Speaker 1: Hello, friends. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna enjoy it a little bit more if you listen
Speaker 1: to this Stuff you should Know. Select episode from October
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, How Pez Works. I love these pop
Speaker 1: culture episodes. Everyone Pez. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: A production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Noel And this is stuff
Speaker 1: you should have to do. The peas at nice. I
Speaker 1: like that another Null cast as well. Yeah, pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: It's part of the Null spint. We then old stint.
Speaker 1: We're gonna fell it. Uh. Do you like pest? I
Speaker 1: like Pez? Do you like the candy? I? Do you
Speaker 1: like to taste? I like the taste of Pez. Yes.
Speaker 1: Describe to me what happens when you can put a
Speaker 1: candy has candy in your mouth? Well, I put a
Speaker 1: PEZ candy, I pull the head back, the kicker kicks
Speaker 1: it out. Pop. Yes, it's nice, and I take it
Speaker 1: from the Pez dispenser with my tooth. Oh you don't
Speaker 1: really you'd like go mouth the mouth with it? Sure?
Speaker 1: Well tooth 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 PEZ, 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, let's half the fun. Oh 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 nano seconds, and
Speaker 1: then I started to bite into it, and it's very
Speaker 1: much like um. This explains why I like pets, especially
Speaker 1: orange pests. And once eight almost an entire bottle of
Speaker 1: orange flavored baby aspirin for the taste. That's why I
Speaker 1: like pests. How old were you then, would be a kid?
Speaker 1: It was like twenty something, 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 feels
Speaker 1: like because they aren't even it isn't even medicine. I
Speaker 1: wonder it's just a placebo. But how could you use
Speaker 1: a placebo and a little kid? I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it work, but certainly there's an age where they're just
Speaker 1: like I feel like half of parenting is probably placebo. Probably,
Speaker 1: well you would know now, well not yet, Well let
Speaker 1: me know she doesn't believe my lies yet. That will
Speaker 1: come later. Yeah, I mean, I'm surely kids are pretty dumb,
Speaker 1: so you can get them to believe anything. Sure, but
Speaker 1: there seems like there would be an age where they
Speaker 1: wouldn't They wouldn't make that connection, and a placebo wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: I don't think of 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, I don't even children aspirin anyway.
Speaker 1: I like pez I like how it tastes. I like
Speaker 1: the experience of eating a pets, all right. I don't
Speaker 1: care for pets. I also like the shape the brick,
Speaker 1: the brick that it helps with the taste. I saw
Speaker 1: we did the l a podcast pest this last weekend,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember her name, but very nice young
Speaker 1: lady brought 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, yeah, 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 in 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 YouTube,
Speaker 1: and specifically look up the one on pop rocks that
Speaker 1: I did a year or two ago. It was really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. Candy manufacturing is fascinating. I don't care what
Speaker 1: you say. No, I like manufacturing processes. I just don't
Speaker 1: like to eat candy. I got you. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? You just go to the plant watch it
Speaker 1: made and then turn down the free samples like no,
Speaker 1: thank you. I find that disgust. They're like, now, would
Speaker 1: you like to try some? Yeah? I don't do that.
Speaker 1: On beer tours, I'll sample that. You mean, I went
Speaker 1: to the maker's mark distillery. Oh, did you dip your
Speaker 1: own bottle? Yes? No, yes, we definitely have one, but
Speaker 1: I don't remember if we. I guess we did dip it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a thing. But it was like a mini,
Speaker 1: so maybe not. Maybe we bought a mini that was
Speaker 1: like just a man need to commemorate it, and they
Speaker 1: made you buy like a fifth or something and dip
Speaker 1: your own bottle. And we're like, man, it's fine because
Speaker 1: we'd we'd be like, we would want to open it that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't dip our own. Body forgot. That was exactly
Speaker 1: the conversation we had. Wow, you guys to put a
Speaker 1: lot of thought into that one. Anyway, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: cool tour, to tell you the truth. I strongly recommended.
Speaker 1: I've never done a distillery. I'd like to do that.
