Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from the house stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's guest
Speaker 1: producer Noel and this is stuff you should have to do.
Speaker 1: Do do do the Pez dition? Nice? I like that.
Speaker 1: Another NOL cast as well. Yeah, pretty exciting. It's part
Speaker 1: of the Knoll spin Wee, then ole stint We're gonna follow. Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you like pets? But I like pets? Do you
Speaker 1: like the candy? I? Do you like taste? I like
Speaker 1: the taste of Pez. Yes. Describe to me what happens
Speaker 1: when you can put a candy PEZ candy in your mound. Well,
Speaker 1: I put a PEZ candy, I pull the head back,
Speaker 1: the kicker kicks it out pop. Yes, nice, and I
Speaker 1: take it from the Pez dispenser with my tooth. Oh
Speaker 1: you don't really, you'd like go mouth the mouth with it? Sure? Well,
Speaker 1: to tooth to kicker. Okay? Uh? And then I, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you do use your hand? Well? I don't
Speaker 1: eat petz, but back when I was eight, I would
Speaker 1: be delighted when I would pull the head back the
Speaker 1: little candy with chewed out now, pick it out with
Speaker 1: my hand, put in my mouth. Yeah, I use my teeth. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I would feel like I was like going into to
Speaker 1: make out with a daffy duck or something if I
Speaker 1: did that. Oh that's half the fun. Oh boy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't care for the candy though. I wasn't done
Speaker 1: describing pez go ahead, sorry, And then I take it
Speaker 1: onto my tongue, right, and I start to savor the
Speaker 1: flavor of it. Typically I prefer maybe um, well, definitely
Speaker 1: one of the fruit flavors. I've never had a mint
Speaker 1: pez or chocolate pets, which is new. I would try
Speaker 1: the chocolate one, but say, like orange, We'll just go
Speaker 1: with orange. I'm sitting there. I let it sit on
Speaker 1: my tongue for all of like six nanoseconds, and then
Speaker 1: I started to bite into it, and it's very much
Speaker 1: like um. This explains why I like pests, especially orange pests.
Speaker 1: Once eight almost an entire bottle of orange flavored baby
Speaker 1: aspirin for the taste. That's why I like pests. How
Speaker 1: old were you then? Would be a kid? It's like
Speaker 1: twenty something? Uh did it? Yes? I was a kid?
Speaker 1: Well did you? What did it hurt? You know? Nothing
Speaker 1: happened to me. We talked about that before. It feel
Speaker 1: like because they aren't even it isn't even medicine. I
Speaker 1: wonder it's But how could you use a placebo and
Speaker 1: a little kid? I mean, I guess it worked, but
Speaker 1: certainly there's an age where they're just like I feel
Speaker 1: like half of parenting is probably placebo. Probably, well you
Speaker 1: would know now, well not yet, Well let me know
Speaker 1: she doesn't believe my lies yet. That will come later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm surely kids are pretty dumb, so you
Speaker 1: can get them to believe anything. Sure, but there seems
Speaker 1: like there would be an age where they wouldn't They
Speaker 1: wouldn't make that connection, and a placebo wouldn't work. I
Speaker 1: don't think a placebo would work, like say, from birth.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember what age you can start giving
Speaker 1: kids baby aspirin. Baby don't even children as Anyway. I
Speaker 1: like PEZ. I like how it tastes. I like the
Speaker 1: experience of eating a pet alright, I don't care for pets.
Speaker 1: I also like the shape, the brick, the brick, the
Speaker 1: it helps with the taste. I saw we did the
Speaker 1: l a podcast pest this last weekend, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember her name, but a very nice young lady brought
Speaker 1: us some different candies and things. The Lego candies. Well,
Speaker 1: you jumped on that bag. It's like you want these
Speaker 1: lego brick candies and you're like, yea, give me a
Speaker 1: second time, man, I love those things. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: sort of this. I put those on the same category,
Speaker 1: which is just like compressed sugar right in like a
Speaker 1: brick form. As a matter of fact, it turns out
Speaker 1: the Pez company to the state uses about fifty thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of sugar every four days making its Pez candies.
Speaker 1: That's right. And here's a factoid for you, all right.
Speaker 1: It takes three thousand pounds of pressure to compress the
Speaker 1: Pez ingredients, which is not just sugar, into the delightful, tiny,
Speaker 1: disgusting brick that you love. I don't think it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: I don't like candies. I have another one for you.
Speaker 1: They make twelve million tablets a day at their Orange,
Speaker 1: Connecticut facility, the headquarters of PETS, and three billion Pez
Speaker 1: bricks are consumed in the US alone each year by
Speaker 1: people like me who like Pez. Yes, roughly twelve at
Speaker 1: a time, because that's how much the standard dispenser holds
Speaker 1: and if this kind of thing floats your boat right now,
Speaker 1: go check out how Stuff Works brain Stuff series on
Speaker 1: YouTube and typically look up the one on pop rocks
Speaker 1: that I did a year or two ago. It was
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff. Candy manufacturing is fascinating. I don't care
Speaker 1: what you say. No, I like manufacturing processes. I just
Speaker 1: don't like to eat candy. I got you. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? You just go to the plant watch
Speaker 1: it made and then turn down the free samples, like, no,
Speaker 1: thank you. I find that disgust. Yeah. They're like, now,
Speaker 1: would you like to try some? Yeah? I don't do
Speaker 1: that on beer tours, I'll sample that. You mean. I
Speaker 1: went to the Maker's mark distillery. Oh did you dip
Speaker 1: your own bottle? Yes? No, yes, we definitely have one,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember if we. I guess we did
Speaker 1: dip it. Yeah, I think that's a thing. But it
Speaker 1: was like a mini, so maybe not. Maybe we bought
Speaker 1: a mini that was like just a mini to commemorate it,
Speaker 1: and they made you buy like a fifth or something
Speaker 1: and dip your own bottle and we're like, ma, got
Speaker 1: it's fine, because we we'd be like we would want
Speaker 1: to open it. Yeah, we didn't dip our own body forgot.
