June 10, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, PEZ found great success in its native Austria but struggled when it first entered the American market. Shawn Peterson, author of PEZ: From Austrian Invention to American Icon, shares the fascinating story of how this quirky manual candy dispenser evolved into a beloved pop culture phenomenon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including yours. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There're some of our favorites. As you know, we're a
nation of immigrants, but it's not just people that travel,
it's also their ideas. One of these ideas is something
that many of us loved as kids. Sean Peterson of
(00:33):
the Pez Visitor Center is author of PEZ from Austrian
Invention to American Icon, and he's here to share how
it evolved into the brick shaped candy dispenser that we
all know and love today. Here's Sean.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Pez.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
The brand or the candy was invented by a man
named Edward has the Third.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
He was an Austrian.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
The family had been very successful and a variety of
businesses up to that point, and they had a nice
business providing baking products. And one of the things mister
Haas noticed where people were having a difficult time digesting
some of the cakes based on some of the ingredients
that were in them, and found that peppermint oil was
(01:19):
a good way to help in the digestion. And a
byproduct of that, you know, it was a way to
freshen your breath, and most of all, he really wanted
to provide an alternative to smoking. He was very much
a man ahead of his time and didn't really think
too much of smoking and the health ramifications of that.
So his goal was to kind of come up with
(01:40):
an alternative to that, and he found peppermint oil and
through this what's called a cold press method where you
just kind of pressed the ingredients together, came up with
these little Pez tablets as the product and wanted to
see if there was interest. The German word for peppermint
(02:01):
is feffermints, and it's actually quite a long word, so
he used the first, middle and last letter of the
word feffermints, which was a pe in z, and he
found it was an easily pronounceable word in just about
any language, and it was a trademarkable brand name. So
it served two purposes in one and that that's really
how Pez got its start. For the first twenty plus
(02:25):
years of its creation, there was no dispenser. You either
bought the product in a little foil role similar to
what is offered today, or there was a little metal
tin that you could carry him in your pocket. If
you're old enough to remember. You know, you could get
like bay or aspirin and a little metal tin probably
associated these days with like an altoid or something like that,
(02:46):
and that you could carry in your pocket, and that
was really the only way you could get pez for
its initial creation. It wasn't till the late nineteen forties
that his success was growing in business was incing that
he wanted to try something different with that because he
was a bit of a germophobe. You know, I've got
(03:07):
this great candy. I'm the founder and inventor of this,
but if I want to offer it to you, you've
got to put your fingers in that ten to get
a piece of candy.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And it's not really what I want.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So he found a freelance designer, a man named Oscar Usha,
and commissioned him to come up with some kind of dispensing.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Device for the candy. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
He put a little thumb grip at the top and
some spring mechanisms inside to be able to offer them
one at a time, and that's really how the shape
of the dispenser was born. Mister Haas started selling these
in nineteen twenty seven in Austria found success rather quickly
and expanded the product throughout Europe and other parts of
(03:49):
the world, and for him, the last great market to
conquer was the United States.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
They came to Lower Manhattan. They had offices in New
York City. They imported all of the products from Europe
and tried to sell them as they had throughout the
rest of the world, as an upscale adult product and
marketed as an alternative to smoking. And it really didn't
have the success that it had in Europe. Fact, it
(04:20):
really did poorly unfortunately. I'd say unfortunately, but actually it
was probably one of the best things that could have
happened to it. It was the lack of success really
that drove Pez to innovate and create the changes that
have made us successful to this day. They were selling
the dispenser without a character head. It just had a
(04:42):
little thumb grip and the only flavor you could get
was peppermint, and as I said, it didn't really have
the success that they had hoped for. So somebody in
marketing said, let's don't pull out of the market.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Let's think about what we're doing and how we could do.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It differently, and they came up with the idea of
putting a three dimensional character head on top of that dispenser,
and children generally don't like peppermint, you know, the strong
flavors like that. So the idea was, let's add fruit
flavors to the candy, put the three dimensional cartoon character
head on top, and let's shift the marketing from adults
(05:20):
to children. And it changed really the direction of the brand.