Speaker 1: There's there's a new one here in Atlanta, Avandale Whiskey Distillery. Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you go on any whiskey tour and
Speaker 1: you will find what Mila Kunis is talking about with
Speaker 1: the angels share stuff. It's a real thing. The evaporating
Speaker 1: whiskey fills the um whatever the place where they're aging
Speaker 1: em barrels, and it's actually really dangerous, like the place
Speaker 1: could blow up at any time because like very much so.
Speaker 1: We're a sugar factor, right, um. But the smell is
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing smells I've ever experienced in
Speaker 1: my entire life, like smell good or just weird good
Speaker 1: great eat like the the half of a percent of
Speaker 1: whiskey that is just glorious. It's in the air, right,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Oh man, now I'm thirsty. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk pez Um. In two thousand and eleven, this
Speaker 1: is something I didn't know. There was a wedding while
Speaker 1: I didn't know this part um in the United Kingdom
Speaker 1: between a guy named William and a little lady named
Speaker 1: Kate Waity Katie? Do people call her that? Some? Some
Speaker 1: people did? What like that she's overweight? No? No, that
Speaker 1: she waited around? Oh okay, it's like, man, how mean
Speaker 1: can people get? Yeah? That would be. So they made
Speaker 1: um specialty pez dispensers out of Prince William and Kate
Speaker 1: for that, and they were expensive, three sixty dollars at
Speaker 1: a charity auction. Clearly that's the most expensive pez dispenser
Speaker 1: ever sold. Not so, my friend, what uh? Supposedly that
Speaker 1: is the thirty two thousand dollars in two thousand and
Speaker 1: six for an astronaut limited edition Astronaut deemed It was
Speaker 1: from the two World's Fair and there were two of
Speaker 1: them too in existence. Yeah, that's why it's expensive. And
Speaker 1: what's neat is that that's that Um was that auction
Speaker 1: took place on eBay, which is very appropriate that peest
Speaker 1: dispenses are sold on eBay because the guy who founded eBay,
Speaker 1: what's his name, Pierre Um, Pierre r Right, He Um
Speaker 1: founded eBay and party. He was inspired to found eBay
Speaker 1: because his girlfriend at the time, I think his wife
Speaker 1: is his wife. Now, Um collected PEZ and he thought, hey,
Speaker 1: this would be a really great We may not have
Speaker 1: eBay today if it weren't for Pez peest dispensers electing
Speaker 1: peest dispensers, which is a relatively new thing. It really
Speaker 1: took off in the eighties, late eighties. Actually, it wasn't
Speaker 1: until the late eighties that people really started collecting peest dispensers.
Speaker 1: And now I felt you of the Tweetie Bird episode.
Speaker 1: I had to go back and look it up. But
Speaker 1: once I did, I started to remember, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: Elaine and Jerry and George Ritta George's girlfriend's piano recital,
Speaker 1: and Jerry put the Tweetie Bird pest dispenser on his
Speaker 1: lap or on Elane's lap, and Elaine started laughing, ruined
Speaker 1: the performance, and then she was later outed when she
Speaker 1: laughed again in front of that lady right, and then
Speaker 1: the Tweetie bird um Pez Dispenser also factored into the
Speaker 1: plot because Jerry and his friends had an intervention for
Speaker 1: another friend who had a drug problem and he was resisting, resisting,
Speaker 1: and then for some reason, Jerry brought out the Pets
Speaker 1: dispenser in the wave of nostalgia that washed over this
Speaker 1: guy caused him to admit that he had a drug problem,
Speaker 1: but then he became hooked on pest. Well in nostalgia
Speaker 1: figures in a lot. Uh, it really does. Kids from
Speaker 1: the well, kids of all ages grew up with pez
Speaker 1: kids of all ages? What am my circus announcer? Step
Speaker 1: all on up? What do they calls? I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: circus himself, Barker, ring master, your circus Barker. Well, there's
Speaker 1: two different Those are two different things. I think unless
Speaker 1: you're in like a low budget carnival, then it's maybe
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, that's I would be. But the
Speaker 1: Barker is the one who's like, step on up, we'll
Speaker 1: guess your weight. The people he's trying to get people
Speaker 1: to come in. The ring master is the one who's
Speaker 1: like running the show. Once the show starts, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'd be the barker. Would you need to be
Speaker 1: the ring master. You'd have to wear a straw boater
Speaker 1: 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. Do strong teeth as opposed to my
Speaker 1: little when I fell off and there's some of my
Speaker 1: teeth jammed into the trapeze bar. Still, well, you like
Speaker 1: a Loonington's cartoon now, yeah, but imagine it in reality
Speaker 1: even worse it is. Uh, I feel like we should
Speaker 1: take a break and regain our composure. All right, we'll