Speaker 1: That was exactly the conversation we had. Wow, you guys
Speaker 1: put a lot of thought into that one. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty cool tour, to tell you the truth. I
Speaker 1: strongly recommended. I've never done a distillery. I'd like to
Speaker 1: do that. There's there's a new one here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: in Avondale Whiskey Distillery. Well, I can tell you go
Speaker 1: on any whiskey tour and you will find what Mila
Speaker 1: Kunis is talking about with the angels share stuff. It's
Speaker 1: a real thing. The evaporating whiskey fills the um whatever
Speaker 1: the place where they're aging em barrels, and it's actually
Speaker 1: really dangerous, like the place could blow up at any
Speaker 1: time because like very much so, we're a sugar factor, right, um.
Speaker 1: But the smell is one of the most amazing smells
Speaker 1: I've ever experienced in my entire life, like smell good
Speaker 1: or just weird great, Like the the half of a
Speaker 1: percent of whiskey that is just glorious. It's in the air.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Oh man, that I'm thirsty, all right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk pez um in two thousand eleven. This is
Speaker 1: something I didn't know. There was a wedding while I
Speaker 1: didn't know this part um in the United Kingdom between
Speaker 1: a guy named William and a little lady named Kate
Speaker 1: Waity Katie? Do people call her that? Some? Some people did,
Speaker 1: what like that she's overweight? No? No, that she waited around?
Speaker 1: Oh okay? It was like, man, how mean can people get? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That would So they made um specialty pez dispensers out
Speaker 1: of Prince William and Kate for that and they were expensive,
Speaker 1: three d sixty dollars at a charity auction. Clearly that's
Speaker 1: the most expensive Pezz dispenser ever sold. Not so, my friend,
Speaker 1: what supposedly that is the thirty two thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six for an astronaut limited edition Astronaut
Speaker 1: themed It was from the two World's Fair and there
Speaker 1: were two of them too in existence. Yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: it's expensive. And what's neat is that that's that was
Speaker 1: That auction took place on eBay, which is very appropriate
Speaker 1: that Peest dispensers are sold on eBay because the guy
Speaker 1: who founded eBay, what's his name, Pierre Um, Pierre R. Right,
Speaker 1: He Um founded eBay and party he was inspired to
Speaker 1: found eBay because his girlfriend at the time I think
Speaker 1: his wife is his wife now um collected pez and
Speaker 1: he thought, hey, this would be a really great We
Speaker 1: may not have eBay today if it weren't for petz
Speaker 1: peest dispensers electing peest dispensers, which is a relatively new thing.
Speaker 1: It really took off in the eighties late eighties. Actually
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the late eighties that people really started
Speaker 1: collecting peest dispensers. And now I felt, you know, the
Speaker 1: tweete Bird episode. I had to go back and look
Speaker 1: it up. But once I did, I started to remember, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Elaine and Jerry and George Ritta George's girlfriend's
Speaker 1: piano recital, and Jerry put the tweetie Bird pest dispenser
Speaker 1: on this laper on Elane's lap, and Elaine started laughing,
Speaker 1: ruined the performance, and then she was later outed when
Speaker 1: she laughed again in front of that lady, right, And
Speaker 1: then the tweety bird um Pez dispenser also factored into
Speaker 1: the plot because Jerry and his friends had an intervention
Speaker 1: for another friend who had a drug problem and he
Speaker 1: was resisting resisting, and then for some reason Jerry brought
Speaker 1: out the Pets dispenser. In the wave of nostalgia that
Speaker 1: washed over this guy caused him to admit that he
Speaker 1: had a drug problem, but then he became hooked on pest.
Speaker 1: Well in nostalgia figures in a lot, Uh, it really does.
Speaker 1: Kids from the well, kids of all ages grew up
Speaker 1: with pez kids of all ages? What am I circus announcer?
Speaker 1: Step on up? What do they call? I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: circus ring master, circus barker. Well, there's two different Those
Speaker 1: are two different things. I think unless you're in like
Speaker 1: a low budget carnival, then it's maybe the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I would be. But the barkers, the one who's like,
Speaker 1: step on up, well, guess your weight, the people he's
Speaker 1: trying to get people to come in. The ring masters,
Speaker 1: the one who's like running the show once the show starts.