They found success very quickly, and you know, it changed
the business model here in the United States as well
as globally, and we've been primarily a children's product.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Ever since.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The Pez Girl was It was kind of the grassroots
marketing campaign of how they wanted to advertise Pez. You know,
this is something that nobody was really familiar with. So
they had these outfits for ladies to wear. They would
hire models to go out and share the brand, and
a lot of the early ones had like skirts with
(05:59):
big pockets so they could keep a lot of the
refills in them. And they would just go out to
events and hand the candy to people, get them to
try this new brand and hopefully get people enthused about
what this new product was.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
It was very kind up girl.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Esque when it started in the nineteen fifties, So a
lot of the early PEZ girls were kind of leggy,
and this is when the marketing was being directed towards adults,
and certainly that shifted into sixties and seventies as it
shifted to children. In the nineteen seventies, you can see
what looks like a superhero. They had, you know, like
knee high boots on the models. She had a cape
(06:36):
and instead of the full PEZ logo, it just had
like a giant pee on the chest. So it looked,
you know, kind of like a superhero.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
And it worked.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And you're listening to Sean Peterson of the Pez Visitor
Center and telling a story we tell again and again
here on the show. That a failure, and that's the
failure to launch the PEZ product that had worked internationally
here in the United States. What did they do well?
They learned from the market, they adapted and actually took
PEZ to a place they'd never been before. Again, a
(07:07):
failure leads to a success when we come back. More
from Sean Peterson, author of PEZ from Austrian invention to
American icon. Here on our American Stories, folks, if you
love the stories we tell about this great country, and
especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all
(07:27):
of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we returned to our American stories
(08:11):
and to Sean Peterson with a story of Pez the
Manual candy Dispenser.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
The first traditional head on a stem that you're familiar
with today was a witch for Halloween, and that was
nineteen fifty seven. And then the first licensed character was
nineteen fifty eight, and that was Popeye. And then we
followed that with a couple of additions to the seasonal line.
We added Santa for the first time. We've been doing
(08:38):
Santa ever since. It's coincidentally one of our best selling
probably our number one seller to this day. We added
an Easter line with the Easter Bunny that year, and
then about nineteen fifty nine nineteen sixty Casper and Bozo
came into the mix, and then nineteen sixty one we
did Mickey Mouse with Disney for the first time. And
(09:01):
I think we're actually the second longest licensed partner with Disney,
next to Donald Duck Orange Juice. We've been working with
Disney consecutive atly since nineteen sixty one, so we've probably
produced more Disney characters over the year than any other license.
You know, how many are there referring to the dispensers,
and this is what collectors like to talk about and argue.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, I mentioned Santa Claus.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
We've done many, many iterations of Santa Claus and is
it a variation or is it a different dispenser? And
you know, there's really no right or wrong answer. So
if we had to go with just different character heads
on top of the dispenser base somewhere in the fourteen
hundred ish number range right now. But if you start
factoring in variations and you know there's really no right
(09:48):
or wrong answer as to what constitutes a variation, start
adding zeros to that and it easily goes into thousands
upon thousands. Right now, we have fifteen different flaw that
we offer. The six core Fruit flavors, and that's cherry, grape, lemon, strawberry, orange, raspberry,
you know, the things that you're familiar with. We do
(10:10):
four sour flavors, and then we do some seasonal flavors,
candy corn for Halloween, we do cotton candy. We just
introduced a new dragon fruit flavor to go with our
Game of Thrones gift set that we introduced, and then
we do sugar cookie for Christmas and vanilla cupcake for Easter.
So that gives us fifteen current flavors that we offer,
(10:31):
but we rotate things in and out.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Every few years.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
We try to introduce something new, and to do that
we usually retire a different flavor to try to keep
it fresh and different. There's been many, many dozens of
different flavors offered throughout the year. We just retired cola
and chocolate. We made those for probably a couple of
decades and finally decided it was time to retire and
try something different. We produce here at the factory about
(10:58):
twelve million into Vigil candy tablets per day. There's certainly
some top collectors out there that have some incredible collections.
There's people it's really surprising, you know, they'll go in
and do buyouts of other collectors, and it's things they
(11:18):
already have, and they've got like many warehouses in their basement,
you know, and they may have five thousand of the
same dispenser, but that's part of the enjoyment for them.
They like just having the quantity of it. And then
there's other people that focus on not having duplicates, but
they want something different and they have thousands upon thousands,
(11:39):
you know, in their collections. So it's really up to
how you want to enjoy and collect. It's what makes
the hobby so much fun is you know, everybody's got
their own take on it, but there's certainly some really
impressive collections out there when you look at what people
have been able to put together. The factor he's been
here since nineteen seven. This is the site that they
(12:01):
chose when they first decided to manufacture. They ended up
moving the offices from New York City to uh here
in Connecticut in the early seventies and we've been manufacturing
in this facility ever since. And then the visitor center
came to be. I think the original idea was around
two thousand and six, and it actually came from me.