Speaker 1: 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 pop culture casts and
Speaker 1: talk about history, because well I thought it was a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting history. Actually, yeah, I'd love this article. Eduard
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 peppermint 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: them as quitting smoking or smoking cessation aids. 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 in 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, we'll we'll 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 invented Pez and that's when they first set
Speaker 1: the market. Um. But again I get the impression that
Speaker 1: he was a germophobe and he didn't want everybody to
Speaker 1: put their grubby hands into the same Pez tint and
Speaker 1: touch the other ones that other people were putting in
Speaker 1: their mouths. And he probably imagined all the poop and
Speaker 1: bacteria who knows what on those people's hands German sausage
Speaker 1: touching his beloved Pez. So we thought there has to
Speaker 1: be a better way to dispense Pez. We need some
Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, Pez dispenser, that's right. And
Speaker 1: so there was an employee of 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 for smoking conson 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 Usa. 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 girls. Yeah, the Pez girls, which were supposedly like
Speaker 1: this very sexy thing to sell Pez. Did you see them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look like bell hops. Oh yeah, they're They're basically
Speaker 1: drawn like pin up girls, except not nearly as racy. Um.
Speaker 1: And they had a little bell boy hats. Sure a
Speaker 1: lot of them did. Um. And they went from the forties,
Speaker 1: I think, all the way up until the early eighties
Speaker 1: they used Pez girls to market Pez. You know what
Speaker 1: they reminded me of was um back in the day
Speaker 1: when you would have like be at a club and
Speaker 1: a and a woman would come around. Yeah, cigarettes Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would have a little tray around that was hung
Speaker 1: around 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah they did. They did the trick the Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were already pretty popular. But when once they packaged them
Speaker 1: into these um cigarette lighter dispensers, like they really cemented
Speaker 1: themselves as like iconic candy. People say, look, you just
Speaker 1: pop it open and the candy comes out and you
Speaker 1: put your teeth on it. It's right, it's wonderful pop off.
Speaker 1: So they went, they went nuts for the stuff. And
Speaker 1: then he said, you know what, let me expand the
Speaker 1: United States is where it's at. 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 love the way these things
Speaker 1: popped out. Plus it probably made them feel a lot
Speaker 1: like they were smoking. You think, probably I never got
Speaker 1: the tie to the lighter. It was completely lost on me.
Speaker 1: So you like flick a lighter? I got it now,
Speaker 1: but I never had made that association until I knew this. Okay,
Speaker 1: so imagine a Peest dispenser without the head. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what the original. Can imagine that because I used
Speaker 1: to take the heads off my okay, all right, but
Speaker 1: so that's the original peest dispensers, which are called regulars now.
Speaker 1: The first before they started adding heads, very much resembled
Speaker 1: like a nice slim lighter. So if you're a kid
Speaker 1: like this kind of thing, like there's a there's the
Speaker 1: manual thing where you're flicking a lighter. Then there's the
Speaker 1: oral fixation that's satisfied by putting the mint into your mouth,
Speaker 1: and it's mimicking smoking, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why it was one of the ways it was marketed.
Speaker 1: The idea was that it would it would alleviate that
Speaker 1: desire for those those Freudian fixations that you had when
Speaker 1: you were a smoker, if you were trying to quit,
Speaker 1: if you're a little kid and you wanted to smoke
Speaker 1: but you just couldn't get your hands, and cigarettes yet
Speaker 1: a good way to do that. I didn't have arms, right,
Speaker 1: but in the fifties, yeah, probably, I saw candy cigarettes
Speaker 1: the other day in the store. By the way, I
Speaker 1: thought those work. Believe they make this, Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: they were completely gone. Okay, if you want to know
Speaker 1: a candy that I think is abhorrent and disgusting, candy cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Gum cigarettes are awesome. Do you remember those, the kind
Speaker 1: where you puff them? Oh, those are great. The candy cigarettes,
Speaker 1: they're just like sticks of candy that are disgusting. No,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the gum that would blow out fist smoke.