Speaker 1: I feel like i'd be the barker. Would you need
Speaker 1: to be the ringmaster? You'd have to wear a straw
Speaker 1: boater hat and like striped suits. Yeah, I'd be the barker,
Speaker 1: and you'd be the guy that like swings from things
Speaker 1: with his teeth, strong teeth as opposed to my little
Speaker 1: weak teeth when I fell off and there's some of
Speaker 1: my teeth jammed into the trapeze bar. Still, well, you
Speaker 1: like a Loonington's cartoon, now, yeah, but imagine it in
Speaker 1: reality even worse it is. Uh, I feel like we
Speaker 1: should take a break and regain our composure. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this. All right, so we're back,
Speaker 1: and I think we should uh start in the traditional
Speaker 1: way that when we handle our culture casts and talk
Speaker 1: about history, because well though I thought it was a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting history. Actually, yeah, I love this article. Edward
Speaker 1: Hass the third he was an Austrian. Um he was
Speaker 1: He made sweets. He was a confection ere. Well, his
Speaker 1: family was in the grocery business, and he was successful
Speaker 1: in that. But yeah, his heart was in candy like yours.
Speaker 1: His heart was in candy. It was also in hygiene.
Speaker 1: I get the impression that he was very strong germophobe.
Speaker 1: Well it's probably good when you're running a candy factory. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know. He was also anti smoking, and he decided
Speaker 1: he went to a chemist, uh pharmacist, and said, hey,
Speaker 1: give me some really strong pepperman essence. And he used
Speaker 1: that with some sugar and made mints, basically a proto
Speaker 1: altoid um, and put him in little tins and marketed
Speaker 1: him as quitting smoking or smoking cessation a. Basically, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to quit, you needed something to put in
Speaker 1: your mouth, just chew one of these Pez mints. That's right.
Speaker 1: And he got the name Pez from the abbreviation the
Speaker 1: German word for peppermint, which is uh. It starts with
Speaker 1: three consonants, which is always fun. Come on, you took German,
Speaker 1: you know Germany? Well, I mean I would just say, uh,
Speaker 1: fefa mints. I would say, I like that better. That
Speaker 1: sounds like the remix version. But it does start with
Speaker 1: two p's and an F. But shorten that and take
Speaker 1: out letters from the beginning, middle, and end and you
Speaker 1: get peasy. So uh, like you said, he said, you
Speaker 1: can either use this to try and quit smoking as
Speaker 1: a sort of an early version of nicarett gum, even
Speaker 1: though I had no nicotine in it that we know of,
Speaker 1: Or you can use it if you do smoke, to
Speaker 1: make your breath fresh, because no one wants to smell
Speaker 1: you stinky smokers. Uh. And we'll see, well, will wrap
Speaker 1: them up in like a little candy bar at first,
Speaker 1: and that's how we sold him for like a year.
Speaker 1: Well yes, um, they were also sold in tins, right,
Speaker 1: and he invent in PEZ and that's when they first
Speaker 1: set the market. Um. But again I get the impression
Speaker 1: that he was a germophobe and he didn't want everybody
Speaker 1: to put their grubby hands into the same Pez tint
Speaker 1: and touch the other ones that other people were putting
Speaker 1: in their mouths. And he probably imagined all the poop
Speaker 1: and bacteria and who knows what on those people's hands,
Speaker 1: sausage touching his beloved Pez. So we thought there has
Speaker 1: to be a better way to dispense Pez. We need
Speaker 1: some sort of I don't know, PEZ dispenser, that's right.
Speaker 1: And so there was an employee at his company, Oscar Uxa,
Speaker 1: and you know what Oxcar Uxa does. He's a dispenser genius.
Speaker 1: And he says, hey, how about this, Why don't we
Speaker 1: make a dispenser that looks like a cigarette lighter because
Speaker 1: this is his first smoking and I'll have a little
Speaker 1: contraption on here that kicker that'll spit out one at
Speaker 1: a time. And he said it's genius. Right. Edward Hoss
Speaker 1: kicked the Kleenex boxes off of his feet and stood
Speaker 1: up and hugged oscar Oosa. Yeah. And by the way,
Speaker 1: they're selling them in tens again now in Peppermint with
Speaker 1: a little throwback retro looking um. One of the Pez
Speaker 1: ladies Pez girls. Yeah, the Pez girls, which were supposedly
Speaker 1: like this very sexy thing to sell Pez. Did you
Speaker 1: see them? Yeah? They look like bell hops. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're basically drawn like pin up girls, except not
Speaker 1: nearly as racy. Um. And they have a little bell
Speaker 1: boy hats. Sure a lot of them did. Um. And
Speaker 1: they went from the forties, I think, all the way
Speaker 1: up until the early eighties they used Pez girls to
Speaker 1: market Pez. Do you know what they reminded me of
Speaker 1: was um back in the day when you would have
Speaker 1: like be at a club and a and a woman
Speaker 1: would come around, see yeah, stick it ahead. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: would have a little tray around that was hung around
Speaker 1: their neck with cigars and cigarettes and mints and uh,
Speaker 1: who knows what else Pez. I guess Pez. I guarantee
Speaker 1: you Pez was in there. You're probably right. So um.
Speaker 1: So they were a hit among adults in Europe big times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did. They did the trick. The Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: already pretty popular. But when once they packaged them into
Speaker 1: these um cigarette lighter dispensers, like they really cemented themselves
Speaker 1: as like iconic candy. People say, look, you just pop
Speaker 1: it open and then candy comes out and you put
Speaker 1: your teeth on. It's right, it's wonderful pop off. So
Speaker 1: they went they went nuts for the stuff. And then
Speaker 1: he said, you know what, let me expand the United
Speaker 1: States is where it's at. Two. Uh. He found out
Speaker 1: that kids in America, we're delighted over this because I
Speaker 1: guess kids in America were like adults in Europe at
Speaker 1: the time, um, and they'd love the way these things
Speaker 1: popped out, plus and power dobably made them feel a
Speaker 1: lot like they were smoking. You think probably I never
Speaker 1: got the tie to the lighter. It was completely lost
Speaker 1: on me. So you like flick a lighter. We got
Speaker 1: it now, But I never had made that association until
Speaker 1: I knew this. Okay, so imagine a Peest dispenser without
Speaker 1: the head. Oh yeah, that's what the original. Can imagine
Speaker 1: that because I used to take the heads off my Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, but so that's the original Peest dispensers, which
Speaker 1: are called regulars now the first one before they started
Speaker 1: adding heads very much resembled like a nice slim lighter.
