. That's all I got
to say. Captain Crunch has one out now. I saw
in the cereal all the other day. It's sprinkled donuts
Captain crunch and it looks awesome. Yeah, I just the
(23:08):
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
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?
(23:30):
Have to save those moments, all right. So it's a
ninety Um hass is super rich because he's selling 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,
(23:51):
to the Central Europe and now as well. But the
actual candies are and have been 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
(24:15):
going even after Hassa departed, and that was helped very
much by this this um explosion 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 dispenser so that they can be displayed from that
point not and they realized, like white people are collecting these,
(24:36):
there's like a secondary market that's generated exactly UM, and
so they added feet to it. So now a PEZ
dispencer can stand up. But that was introduced in seven.
So if you see feet on your Pez dispencer, you
know that it's at least un on. All right, So
let's take another quick break here and we will come
(24:56):
back and talk a little bit more about the odd
collecting of Pezz dispensers. So, Chuck, people started collecting Pezz
(25:25):
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 income, and we're nostalgic
for their childhoods. Yeah, I have a theory, and it's
not like I'm sure everyone knows this, but I think
pets dispensers became collectible because you can throw them, throw
(25:49):
it away like you would eat the candy, and what
are you gonna do As a kid. You can be like, okay,
let me throw away this Garfield toy. Now, well, not
only that, you can put it on your chef, right,
your chef, you're if you're like, dance still, chef, stop
making that stew weird so I can put this. Participants
around the bully of base can wait. Um. But the
the whole thing is they're reloadable, like you get the
(26:12):
little uh, 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 Star
Wars to Hello Kitty. Which was the other stroke of
(26:32):
genius was partnering up with these uh iconic 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 the Disney and now it's
even more I'm sure to license anything from Star Wars, right.
(26:55):
So Pez also very frequently came up with their own
stuff as well. 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 were a major choking hazard. And actually
there's a lore among Pez collectors who are called Pez
(27:17):
heads that if you look at some of the nineteen
nineteen seventy three Indian chiefs that were released, their head
dresses are marble, they have marbled color, and they're saying
that those are ground up make a face um dispensers
that they reused in the head dresses. That sounds like
a Pez enthusiast conspiracy theory, but it's pretty cool. And
(27:41):
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 the head wound. Okay,
I thought you can say the Paul Revere. I think
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
(28:03):
a well formed beehive on his head rather than a
queenskin cap an 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
of out of it. It's a really weird Pezzi spencer.
That one is probably my favorite, although I like a
(28:24):
lot of 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
the best Pezzis spencer of all time. Well, there have
been four hundred more than four and fifty dispenser since,
(28:47):
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 dispenser wasn't just
a little Pezzis menser. It was like the whole body.
But then they're like this is way too expensive. Yeah,
they're like I betch you of people just buy it
with the head. Yeah, and they did the Salvador Dolly tribute.
(29:10):
I don't know if it's a tribute. I bet it was.
UM is my favorite in psychedelic hand. It was a
hand with a green eyeball and it's just very cool looking. Yeah,
like I would I would want one of those. Of
course I wouldn't bay thousands of dollars for it. No,
I'd like to just find one on the streets. And
it's pretty neat though. Yeah, do all of them cost
that much? But what that specific collectible? No? But I
(29:35):
mean I would say they range in the hundreds and
it's really rare. But what was interesting about this um?
I think Patrick Kiger pointed out, like it's compared to
a lot of other collecting hobbies, this is dispensers are
relatively cheap, not too bad. You can get into them
pretty easily with you know, a minimal amount of money. Um.
(29:58):
One of my favorite dispensers is the pez gun series.
Oh really, First there was a ray gun, and then
they made it into a handgun, and then when Star
Wars came out in Like Night, they released another space
gun that looked an awful lot like Han Solo's gun,
but it wasn't really them, um, but the kid would
(30:21):
put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger
to dispense the candy. Wow. Yeah, really yeah, unbelievable. They
have had some kind of weird ones over the ears,
like the airline pilot and stewardess, which I don't know,
is that a big seller. I don't know. Well, this
(30:41):
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 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,
(31:03):
like really chiseled features. And actually, apparently the Pets Company
says that they very infrequently do real life humans, that
those those bicentennial figures where the first humans they ever
did a real 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
(31:25):
human face wasn't nearly as interesting as say, like a
bubble man. Yeah, you know, in two thousand and six
they issued the first ever pets dispensers of living humans
when they decided to pay tribute to the fellas from
Orange County Chopper. It makes me so sad that goes
down in history as the worst one ever. But I
(31:45):
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 collector set. Well, of course because 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
(32:06):
other little fact sheet. Kim Kardashian wanted a peest 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 bubblehead because you can get that done.
