The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Diminutive Pez candies a big deal in world of confection
Brand started in Austria, moved to Orange in 1973
Cheshire resident Steve Kalb recently was looking for a day trip to do with his 8-year-old son Marty.
They quickly settled on a trip to the Pez Visitor Center on Prindle Hill Road in Orange.
“How can you lose?” the elder Kalb said. “He likes candy and it has superhero dispensers.”
The 4,000-square-foot visitors center, with selfguided tours, includes what the candymaker says is the most comprehensive collection of Pez memorabilia on public display in the world. The facility also includes a Pez motorcycle built by Orange County Choppers and the world’s largest dispenser of the candy.
But for Kalb’s son Marty, part of the fun was being able to buy some of his favorite Pez dispensers, such as those depicting D.C. Comics’ superheroes.
“I also got an Iron Man dispenser,” the younger Kalb noted.
The ability to bridge generations, thereby providing quality bonding time for parents and their children, is one of the reasons Pez remains an iconic brand, 90 years after the product debuted in Austria in 1927. It was invented by Eduard Haas III as a upscale mint designed as an alternative to smoking. The dispensers that have captivated generations and inspired collectors came later.
David Cadden, a professor emeritus at Quinnipiac University’s School of Business, attributes the staying power of the Pez brand to several factors.
“Their popularity operates on two or three lev-
els,” Cadden said. “They have so many types of dispensers that they are able to stay current with the tastes of younger people over the years. And for baby boomers, Pez helps them reconnect to their youth.”
Industry experts seem to agree. Pez dispensers are regularly nominated for innovative product awards in the National Confectioners Association’s annual competition. In the 2017 competition, for instance, the Pez “Smurfs Gift Tin” and the “Christmas Ornament with Mini Dispensers” both were nominated, and in 2018, the “Jurassic World Click & Play Gift Tin” was nominated, according to candyusa.com.
Much more than candy
The third level on which Pez connects with consumers is with those individuals who are passionate collectors, Cadden said.
“There is a deep psychological significance in what people collect ,” Cadden said. “What people collect is based on filling some deep-seated need. In some cases, it almost become an obsession.”
And yes, there is a “He who dies with the most Pez dispensers wins” Tshirt available for sale on Amazon. According to CNN, the most expensive Pez dispenser ever sold for $13,000 and it was one of only two political donkeys made in 1961. The bestselling Pez dispenser of all time, however, is Santa Claus, according to the company.
The first national convention for collectors of Pez dispensers was held in Mentor, Ohio, in June 1991. Pez and its dispensers received a boost in popularity in early 1992 when the hit television sit-com “Seinfeld” based one of it episodes on the brand. A convention that has been regularly held in Stamford over the years has drawn many Pez collectors and even more colorful dispensers.
One New Jersey resident who attended the 2011 convention in Stamford told Hearst Connecticut Media that it is a fun hobby and he had about 2,000 Pez-related items in his collection — which started when he was a child and would “get Pez in between Sunday School and church.”
Now, the Pez collector said, he attends “these conventions to make a few bucks to buy more items for my collection.”
Over the remainder of this year, there will be four Pez Collectors Conventions, including one called Pezylvania on Oct. 13 in Kutztown, Pa. PezMania in Cleveland during the final weekend in July attracted more than 1,000 devotees of the candy brandy.
The interest that Pez has among collectors and the brand’s ability to keep current came to an interesting intersection in May.
That’s when Pez auctioned off an exclusive set of dispensers of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Proceeds from the winning bid of just over $9,893 went to support the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Great Britain.
The auction, which began May 7 and concluded May 13, saw 25 bidders and 46 bids. The winning bid came from someone in New Jersey, according to Pez officials.
Other recent evidence of the iconic nature of the Pez dispensers came last September from the Rochester, N.Y.-based National Toy Hall of Fame. Officials there announced that the Pez dispenser had been selected as one of 12 finalists for inclusion in the Hall of Fame.
The Pez dispenser was ultimately not chosen to be in inducted in the Toy Hall of Fame, losing out to paper airplanes, the murdermystery board game “Clue” and another iconic madein-Connecticut toy, the Wiffle Ball. But in order to be selected as a finalist for enshrinement, nominated toys must beat out thousands of other nominees each year.
The criteria for being selected for the Hall of Fame include how widely recognized and respected the toy is and the longevity of it in the marketplace.
Flavorful
The Pez name is derived from the German word Pfefferminz, which means peppermint in English. It was introduced America in 1952 in mint and lemon flavors.
Initially, the product didn’t sell well because there was no demand for smoking alternatives, according to the book “Pez: From Austrian Invention to American Icon.”
The brand was redefined as a candy and fruit flavoring was added. And the Pez dispensers that have made the product so iconic debuted in 1949 at a trade show in Vienna, according to company officials..
The Pez dispensers, with the hinged top that lifts up to reveal the candies, were designed to mimic cigarette lighters, a nod to the product’s past as an alternative to smoking. Pez originally came in metal tins and it wasn’t until 1948 that the first Pez dispenser, a small mechanical box that dispensed the tablets one at a time, was invented by Oscar Uxa.
The company opened it U.S. headquarters in New York City in 1952.
Twenty-one years later, construction was started on a new manufacturing facility and warehouse in Orange. The company added a new warehouse to the complex in 2005, a facility that uses wire guided equipment to move pallets from stacks of storage space, and radio frequency scanning to keep track of box after box of the classic candy.
The Pez Visitors Center opened in Orange in 2011.
During the summer, it’s not unusual for 500 people or more to visit the center in a single day. The center averages between 70,000 to 75,000 visitors per year.
Between the factory in Orange (which serves the U.S. and Canada) and another facility in Austria, Pez manufactures about 70 million dispensers and 5 billion candies per year. The company has about 124 employees in the United States.
The candies are made by applying 3,000 pounds of pressure to turn the mix made of food materials to make the candy into tiny rectangular tablets.
Although the actual plastic dispensers are decidedly low-tech, the company has made use of state-of-the art augmented reality gaming to promote its brand. Augmented reality is a technology that superimposes a computergenerated image on a user’s view of the real world and provides a composite view.
The company worked with Zappar, an augmented reality platform, to create an app in which users can play games.
The goal of the game is to restore the virtual Pez World to its former glory using codes that are only available on the inside of the candy’s refill packs. Because the codes are randomly scattered among refill packs, consumers are encouraged to keep buying the packs.