Speaker 1: So if you're a kid like this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: like there's a there's the manual thing where you're flicking
Speaker 1: a lighter. Then there's the oral fixation that's satisfied by
Speaker 1: putting the mint into your mouth, and it's mimicking smoking,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why it was one
Speaker 1: of the ways it was marketed. The idea was that
Speaker 1: it would it would alleviate that desire for those those
Speaker 1: Freudian fixations that you had when you were a smoker,
Speaker 1: if you were trying to quit, if you're a little
Speaker 1: kid and you wanted to smoke, but you just couldn't
Speaker 1: get your hands and cigarettes yet a good way to
Speaker 1: do this didn't have arms right in the fifties, Yeah, probably.
Speaker 1: I saw candy cigarettes the other day in the store.
Speaker 1: By the way, I thought those were they make this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought they were completely gone. Okay, if you want
Speaker 1: to know a candy that I think is abhorrent and disgusting,
Speaker 1: candy cigarettes. Gum cigarettes are awesome. Do you remember those
Speaker 1: the kind where you puff them? Oh, those are great.
Speaker 1: The candy cigarettes, they're just like sticks of candy that
Speaker 1: are disgusting. No, I'm talking about the gum that would
Speaker 1: blow out face smoke. I love that they still make those.
Speaker 1: But the gum cigars, I think we're gross. They have
Speaker 1: some weird chemical taste to them. I never saw that
Speaker 1: they were not one and the same, which is surprising.
Speaker 1: And they still make those, and they still make big
Speaker 1: league chew yes like it's it's amazing that they can, still,
Speaker 1: like with good conscience, market tobacco products to children, and
Speaker 1: that they're allowed to. I remember um probably the greatest
Speaker 1: tasting gum of all time, big red No. No, it
Speaker 1: was a Rambo gum that was sold to commemorate Rambo three. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it had like a It was marketed as like black
Speaker 1: raspberry or something like that, but it didn't taste like
Speaker 1: that at all. It had it. I've never tasted anything like,
Speaker 1: you know, usually like you run into a taste years later,
Speaker 1: like there's only ten tastes or ten cents, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: this was I've never experienced it before after and it
Speaker 1: was the best tasting gum ever. But it was in
Speaker 1: the big League chew pouch and it was big league
Speaker 1: t shirts, so clearly It was made by the same
Speaker 1: company for the makers of Rambo, but the flavor they
Speaker 1: used was perfect sweat and gunpowder and you could get
Speaker 1: it for like one summer. What did it have a
Speaker 1: cartoon version of of stallone on it? No, it was
Speaker 1: a photo of him with like the very famous rocket
Speaker 1: launcher from Rambo three um and uh it was just
Speaker 1: a picture of it on the Big League two pouch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I loved it. I guess they had to market
Speaker 1: it that way because first blood gum didn't go over
Speaker 1: so well. Exactly tastes just like blood. Uh Man, I'm
Speaker 1: wondering all kinds of things. Well, hold on, hold on,
Speaker 1: we're getting ahead of ourselves. Oh no, we're getting super distracted.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. In the fifties, kids very surprisingly
Speaker 1: liked Pez but they were like, this is pretty strong mint.
Speaker 1: And I'm a little kid, sure like fruity flavored stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the dispenser, but gonna get your game going
Speaker 1: with the candy exactly, And and Hass and company listen
Speaker 1: big time. So they kept Mint Pez still, but they
Speaker 1: started releasing lines of of fruit flavored ones and kola.
Speaker 1: They had one called Chlorophyll Coffee flavored a yogurt one
Speaker 1: that probably was just European. What is the chlorophyll? I
Speaker 1: couldn't get a read on what that was like um,
Speaker 1: and I looked. I think it's like a UM, it's
Speaker 1: a mint. It's a definitely in flavor. Um. Did they
Speaker 1: just use the wrong word. There's another There's a gum
Speaker 1: out there that has a similar sounding names. It's just
Speaker 1: like a very bright like mint, not peppermint. It's not
Speaker 1: as sweet. It's mintier um. But yeah, chlorophyll is interesting.
Speaker 1: But they had other stuff too, like orange and I
Speaker 1: think cherry maybe something like that. Traditional flavors, but not peach.
Speaker 1: There's a fun trivia effect for you. They have had
Speaker 1: peach flavors, but it was never released in the US. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a weirdo. I don't like peach flavors or peaches.
Speaker 1: So since they realized that kids are going bonkers for
Speaker 1: this candy, UM, which bonkers, that was another good candy too.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is. It came out in
Speaker 1: the eighties. It was great. UM. They they decided to
Speaker 1: try to make pez a little more parent friendly because
Speaker 1: even back in the fifties, I think parents were like,
Speaker 1: I don't want you teaching my kid to smoke with
Speaker 1: this candy. So they said, well, let's change it from
Speaker 1: a cigarette lighter into something different, a toy, and we'll
Speaker 1: add like a beloved cartoon character on there. How about that?
