PEZ® is a registered trademark of
Pez Candy, Inc, and they guard it very jealously.
Austrian food company executive, Edward Haas, invented PEZ in 1927, and it was originally sold in small tins. The
original dispensers were introduced in 1948 in the shape of cigarette lighters as they were dispensing a breath mint for adult smokers. I wonder how much one of those would cost now?
When Edward Haas took them to America in 1952 the breath mints didn't sell too well, so he decided to appeal to children and and designed dispensers - topped with the heads of cartoon characters, animals, circus figures etc - that dispensed fruit flavoured PEZ.
A way to roughly date a dispenser is to check the patent number moulded on its side.
This website explains how.
Did you know that an urban legend, still believed by many, says that e-bay was started as a result of Pierre Omidyar designing a small website so that his girlfriend could trade items from her PEZ collection? Another story alleged that is was for him to add to his own PEZ collection.
This article explains.How many do you have in your collection, Pace?