(12:25):
I approached the company. They were familiar with me through
some of the books that I had published about the
history of Pez and documented all the various dispensers and
things like that, and they were using the books. People
would come into marketing and they would share my book
with them, and you know, look, you can get some
ideas from this and see what we've done. And when
(12:45):
I approached, they kind of knew who I was at
that time and met with the CEO of the company
and I said, I know, you guys haven't done this before,
but I think it'd be a great idea if you
had some kind of historical museum back to the business,
and you know, maybe a retail piece attached to that
that people could come in and get a sense of
(13:06):
the Pez history and how it's changed and evolved, and
have an opportunity to sell them all things Pez right
right there at the same facility. And if you like
the idea, I'd like to be the guy to put
that together and run it for you. He said, we're
just not ready for that step yet, but let's stay
in touch. So I took every opportunity that I could
(13:27):
for the next few years to, you know, remind him
that I'm still around and had interest in doing this,
and it was about late two thousand and nine he
called and said, you know, if you're still interested, let's
talk about doing this. I'm actually from Kansas City, So
not only did I have to move a household, I
had to move an entire collection halfway across the country.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And we figured out how.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
To do that and got me here to Connecticut and
began the process of constructing the visitors center. So while
we were doing that, we got a general contractor and
started figuring out who can supply giant PEZ dispensers and
PEZ related fixtures and all the cool stuff that we
have here in the visitor center. We started that process,
(14:11):
and then I began work on the website Pez dot
com and figuring out how to get the online store
aspect together. That all took about a year and a half,
and in the meantime, the visitor centers being constructed, and
then we finally got it open December of two thousand
and eleven. To me coming into work every day, you know,
(14:32):
I see this every single day, and I still find
myself stopping and looking around and just kind of enjoying
the space.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And I'm the one that that, you know, kind of put.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
The stuff on the walls and put everything in the
display cases. But I still enjoy it, you know, ten
years later, it's still so much fun for me to
have not only a place for my collection, but being
able to share it with everybody now that comes in
to see us, the majority of business that we have,
and people that come through the do or you know,
to this day ten years later, I think that's the
(15:03):
thing that surprises me most. It's, you know, people that
had no idea they were going to be here today
and they just saw the signs along the highway and
it's the Pez Factory and we know what that is,
but let's go. We've never been and they come in,
and the positive comments and feedback that we hear from people,
it's just like, you know, it's amazing. We had no
idea there was this much to Pez, And to me,
(15:25):
that's exciting and really one of the goals behind this
for me was just to share it with people. It's
been a big part of my life. I've been doing
this for over thirty years and I's still really enthusiastic
about it.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It's exciting. There's still things that.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
You know, are yet to be discovered and you know,
being able to share that with people and hopefully create
that spark of interest that maybe wants to get them
involved to where maybe they're going to start their own
collection themselves, or you know, maybe they think about Pez
a little bit differently the next time they see it
in the store and they've been to the factory and
they watched where it was being packaged and saw how
(16:00):
we make the candy. It kind of gives you a
different appreciation for the brand and what we do, so
that that's really the most exciting thing for me. And
it was just kind of a happy mistake trying to
adapt to the market. And you know, had they not
done that, nobody would have probably heard about Pez. It
would just been a footnote in history of a mint
or an alternative to smoking, like many products that have
(16:21):
come and gone. It certainly wasn't intentional or the original
idea of it, but you know, it was being able
to adapt and just find the right market. It changed
and created a sense of Pez being part of pop
culture ever since. You know, it's a relatable brand that
everybody knows.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And a special thanks to Madison for bringing us this
terrific story and a special thanks to Sean Peterson of
the PEZ Visitor Center, and by all means pick up
his book PEZ from Austrian Invention to American Icon in
Amazon or the usual Suspects. And if you're in the
Connecticut area and that's Orange, visit the PEZ Visitor Center.