Speaker 1: And it was genius because what he did was he
Speaker 1: combined candy with a toy, uh, and not only a toy,
Speaker 1: but a collectible, and it was it was genius for kids.
Speaker 1: That was all they needed. Um, they were pretty cheap
Speaker 1: and so kids could buy them. They could like go
Speaker 1: around and probably finding money on the ground in a
Speaker 1: given day to go buy a little pet dispenser, right,
Speaker 1: or build like a like a soapbox racer and sell
Speaker 1: it to the rich kid in the neighborhood, buy a
Speaker 1: bunch of pez did you fund Yeah, that's another thing too.
Speaker 1: I didn't like the the stick that you had to lick,
Speaker 1: but the sugar was just great. So the sugar stick
Speaker 1: that you dipped into the sugar, the sugar stick didn't
Speaker 1: have enough flavor for me. Yeah, it just I was
Speaker 1: thinking about fund it the other day when I was
Speaker 1: driving for some reason. It was just remarkable to me
Speaker 1: that they would just make a sugar stick that you
Speaker 1: dip in different flavors of sugar and you would then
Speaker 1: eat the sugar off the stick and then eat the
Speaker 1: sugars right. Well, they they didn't even try back then.
Speaker 1: Like it's like smacks used to be called sugar smacks,
Speaker 1: and then they changed to the honey smacks, and they're like,
Speaker 1: let's just go with smacks. That wasn't just called smacks,
Speaker 1: I believe. So it's not sugar smacks. No, it hasn't
Speaker 1: been sugar smacks for years. I don't need much cereal.
Speaker 1: Like they would get chased out of the grocery aisle
Speaker 1: whenever they tried to restock that if they still call
Speaker 1: it sugar smacks. I just don't mess with Captain Crunch.
Speaker 1: Peanut butter, that's all I gotta say. Captain Crunch has
Speaker 1: one out now. I saw on the cereal all the
Speaker 1: other day. It's sprinkled donuts Captain Crunch, and it looks awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just the peanut butter is so good. Even though
Speaker 1: it tears of the roof of your mouth, it's worth it.
Speaker 1: But that's a fatal flaw, don't you think not to me? Ali,
Speaker 1: I'll get a box of that, like every three or
Speaker 1: four years. I'll get a box of that, like when
Speaker 1: Emily's out of town dinner time, because if she would
Speaker 1: come home and see that, she'd be like, what are
Speaker 1: you doing this in our house? Are you a child? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I just have to save those moments, all right. So
Speaker 1: it's ninety. Um Has is super rich because he's selling
Speaker 1: tons and tons of these dispensers. He sells the company
Speaker 1: and uh, they move well. The manufacturing of the dispensers
Speaker 1: is actually now in China and Hungary and like UM
Speaker 1: Slovenia I think, to the Central Europe and now Asia
Speaker 1: as well. But the actual candies are and have been
Speaker 1: for a very long time made, to believe you already
Speaker 1: said at a plant in Orange, Connecticut. UM and they
Speaker 1: kept it going. Pez was always a privately owned company.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's ever been public UM. But they
Speaker 1: kept the whole thing going even after Hassa departed, and
Speaker 1: that was helped very much by this this um explosion
Speaker 1: in collecting that came from the late the mid mid eighties,
Speaker 1: I would say. And as a result, um Pez itself
Speaker 1: added feet to the dispensers so that they can be displayed.
Speaker 1: From that point not and they realized, like white people
Speaker 1: are collecting these. There's like a secondary market that's generated
Speaker 1: exactly um and so they added feet to it. So
Speaker 1: now a Pezz dispencer can stand up. But that was
Speaker 1: introduced in seven. So if you see feet on your
Speaker 1: Pezz dispencer, you know that it's at least un on.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's take another quick break here and
Speaker 1: we will come back and talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the odd collecting of Pez dispensers. So, Chuck, people
Speaker 1: started collecting pezz dispensers partly because they came of age
Speaker 1: at a time about the mid eighties when they were
Speaker 1: high on cocaine and had a lot of disposable come
Speaker 1: and we're nostalgic for their childhood. Yeah, I have a theory,
Speaker 1: and it's not like I'm sure everyone knows this, but
Speaker 1: I think pest dispensers became collectible because you can't throw
Speaker 1: throw it away like you would eat the candy and
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? As a kid, you can
Speaker 1: be like, let me throw away this Garfield toy. Now, well,
Speaker 1: not only that, you can know you put it on
Speaker 1: your chef, right, your chef, You're like standing still, chef,
Speaker 1: stop making that stew weird. So I can put this
Speaker 1: penticipencer on the bullion. These can wait. Um, but thet
Speaker 1: the whole thing is they're reloadable like that. You get
Speaker 1: the little U the little packet of twelve, pop it
Speaker 1: in there and you want more, like if it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's one of those same deals like collect all four.