Speaker 1: I love that they still make those. But the gum cigars,
Speaker 1: I think we're gross. They have some weird chemical taste
Speaker 1: to them. I never saw that they were not one
Speaker 1: and the same, which is surprising. And they still make those,
Speaker 1: and they still make big league chew yes like it's
Speaker 1: it's amazing that they can, still, like with good conscience,
Speaker 1: market tobacco products to children, and that they're allowed to.
Speaker 1: I remember um probably the greatest tasting gum of all time,
Speaker 1: Big Red No. No, it was a Rambo gum that
Speaker 1: was sold to commemorate Rambo three. Yeah. No, it had
Speaker 1: like a It was marketed as like black raspberry or
Speaker 1: something like that, but it didn't taste like that at all.
Speaker 1: It had I've never tasted anything like you know, usually
Speaker 1: like you run into a taste years later, like there's
Speaker 1: only ten tastes or ten cents, you know. Um, this
Speaker 1: was I've never experienced it before after and it was
Speaker 1: the best tasting gum ever. But it was in the
Speaker 1: big league chew pouch and it was big league to shreds,
Speaker 1: So clearly it was made by the same company for
Speaker 1: the makers of Rambo. But the flavor they used was
Speaker 1: perfect sweat and gunpowder and you could get it for
Speaker 1: like one summer. What did it have a cartoon version
Speaker 1: of of stallone on it? No, it was a photo
Speaker 1: of him with like the very famous rocket launcher okay,
Speaker 1: the rocket from Rambo three um, and uh it was
Speaker 1: just 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 flavor and 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 cola.
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 mint 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 flavor, 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 with bonkers. That was another good candy too,
Speaker 1: But I don't know what that is. It came out
Speaker 1: in the eighties. It was great. Um. They they decided
Speaker 1: to try to make Petz a little more parent friendly
Speaker 1: because 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 that's fine. It was genius because what he did
Speaker 1: was he combined candy with a toy, uh, and not
Speaker 1: only a toy, but a collectible and it was it
Speaker 1: was genius for kids. That was all they needed. Um.
Speaker 1: They were pretty cheap and so kids could buy them.
Speaker 1: They could like go around and probably finding money on
Speaker 1: the ground in a given day to go buy a
Speaker 1: little pet dispenser, right, or build like, uh, like a
Speaker 1: soapbox racer and sell it to the rich kid in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood buy a bunch of pez did. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: another thing too. I didn't like the the stick that
Speaker 1: you had to lick, but the sugar was just great.
Speaker 1: So the sugar stick that you dipped into the sugar,
Speaker 1: the sugar stick didn't have enough flavor for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just I was thinking about fund it the other
Speaker 1: day when I was driving for some reason. It was
Speaker 1: just remarkable to me that they would just make a
Speaker 1: sugar stick that you dip in different flavors of sugar,
Speaker 1: and you would then eat the sugar off the stick
Speaker 1: and then eat the sugars right. Well, they they didn't
Speaker 1: even try back then. Like it's like that smacks used
Speaker 1: to be called sugar smacks, and then they changed to
Speaker 1: the honey smacks and they're like, let's just go with smacks.
Speaker 1: That wasn't just called smacks, I believe. So it's not
Speaker 1: sugar smacks. No, it hasn't been sugar smacks for years.
Speaker 1: I don't need much cereal. Like they would get chased
Speaker 1: out of the grocery I whenever they tried to restock that.