(17:00):
Better still, if you can't get there, go to Pez
dot com and take a virtual tour. And by the way,
since the partnership with Disney and Mickey, there have been
many other partnerships with brands and with characters. And you
can find the Muppets, Sesame Street characters, the Marvel characters,
Star Wars characters, the Wizard of Oz, Scooby Doo, Looney Tunes, Mario,
(17:22):
the Ninja, Turtles, the Simpsons, Pokemon and Angry Birds. The
story of Pez here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including yours. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There're some of our favorites. As you know, we're a
nation of immigrants, but it's not just people that travel,
it's also their ideas. One of these ideas is something
that many of us loved as kids. Sean Peterson of
(00:33):
the Pez Visitor Center is author of PEZ from Austrian
Invention to American Icon, and he's here to share how
it evolved into the brick shaped candy dispenser that we
all know and love today. Here's Sean.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Pez.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
The brand or the candy was invented by a man
named Edward has the Third.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
He was an Austrian.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
The family had been very successful and a variety of
businesses up to that point, and they had a nice
business providing baking products. And one of the things mister
Haas noticed where people were having a difficult time digesting
some of the cakes based on some of the ingredients
that were in them, and found that peppermint oil was
(01:19):
a good way to help in the digestion. And a
byproduct of that, you know, it was a way to
freshen your breath, and most of all, he really wanted
to provide an alternative to smoking. He was very much
a man ahead of his time and didn't really think
too much of smoking and the health ramifications of that.
So his goal was to kind of come up with
(01:40):
an alternative to that, and he found peppermint oil and
through this what's called a cold press method where you
just kind of pressed the ingredients together, came up with
these little Pez tablets as the product and wanted to
see if there was interest. The German word for peppermint
(02:01):
is feffermints, and it's actually quite a long word, so
he used the first, middle and last letter of the
word feffermints, which was a pe in z, and he
found it was an easily pronounceable word in just about
any language, and it was a trademarkable brand name. So
it served two purposes in one and that that's really
how Pez got its start. For the first twenty plus
(02:25):
years of its creation, there was no dispenser. You either
bought the product in a little foil role similar to
what is offered today, or there was a little metal
tin that you could carry him in your pocket. If
you're old enough to remember. You know, you could get
like bay or aspirin and a little metal tin probably
associated these days with like an altoid or something like that,
(02:46):
and that you could carry in your pocket, and that
was really the only way you could get pez for
its initial creation. It wasn't till the late nineteen forties
that his success was growing in business was incing that
he wanted to try something different with that because he
was a bit of a germophobe. You know, I've got
(03:07):
this great candy. I'm the founder and inventor of this,
but if I want to offer it to you, you've
got to put your fingers in that ten to get
a piece of candy.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
And it's not really what I want.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So he found a freelance designer, a man named Oscar Usha,
and commissioned him to come up with some kind of dispensing.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Device for the candy. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
He put a little thumb grip at the top and
some spring mechanisms inside to be able to offer them
one at a time, and that's really how the shape
of the dispenser was born. Mister Haas started selling these
in nineteen twenty seven in Austria found success rather quickly
and expanded the product throughout Europe and other parts of
(03:49):
the world, and for him, the last great market to
conquer was the United States.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
They came to Lower Manhattan. They had offices in New
York City. They imported all of the products from Europe
and tried to sell them as they had throughout the
rest of the world, as an upscale adult product and
marketed as an alternative to smoking. And it really didn't
have the success that it had in Europe. Fact, it
(04:20):
really did poorly unfortunately. I'd say unfortunately, but actually it
was probably one of the best things that could have
happened to it. It was the lack of success really
that drove Pez to innovate and create the changes that
have made us successful to this day. They were selling
the dispenser without a character head. It just had a
(04:42):
little thumb grip and the only flavor you could get
was peppermint, and as I said, it didn't really have
the success that they had hoped for. So somebody in
marketing said, let's don't pull out of the market.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Let's think about what we're doing and how we could do.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It differently, and they came up with the idea of
putting a three dimensional character head on top of that dispenser,
and children generally don't like peppermint, you know, the strong
flavors like that. So the idea was, let's add fruit
flavors to the candy, put the three dimensional cartoon character
head on top, and let's shift the marketing from adults
(05:20):
to children. And it changed really the direction of the brand.