Speaker 1: But this is not all four. This is constantly new
Speaker 1: licensing deals being cooked up, everything from Looney Tunes to
Speaker 1: Star Wars to Hello Kitty. Which was the other stoke
Speaker 1: of genius was partnering up with these uh I kind
Speaker 1: of brands and cultural icons to uh to say, hey,
Speaker 1: a Chewbacca head on this thing, like they're grown adults
Speaker 1: little by that. Right. The thing is is Lucasfilm. Uh
Speaker 1: definitely charges a pretty penny, or did before they sold
Speaker 1: the Disney and now it's even more. I'm sure to
Speaker 1: license anything from Star Wars. Right. So, PEZ also very
Speaker 1: frequently came up with their own stuff as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were the Pez Pals. There was a very famous
Speaker 1: misstep called make a Face Pez, which is like a
Speaker 1: tiny Mr. Potato head where you could put on different
Speaker 1: eyes and mouth and stuff. But of course these things
Speaker 1: were a major choking Hatzard and Actually, there's a lore
Speaker 1: among Pez collectors, who are called pez heads that if
Speaker 1: you look at some of the nineteen seventy nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three Indian chiefs that were released, their head dresses um
Speaker 1: are marbled. They have marbled color, and they're saying that
Speaker 1: those are ground up make a face um dispensers that
Speaker 1: they reused in the head dresses. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: peaz enthusiast conspiracy theory, but it's pretty cool. And another
Speaker 1: one that they released was a series for the bi
Speaker 1: centennial that includes the funniest character of all time, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, the colonial soldier with a head wound. Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought you can save the Paul Revere. I think
Speaker 1: there is a Paul Revere. No there is, which is
Speaker 1: I thought would be a pretty weird there's a Paul
Speaker 1: Revere Daniel Boone who looks like he has like a
Speaker 1: a well formed bee hive on his head rather than
Speaker 1: a coonskin cap. Uncle Sam, Yeah, there's a Betsy Ross uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's the wound, the head wound soldier. He's
Speaker 1: got like that white gauze on his head with a
Speaker 1: little blood dot coming through, and he looks just kind
Speaker 1: of out of it. It's a really weird peasant spencer.
Speaker 1: That was probably my favorite, although I like a lot
Speaker 1: of the the Halloween themed ones from the seventies. Some
Speaker 1: of those glow in the dark, which is pretty neat,
Speaker 1: Like Mr Skull. Did you see him? Their Doctor Skull?
Speaker 1: I think I think he's probably my favorite. Or the
Speaker 1: Pumpkin from the seventies on the green stem is probably
Speaker 1: the best pezz dis spencer of all time. Well, there
Speaker 1: have been four hundred more than four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: dispenser since nineteen including three different Santas, and the Santa
Speaker 1: is the best selling of all time, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: of course, especially the first one because he was his
Speaker 1: His dispenser wasn't just a little peas spencer. It was
Speaker 1: like the whole body. But then they're like this is
Speaker 1: way too expensive. Yeah, they're like a bunch of people
Speaker 1: just buy it with the head. Yeah, And they did
Speaker 1: the Salvador Dolly tribute. I don't know if it's a tribute.
Speaker 1: I bet it was. Um is my favorite in the
Speaker 1: psychedelic hand. It was a hand with a green eyeball
Speaker 1: and it's just very cool looking. Yeah, like I would
Speaker 1: I would want one of those. Of course, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: pay thousands of dollars for it. I'd like to just
Speaker 1: find one on the street. And it's pretty neat. Though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do all of them cost that much? But what that
Speaker 1: specific collectible? No? But I mean would say they ranged
Speaker 1: in the hundreds and it's real. But what was interesting
Speaker 1: about this? Um? I think Patrick Kiger pointed out, like
Speaker 1: it's compared to a lot of other collecting hobbies, this
Speaker 1: is Pez dispensers are relatively cheap. You can get into
Speaker 1: him pretty easily with you know, a minimal amount of money. Um.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite Pez dispensers is the Pez Gun series.
Speaker 1: First it was a ray gun, and then they made
Speaker 1: it into a handgun, and then when Star Wars came
Speaker 1: out in like, they released another space gun that looked
Speaker 1: an awful lot like Han Solo's gun, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: really sem um, but the kid would put the gun
Speaker 1: in his mouth and pull the trigger to dispense the
Speaker 1: can Wow. Yeah really yeah, unbelievable. They have had some
Speaker 1: kind of weird ones over the years, like the Airline
Speaker 1: Pilot and Stewardess, which I don't know is that a
Speaker 1: big seller? I don't know. Well this was back in
Speaker 1: the day. I think when they were they were revered
Speaker 1: figures and culture. Yeah, the pilots weren't drunks, and the
Speaker 1: flight attendants weren't flight attendants. They were stewardesses, and they
Speaker 1: were you know, fancy clothes, and but they have like
Speaker 1: hard chiseled features. They look like they look like real people.
Speaker 1: They look like pilots and flight attendants from the Mother
Speaker 1: Road during the depression or something, you know, like really
Speaker 1: chiseled features. And actually, apparently the Pets Company says that
Speaker 1: they very infrequently do real life humans. Those those bicentennial
Speaker 1: figures were the first humans they ever did a real
Speaker 1: life humans, I should say, And they didn't even do
Speaker 1: fictitious ones very often, like a stewardess or the pilot um,
Speaker 1: because they just found that the human face wasn't nearly
Speaker 1: as interesting as say, like a bubble man. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six they issue the first ever
Speaker 1: Pets dispensers of living humans when they decided to pay
Speaker 1: tribute to the fellas from Orange County. Chopper makes me
Speaker 1: so sad that goes down in history is the worst
Speaker 1: one ever. But I mean, those were the first guys
Speaker 1: to ever have living Why why a licensing deal? And
Speaker 1: it opened the floodgates after that, After that it was on.