Speaker 1: If they still call it sugar smacks, I just don't
Speaker 1: mess with Captain Crunch peanut butter. That's all I got
Speaker 1: to say. Captain Crunch has one out now. I saw
Speaker 1: in the cereal all the other day. It's sprinkled donuts
Speaker 1: Captain crunch and it looks awesome. Yeah, I just the
Speaker 1: peanut butter is so good. Even though it tears of
Speaker 1: the roof of your mouth, it's worth it. But that's
Speaker 1: 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: Have to save those moments, all right. So it's a
Speaker 1: ninety Um hass is super rich because he's selling tons
Speaker 1: and tons of these dispensers. He sells the company and uh,
Speaker 1: they move well. The manufacturing of the dispensers is actually
Speaker 1: now in China and Hungary and like um, Slovenia, I think,
Speaker 1: to the Central Europe and now as well. But the
Speaker 1: actual candies are and have been for a very long
Speaker 1: time made, to believe you already said at a plant
Speaker 1: in Orange, Connecticut. Um, and they kept it going. PEZ
Speaker 1: was always a privately owned company. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: ever been public Um. But they kept the whole thing
Speaker 1: going even after Hassa departed, and that was helped very
Speaker 1: much by this this um explosion in collecting that came
Speaker 1: from the late the mid mid eighties, I would say.
Speaker 1: And as a result, um Pez itself added feet to
Speaker 1: the dispenser so that they can be displayed from that
Speaker 1: point not and they realized, like white people are collecting these,
Speaker 1: there's like a secondary market that's generated exactly UM, and
Speaker 1: so they added feet to it. So now a PEZ
Speaker 1: dispencer can stand up. But that was introduced in seven.
Speaker 1: So if you see feet on your Pez dispencer, you
Speaker 1: know that it's at least un on. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break here and we will come
Speaker 1: back and talk a little bit more about the odd
Speaker 1: collecting of Pezz dispensers. So, Chuck, people started collecting Pezz
Speaker 1: dispensers partly because they came of age at a time
Speaker 1: about the mid eighties when they were high on cocaine
Speaker 1: and had a lot of disposable income, and we're nostalgic
Speaker 1: for their childhoods. Yeah, I have a theory, and it's
Speaker 1: not like I'm sure everyone knows this, but I think
Speaker 1: pets dispensers became collectible because you can throw them, throw
Speaker 1: it away like you would eat the candy, and what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do As a kid. You can be like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me throw away this Garfield toy. Now, well, not
Speaker 1: only that, you can put it on your chef, right,
Speaker 1: your chef, you're if you're like, dance still, chef, stop
Speaker 1: making that stew weird so I can put this. Participants
Speaker 1: around the bully of base can wait. Um. But the
Speaker 1: the whole thing is they're reloadable, like you get the
Speaker 1: little uh, the little packet of twelve, pop it in
Speaker 1: there and you want more, like if it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: one of those same deals like collect all four. But
Speaker 1: this is not all four. This is constantly new licensing
Speaker 1: deals being cooked up, everything from Looney Tunes to Star
Speaker 1: Wars to Hello Kitty. Which was the other stroke of
Speaker 1: genius was partnering up with these uh iconic brands and
Speaker 1: cultural icons to uh to say, hey, a Chewbacca head
Speaker 1: on this thing, like they're grown adults little by that. Right.
Speaker 1: The thing is is Lucasfilm UH definitely charges a pretty penny,
Speaker 1: or did before they sold the Disney and now it's
Speaker 1: even more I'm sure to license anything from Star Wars, right.
Speaker 1: So Pez also very frequently came up with their own
Speaker 1: stuff as well. There were the Pez pals. There was
Speaker 1: a very famous misstep called make a Face Pez, which
Speaker 1: is like a tiny Mr Potato head where you could
Speaker 1: put on different eyes and mouth and stuff. But of
Speaker 1: course these things were a major choking hazard. And actually
Speaker 1: there's a lore among Pez collectors who are called Pez
Speaker 1: heads that if you look at some of the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three Indian chiefs that were released, their head
Speaker 1: dresses are marble, they have marbled color, and they're saying
Speaker 1: that those are ground up make a face um dispensers
Speaker 1: that they reused in the head dresses. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a Pez enthusiast conspiracy theory, but it's pretty cool. And
Speaker 1: another one that they released was a series for the
Speaker 1: bi centennial that includes the funniest character of all time
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the Colonial soldier with the head wound. Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought you can say 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 beehive on his head rather than a
Speaker 1: queenskin cap an 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 Pezzi spencer.