They found success very quickly, and you know, it changed
the business model here in the United States as well
as globally, and we've been primarily a children's product.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Ever since.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The Pez Girl was It was kind of the grassroots
marketing campaign of how they wanted to advertise Pez. You know,
this is something that nobody was really familiar with. So
they had these outfits for ladies to wear. They would
hire models to go out and share the brand, and
a lot of the early ones had like skirts with
(05:59):
big pockets so they could keep a lot of the
refills in them. And they would just go out to
events and hand the candy to people, get them to
try this new brand and hopefully get people enthused about
what this new product was.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
It was very kind up girl.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Esque when it started in the nineteen fifties, So a
lot of the early PEZ girls were kind of leggy,
and this is when the marketing was being directed towards adults,
and certainly that shifted into sixties and seventies as it
shifted to children. In the nineteen seventies, you can see
what looks like a superhero. They had, you know, like
knee high boots on the models. She had a cape
(06:36):
and instead of the full PEZ logo, it just had
like a giant pee on the chest. So it looked,
you know, kind of like a superhero.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
And it worked.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And you're listening to Sean Peterson of the Pez Visitor
Center and telling a story we tell again and again
here on the show. That a failure, and that's the
failure to launch the PEZ product that had worked internationally
here in the United States. What did they do well?
They learned from the market, they adapted and actually took
PEZ to a place they'd never been before. Again, a
(07:07):
failure leads to a success when we come back. More
from Sean Peterson, author of PEZ from Austrian invention to
American icon. Here on our American Stories, folks, if you
love the stories we tell about this great country, and
especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all
(07:27):
of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we returned to our American stories
(08:11):
and to Sean Peterson with a story of Pez the
Manual candy Dispenser.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
The first traditional head on a stem that you're familiar
with today was a witch for Halloween, and that was
nineteen fifty seven. And then the first licensed character was
nineteen fifty eight, and that was Popeye. And then we
followed that with a couple of additions to the seasonal line.
We added Santa for the first time. We've been doing
(08:38):
Santa ever since. It's coincidentally one of our best selling
probably our number one seller to this day. We added
an Easter line with the Easter Bunny that year, and
then about nineteen fifty nine nineteen sixty Casper and Bozo
came into the mix, and then nineteen sixty one we
did Mickey Mouse with Disney for the first time. And
(09:01):
I think we're actually the second longest licensed partner with Disney,
next to Donald Duck Orange Juice. We've been working with
Disney consecutive atly since nineteen sixty one, so we've probably
produced more Disney characters over the year than any other license.
You know, how many are there referring to the dispensers,
and this is what collectors like to talk about and argue.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, I mentioned Santa Claus.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
We've done many, many iterations of Santa Claus and is
it a variation or is it a different dispenser? And
you know, there's really no right or wrong answer. So
if we had to go with just different character heads
on top of the dispenser base somewhere in the fourteen
hundred ish number range right now. But if you start
factoring in variations and you know there's really no right
(09:48):
or wrong answer as to what constitutes a variation, start
adding zeros to that and it easily goes into thousands
upon thousands. Right now, we have fifteen different flaw that
we offer. The six core Fruit flavors, and that's cherry, grape, lemon, strawberry, orange, raspberry,
you know, the things that you're familiar with. We do
(10:10):
four sour flavors, and then we do some seasonal flavors,
candy corn for Halloween, we do cotton candy. We just
introduced a new dragon fruit flavor to go with our
Game of Thrones gift set that we introduced, and then
we do sugar cookie for Christmas and vanilla cupcake for Easter.
So that gives us fifteen current flavors that we offer,
(10:31):
but we rotate things in and out.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Every few years.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
We try to introduce something new, and to do that
we usually retire a different flavor to try to keep
it fresh and different. There's been many, many dozens of
different flavors offered throughout the year. We just retired cola
and chocolate. We made those for probably a couple of
decades and finally decided it was time to retire and
try something different. We produce here at the factory about
(10:58):
twelve million into Vigil candy tablets per day. There's certainly
some top collectors out there that have some incredible collections.
There's people it's really surprising, you know, they'll go in
and do buyouts of other collectors, and it's things they
(11:18):
already have, and they've got like many warehouses in their basement,
you know, and they may have five thousand of the
same dispenser, but that's part of the enjoyment for them.
They like just having the quantity of it. And then
there's other people that focus on not having duplicates, but
they want something different and they have thousands upon thousands,
(11:39):
you know, in their collections. So it's really up to
how you want to enjoy and collect. It's what makes
the hobby so much fun is you know, everybody's got
their own take on it, but there's certainly some really
impressive collections out there when you look at what people
have been able to put together. The factor he's been
here since nineteen seven. This is the site that they
(12:01):
chose when they first decided to manufacture. They ended up
moving the offices from New York City to uh here
in Connecticut in the early seventies and we've been manufacturing
in this facility ever since. And then the visitor center
came to be. I think the original idea was around
two thousand and six, and it actually came from me.