It sounds the same. Well, you could just put candy
in your bubble head. There are newsletters, there's a pez
(32:27):
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 Pez dispensers.
I know, I think they were a computer sales company. Oh,
I thought they displayed like vintage computers. I think they Yeah,
(32:50):
there 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 Peest dispensercane, gotcha. And
they found that people were way more interested in coming
to see the Pezz dispencers and weren't buying computers, so
they transitioned over to a straight up Pez museum, the
pez um or the Museum of Pez Memorabilium, Berlingame, California. Yeah,
(33:14):
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
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
(33:38):
California raisins? Yes, okay, that explains it. Have you seen
straight out of Compton. 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. Wow,
they're mentioned in a surprising way. I look forward to
seeing them on television. You should go see it, man, Yeah,
(34:00):
all right, le't go see it in the movie there.
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.
But um, they said, no, we're not in the vitamin business.
Let's just stick to the sugary pressed candy. No. And
(34:22):
the guy who said that was a guy named Scott mcwinnie.
Scott mcgwinnie was president. He started out, I think General
Mills or something in General Foods, and um he moved
his way over to PEZ in the nineties or the eighties, No,
the eighties, because that quote was from He was president
of PEZ little and he um, much to his chagrin,
(34:43):
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 title,
like Michigan farmer makes four million dollars in PEZ dispensers
in three years or something. It's a terrible title. Should
(35:04):
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 Gleieu g l e W found out that, Hey,
over in Canada, they're selling different dispensers that you can't
get here in the United States. So let me go
(35:28):
over there, let me buy some of these and resell
them to collectors. And it worked, and all of a sudden,
the lightbulb went off and he said, I think I
can actually make money getting Pez dispensers from other countries.
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
(35:51):
started making trips to Central Europe um oftentimes right along
the border of like war torn Croatia, and found these
factories or pezz is being made and found very bribable
factory workers who would take like molds and make um
new Pezz dispensers to his liking, and then he would
sell them as like basically like Pez freaks or or
(36:13):
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.
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
(36:34):
over extended himself. He took out a massive loan and
uh basically hired a factory to make a bunch of
misfit Pezz dispensers and downfall and Mark mcwinney took him
on and started releasing basically Pez his own version of
these counterfeit weirdo dispensers at a lower price and drove
(36:57):
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
so good. What's it called? I don't remember, Just look
up jelly Belly documentary and weird owls in it. Oh wow, Yeah,
well then I definitely won't see it. No, you really should, man,
(37:17):
it's a great documentary. It's just it's very sad. And
that one and the show Biz Pizza one documentary right
to Yeah, I used to love show biz. You will
love this documentary. 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 excerpt? This
is from the story about the Pez Outlaw uh ninety
(37:41):
convention changed Steve's life forever. As he tells it, a
mysterious woman opened her jacket and showed him a silver Globeez,
holy grail for Pez collectors. She whispered to him in
broken English, there are many more where I come from.
That's still great? Do you believe that? And then she
(38:02):
I get the feeld. She was like two guys and
overcoats and sunglasses came in like hurried her away. Yeah,
he said, but but what's your name? Or two centmbites
came out of the woodwork and like pulled her down
to hell Ivanka. Uh yeah, it's a pretty good article.
Look up stupid title Michigan Farmer Pez Playboy and it'll
bring it up. I think long Form had it at
(38:24):
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 dispensers being nostalgic.
I was like, definitely not for me. Then I went
to PEZ dot com and clicked on collectors Corner and
(38:45):
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 out the
Collector's Corner and I think you will waste a lot
of time there, agreed. Uh, And I think that's it
(39:08):
because Chuck described 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 part how stuff works dot
com and uh, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
(39:28):
call this. You guys are right screw college. Remember when
we had 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
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
(39:51):
it is, and not as a high art form that
requires a fancy, one 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 made
in college were very valuable down the road. And nothing
is quite as nice as 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
(40:13):
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.
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,
(40:36):
It's not 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,
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
(40:56):
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,
that was a great email. Agreed, we appreciate that. And
that's not about college altogether. Sometimes it's very useful. Yoh yeah,
(41:17):
it's just not the end all b l for everyone
on the planet didn't 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.
If you're looking around for the next bubble student loans, Uh, yeah,
we should do something about that. Sometimes, let's do it.
(41:38):
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 blog spot
dot com. I imagine you can go check out her
stuff there when you think yes, sir. Nice. So if
you want to get in touch with Chuck or me,
or both of us, or even Noel, you can tweak
(42:00):
to us at s y SK podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com. You can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us sort at home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio viaus at the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where ever you listen to
(42:22):
your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.