Speaker 1: That one is probably my favorite, although I like a
Speaker 1: lot of 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 Pezzis spencer of all time. Well, there have
Speaker 1: been four hundred more than four and fifty dispenser since,
Speaker 1: including three different Santas, and the Santa is the best
Speaker 1: selling of all time, which makes sense of course, especially
Speaker 1: the first one because he was his dispenser wasn't just
Speaker 1: a little Pezzis menser. It was like the whole body.
Speaker 1: But then they're like this is way too expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like I betch you of people just buy it
Speaker 1: with the head. Yeah, and they did the Salvador Dolly tribute.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a tribute. I bet it was.
Speaker 1: UM is my favorite in psychedelic hand. It was a
Speaker 1: hand with a green eyeball and it's just very cool looking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I would I would want one of those. Of
Speaker 1: course I wouldn't bay thousands of dollars for it. No,
Speaker 1: I'd like to just find one on the streets. And
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat though. Yeah, do all of them cost
Speaker 1: that much? But what that specific collectible? No? But I
Speaker 1: mean I would say they range in the hundreds and
Speaker 1: it's really rare. But what was interesting about this um?
Speaker 1: I think Patrick Kiger pointed out, like it's compared to
Speaker 1: a lot of other collecting hobbies, this is dispensers are
Speaker 1: relatively cheap, not too bad. You can get into them
Speaker 1: pretty easily with you know, a minimal amount of money. Um.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite dispensers is the pez gun series.
Speaker 1: Oh really, First there was a ray gun, and then
Speaker 1: they made it into a handgun, and then when Star
Speaker 1: Wars came out in Like Night, they released another space
Speaker 1: gun that looked an awful lot like Han Solo's gun,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really them, um, but the kid would
Speaker 1: put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger
Speaker 1: to dispense the candy. Wow. Yeah, really yeah, unbelievable. They
Speaker 1: have had some kind of weird ones over the ears,
Speaker 1: like the airline pilot and stewardess, which I don't know,
Speaker 1: is that a big seller. I don't know. Well, this
Speaker 1: was back in the day. I think when they were
Speaker 1: they were revered figures and culture. Yeah, the pilots weren't drunks,
Speaker 1: and the flight attendants weren't flight attendants. They were stewardesses,
Speaker 1: and they were you know, fancy clothes, and but they
Speaker 1: have like hard chiseled features. They look like they look
Speaker 1: like real people. They look like pilots and flight attendants
Speaker 1: from the Mother Road during the depression or something, you know,
Speaker 1: like really chiseled features. And actually, apparently the Pets Company
Speaker 1: says that they very infrequently do real life humans, that
Speaker 1: those those bicentennial figures where the first humans they ever
Speaker 1: did a real life humans, I should say, And they
Speaker 1: didn't even do fictitious ones very often, like a stewardess
Speaker 1: or the pilot um, because they just found that the
Speaker 1: human face wasn't nearly as interesting as say, like a
Speaker 1: bubble man. Yeah, you know, in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: they issued the first ever pets dispensers of living humans
Speaker 1: when they decided to pay tribute to the fellas from
Speaker 1: Orange County Chopper. It makes me so sad that goes
Speaker 1: down in history as the worst one ever. But I
Speaker 1: mean those were the first guys to ever have living
Speaker 1: Why why a licensing deal? And it opened the floodgates
Speaker 1: after that. After that it was on. There's like a
Speaker 1: kiss collector set. Well, of course because Gene Simmons and
Speaker 1: he'll put his face on anything. Um. There was what else, Well,
Speaker 1: people get turned down a lot um. You said that
Speaker 1: other little fact sheet. Kim Kardashian wanted a peest dispenser. Um,
Speaker 1: they said no, Yeah, they turned down people all the
Speaker 1: time because apparently everybody wants one. I would suggest just
Speaker 1: go make your own bubblehead because you can get that done.