Speaker 1: There's like a kiss collectors set. Well, of course because
Speaker 1: Gene Simmons and he'll put his face on anything. Um.
Speaker 1: There was what else, Well, people get turned down a
Speaker 1: lot um. You said that other little fact sheet. Kim
Speaker 1: Kardashian wanted a pet dispenser. Um, they said no, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they turned down people all the time because apparently everybody
Speaker 1: wants one. I would suggest just go make your own
Speaker 1: babble heead because you can get that done. It sounds
Speaker 1: the same. Well, you could just put candy in your
Speaker 1: bubble heads. There are newsletters, there's a pez Collector's news,
Speaker 1: there are conventions, and there is even a museum that
Speaker 1: a husband and wife started in California that started out
Speaker 1: weirdly as a museum for computers and Pezz dispensers. I know,
Speaker 1: I think they were a computer sales company. Oh. I
Speaker 1: thought they displayed like vintage computers. I think they Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a computer dealer and they they were selling computers,
Speaker 1: and just to kind of make the place look a
Speaker 1: little more interesting, they also displayed pees dispensers and they
Speaker 1: found that people were way more interested in coming to
Speaker 1: see the Pez dispencers and weren't buying computers, so they
Speaker 1: transitioned over to a straight up Pez museum, the pez
Speaker 1: um or the Museum of Pez Memorabilium, Berlingame, California. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can pay some money to go in there
Speaker 1: and look at all their rare and vintage peest dispensers.
Speaker 1: They have one. He paid three grand for the pineapple
Speaker 1: wearing sunglasses because in the early seventies thing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: nothing special to look at, but again it's rarity. They
Speaker 1: didn't make many of them because it was ugly. Probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of cute. Did you did you like the
Speaker 1: California raisins? Yes, okay, that explains it. Have you seen
Speaker 1: straight out accounting? Uh? No, not yet. It's a good
Speaker 1: Oh you haven't seen that yet. I haven't been to
Speaker 1: any movies. You should. The California raisins appear by mentioned.
Speaker 1: They're mentioned in a surprising way. I look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing that on television. You should go see it, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll go see it in the movie here.
Speaker 1: What else? Uh? They tried vitamins for a little while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't think that was a bad idea. Put a
Speaker 1: little vitamin c in there, parents might be more willing
Speaker 1: to throw up some money for the for the kid.
Speaker 1: But um, they said, no, we're not in the vitamin business.
Speaker 1: Let's just stick to the sugary pressed candy. No. And
Speaker 1: the guy who said that was a guy named Scott mcwinnie,
Speaker 1: And Scott mcwinnie was president. He started out I think
Speaker 1: General Mills or something or General Foods, and um he
Speaker 1: moved his way over to Pez in the nineties or
Speaker 1: the eighties, No, the eighties, because that quote was from
Speaker 1: he was president of Peza and he um, much to
Speaker 1: his chagrin, got into a um a war, basically an
Speaker 1: economic war with the guy who was known as the
Speaker 1: Pez Outlaw. Yeah, you dug this up. This was really interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: The article what was it called. It was a terrible
Speaker 1: title like Michigan farmer makes four million dollars in Pezz
Speaker 1: dispensers in three years or something. It's a terrible title.
Speaker 1: Should have been called the Pez Outlaw. But it was
Speaker 1: in Playboy and it was pretty good long form reporting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically what happened was in the nineties a dude uh
Speaker 1: named Steve glee U G l e W. Found out that, hey,
Speaker 1: over in Canada, they're selling different dispensers that you can't
Speaker 1: get here in the United States. So let me go
Speaker 1: over there, let me buy some of these and resell
Speaker 1: them to collectors. And it worked, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the light bulb went off and he said, at think
Speaker 1: I can actually make money getting Pez dispensers from other countries.
Speaker 1: And he found a hook up that mysterious woman who
Speaker 1: approached him from the Eastern Bloc wherever she was from, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he ended up. He and his son Joshua Um
Speaker 1: started making trips to Central Europe, um oftentimes right along
Speaker 1: the border of like war torn Croatia, and found these
Speaker 1: factories where Pez is being made, and found very bribable
Speaker 1: factory workers who would take like molds and make um
Speaker 1: new PEZ dispensers to his liking. And then he would
Speaker 1: sell them as like basically like Pez freaks or or
Speaker 1: one offs or something, and for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 1: But he would spend a quarter or maybe a dollar
Speaker 1: on each and he supposedly made quite a bit of money.
Speaker 1: He claims four million. Yeah, I believe it. For if
Speaker 1: they made the number of trips that they were making.
Speaker 1: I think that he did. His downfall was that he
Speaker 1: overextended himself. He took out a massive own and uh
Speaker 1: basically hired a factory to make a bunch of misfit
Speaker 1: Pez dispensers and downfall, and Mark mcwinney took him on
Speaker 1: and started releasing basically Pez's own version of these counterfeit
Speaker 1: weirdo dispensers at a lower price and drove the dude
Speaker 1: out of business. This could be a little documentary easy,
Speaker 1: you know easy. Also that reminds me. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen the Jellybelly documentary? Oh, it's so sad, but it's
Speaker 1: so good. What's it called? I don't remember. Just look
Speaker 1: up Jellybelly documentary and weird owls in it. Oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well then I definitely won't see it. No, you really should, man,
Speaker 1: it's a great documentary. It's just it's very sad. And
Speaker 1: that one and the show Biz Pizza one documents to Yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to love show biz. You will love this documentary.