(12:25):
I approached the company. They were familiar with me through
some of the books that I had published about the
history of Pez and documented all the various dispensers and
things like that, and they were using the books. People
would come into marketing and they would share my book
with them, and you know, look, you can get some
ideas from this and see what we've done. And when
(12:45):
I approached, they kind of knew who I was at
that time and met with the CEO of the company
and I said, I know, you guys haven't done this before,
but I think it'd be a great idea if you
had some kind of historical museum back to the business,
and you know, maybe a retail piece attached to that
that people could come in and get a sense of
(13:06):
the Pez history and how it's changed and evolved, and
have an opportunity to sell them all things Pez right
right there at the same facility. And if you like
the idea, I'd like to be the guy to put
that together and run it for you. He said, we're
just not ready for that step yet, but let's stay
in touch. So I took every opportunity that I could
(13:27):
for the next few years to, you know, remind him
that I'm still around and had interest in doing this,
and it was about late two thousand and nine he
called and said, you know, if you're still interested, let's
talk about doing this. I'm actually from Kansas City, So
not only did I have to move a household, I
had to move an entire collection halfway across the country.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And we figured out how.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
To do that and got me here to Connecticut and
began the process of constructing the visitors center. So while
we were doing that, we got a general contractor and
started figuring out who can supply giant PEZ dispensers and
PEZ related fixtures and all the cool stuff that we
have here in the visitor center. We started that process,
(14:11):
and then I began work on the website Pez dot
com and figuring out how to get the online store
aspect together. That all took about a year and a half,
and in the meantime, the visitor centers being constructed, and
then we finally got it open December of two thousand
and eleven. To me coming into work every day, you know,
(14:32):
I see this every single day, and I still find
myself stopping and looking around and just kind of enjoying
the space.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And I'm the one that that, you know, kind of put.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
The stuff on the walls and put everything in the
display cases. But I still enjoy it, you know, ten
years later, it's still so much fun for me to
have not only a place for my collection, but being
able to share it with everybody now that comes in
to see us, the majority of business that we have,
and people that come through the do or you know,
to this day ten years later, I think that's the
(15:03):
thing that surprises me most. It's, you know, people that
had no idea they were going to be here today
and they just saw the signs along the highway and
it's the Pez Factory and we know what that is,
but let's go. We've never been and they come in,
and the positive comments and feedback that we hear from people,
it's just like, you know, it's amazing. We had no
idea there was this much to Pez, And to me,
(15:25):
that's exciting and really one of the goals behind this
for me was just to share it with people. It's
been a big part of my life. I've been doing
this for over thirty years and I's still really enthusiastic
about it.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It's exciting. There's still things that.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
You know, are yet to be discovered and you know,
being able to share that with people and hopefully create
that spark of interest that maybe wants to get them
involved to where maybe they're going to start their own
collection themselves, or you know, maybe they think about Pez
a little bit differently the next time they see it
in the store and they've been to the factory and
they watched where it was being packaged and saw how
(16:00):
we make the candy. It kind of gives you a
different appreciation for the brand and what we do, so
that that's really the most exciting thing for me. And
it was just kind of a happy mistake trying to
adapt to the market. And you know, had they not
done that, nobody would have probably heard about Pez. It
would just been a footnote in history of a mint
or an alternative to smoking, like many products that have
(16:21):
come and gone. It certainly wasn't intentional or the original
idea of it, but you know, it was being able
to adapt and just find the right market. It changed
and created a sense of Pez being part of pop
culture ever since. You know, it's a relatable brand that
everybody knows.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And a special thanks to Madison for bringing us this
terrific story and a special thanks to Sean Peterson of
the PEZ Visitor Center, and by all means pick up
his book PEZ from Austrian Invention to American Icon in
Amazon or the usual Suspects. And if you're in the
Connecticut area and that's Orange, visit the PEZ Visitor Center.
(17:00):
Better still, if you can't get there, go to Pez
dot com and take a virtual tour. And by the way,
since the partnership with Disney and Mickey, there have been
many other partnerships with brands and with characters. And you
can find the Muppets, Sesame Street characters, the Marvel characters,
Star Wars characters, the Wizard of Oz, Scooby Doo, Looney Tunes, Mario,
(17:22):
the Ninja, Turtles, the Simpsons, Pokemon and Angry Birds. The
story of Pez here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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