Speaker 1: I like show biz more than Chucky cheese. Even there's
Speaker 1: a huge backstory to it that you were unaware of.
Speaker 1: Can I read you this one? Xta. This is from
Speaker 1: the story about the Pez Outlaw. Uh. A nineteen toy
Speaker 1: convention changed Steve's life forever. As he tells it, a
Speaker 1: mysterious woman opened her jacket and showed him a silver
Speaker 1: globe PEZ holy grail for PEZ collectors. She whispered to
Speaker 1: him in broken English, there are many more where I
Speaker 1: come from. Let's go great. Do you believe that? And
Speaker 1: then she get the field she was like two guys
Speaker 1: in overcoats and sunglasses came in like hurried her away.
Speaker 1: He said, but but what's your name? Or two centambites
Speaker 1: came out of the woodwork and like pulled her down
Speaker 1: to hell. Ivanka. Uh yeah, it's a pretty good article.
Speaker 1: Look up stupid title Michigan Farmer, PEZ playboy and it'll
Speaker 1: bring it up. I think long Form had it at
Speaker 1: one point, speaking of Ivanka, should I talk about Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Probably not all right? Um. I was surprised when I
Speaker 1: found out I found mention of like PEZ this was
Speaker 1: being nostalgic. I was like, definitely not for me. Then
Speaker 1: I went to Pez dot com and clicked on Collector's
Speaker 1: Corner and they have well, they have pictures of like
Speaker 1: every every single one they've released over the years, year
Speaker 1: by year, and I definitely felt nostalgic. And I don't
Speaker 1: even think of PEZ is factoring in largely into my
Speaker 1: childhood at all. Same here, but I was a little nostalgical.
Speaker 1: It's cute, So go to PEZ dot com and check
Speaker 1: out the collector's corner and I think you will waste
Speaker 1: a lot of time there. Uh. And I think that's
Speaker 1: it because Chuck just grabbed the listener mail email, which
Speaker 1: is usually a signal for me to shut up because
Speaker 1: it's mean to me. After the mics aren't recording any
Speaker 1: low please uh. And if you want to know more
Speaker 1: about PEZ, type that word in the search bar how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and uh, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: IMNA call this. You guys are right screw college. Remember
Speaker 1: when we a little soapbox moment? Was this from the animator? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I thought this is good. Hey, guys, want to shoot
Speaker 1: you a quick email to thank you for mentioning the
Speaker 1: idea that you don't need to go to college for
Speaker 1: some professions on the How Publicists Works episode. It really
Speaker 1: struck a chord with me. I'm an animator and I
Speaker 1: desperately wish it would be treated as a trade, which
Speaker 1: it is, and not as a high art form that
Speaker 1: requires a fancy, one hundred thousand dollar degree. Most of
Speaker 1: what I learned I actually learned on the job. Got
Speaker 1: almost nothing from my college classes, while the contacts I
Speaker 1: made in college were very valuable down the road. And
Speaker 1: nothing is quite as nice is moving out and being
Speaker 1: on your own in art school. It came with a
Speaker 1: hefty price. It is now ten years later. I've been
Speaker 1: working steadily this whole time, and I'm still paying off
Speaker 1: my college student loans and I make a good amount
Speaker 1: of money. That's just sad. And I know so many
Speaker 1: people were in the same position without but without steady work. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she says that she worked at adult Swim for
Speaker 1: a while too. By the way, Uh, there's a stigma
Speaker 1: about not going to college, and I think it's part
Speaker 1: of the reason so many people are being crushed by
Speaker 1: student loan debt. Now it's a very American stigma too.
Speaker 1: It's not I like that all around the world, stupid Americans.
Speaker 1: I think there's probably a lot of these kinds of
Speaker 1: jobs that don't need college degrees out there, like podcaster,
Speaker 1: and it might be cool to hear a podcast on
Speaker 1: that sometime. I'm not sure what you call it. Maybe
Speaker 1: how not going to college but landing a nice job
Speaker 1: and making a living anyway and sticking it to your
Speaker 1: parents works. Maybe just do one on student loans or something. Anyway,
Speaker 1: thanks for keeping the company while I animate keep it up.
Speaker 1: You guys are top notch, and that is Margie. Thanks Margie,
Speaker 1: that was a great email. Agreed. We appreciate that. And
Speaker 1: that's not college altogether. Sometimes it's very useful. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just not the end all be all for everyone
Speaker 1: on the planet to have to go to college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's true. There, I mean, it's true, and
Speaker 1: I think that there hopefully is a large awakening going
Speaker 1: on because a lot of people say that the current bubble.
Speaker 1: If you're looking around for the next bubble student loans, yep, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do something about that. Sometimes, let's do it.
Speaker 1: And actually Margie gave us her um the U R
Speaker 1: L for her blog. It's m A R J I
Speaker 1: B O R D N E R dot blogspot dot com.
Speaker 1: So I imagine you can go check out her stuff
Speaker 1: there when don't you think? Yes, sir? Nice. So if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with Chuck or me
Speaker 1: or both of us, or even noel Um. You can
Speaker 1: tweak to us at s y s K podcast. You
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff podcast to how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and has always joined us at home on
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