Speaker 1: It sounds the same. Well, you could just put candy
Speaker 1: in your bubble head. There are newsletters, there's a pez
Speaker 1: Collector's news, there are conventions, and there is even a
Speaker 1: museum that a husband and wife started in California that
Speaker 1: started out weirdly as a museum for computers and Pez dispensers.
Speaker 1: I know, I think they were a computer sales company. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought they displayed like vintage computers. I think they Yeah,
Speaker 1: there 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 Peest dispensercane, gotcha. And
Speaker 1: they found that people were way more interested in coming
Speaker 1: to see the Pezz dispencers and weren't buying computers, so
Speaker 1: they transitioned over to a straight up Pez museum, the
Speaker 1: pez 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 of Compton. Uh, no, not yet. It's a
Speaker 1: good Oh you haven't seen that yet. I haven't been
Speaker 1: to any movies. You should. The California raisins appear by mentioned. Wow,
Speaker 1: they're mentioned in a surprising way. I look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing them on television. You should go see it, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, le't go see it in the movie there.
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: Scott mcgwinnie was president. He started out, I think General
Speaker 1: Mills or something in General Foods, and um he moved
Speaker 1: his way over to PEZ in the nineties or the eighties, No,
Speaker 1: the eighties, because that quote was from He was president
Speaker 1: of PEZ little and he um, much to his chagrin,
Speaker 1: got into a um a war, basically an economic war
Speaker 1: with the guy who was known as the Pez outlaw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you dug this up. This was really interesting. Uh. The
Speaker 1: article what was it called. It was a terrible title,
Speaker 1: like Michigan farmer makes four million dollars in PEZ dispensers
Speaker 1: in three years or something. It's a terrible title. Should
Speaker 1: have been called the Pez Outlaw. But it was in
Speaker 1: 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 Gleieu 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 lightbulb went off and he said, I think I
Speaker 1: 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 or pezz is being made and found very bribable
Speaker 1: factory workers who would take like molds and make um
Speaker 1: new Pezz 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: over extended himself. He took out a massive loan and
Speaker 1: uh basically hired a factory to make a bunch of
Speaker 1: misfit Pezz dispensers and downfall and Mark mcwinney took him
Speaker 1: on and started releasing basically Pez his own version of
Speaker 1: these counterfeit weirdo dispensers at a lower price and drove
Speaker 1: the dude 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 jelly Belly 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 documentary right
Speaker 1: to Yeah, I used to love show biz. You will
Speaker 1: love this documentary. I like show biz more than chucky cheese.
Speaker 1: Even there's a huge backstory to it that you were
Speaker 1: unaware of. Can I read you this one excerpt? This
Speaker 1: is from the story about the Pez Outlaw uh ninety
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 Globeez,
Speaker 1: holy grail for Pez collectors. She whispered to him in
Speaker 1: broken English, there are many more where I come from.
Speaker 1: That's still great? Do you believe that? And then she
Speaker 1: I get the feeld. She was like two guys and
Speaker 1: overcoats and sunglasses came in like hurried her away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, but but what's your name? Or two centmbites
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 dispensers being nostalgic.
Speaker 1: I was like, definitely not for me. Then I went
Speaker 1: to PEZ dot com and clicked on collectors Corner and
Speaker 1: they have well they have pictures of like every every
Speaker 1: single one they've released over the years, year by year,
Speaker 1: And I definitely felt nostalgic. And I don't even think
Speaker 1: of PEZ is factoring in largely into my childhood at all.
Speaker 1: Same here, but I was a little nostalgical. It's cute,
Speaker 1: So go to PEZ dot com and check out the
Speaker 1: Collector's Corner and I think you will waste a lot
Speaker 1: of time there, agreed. Uh, And I think that's it
Speaker 1: because Chuck described the listener mail email, which is usually
Speaker 1: a signal for me to shut up because it's mean
Speaker 1: to me after the mics aren't recording any low please uh.
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about PEZ, type
Speaker 1: that word in the search part how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and uh, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this. You guys are right screw college. Remember when
Speaker 1: we had 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 thousand dollar degree. Most of what
Speaker 1: I learned I actually learned on the job. Got almost
Speaker 1: nothing from my college classes, while the contacts I made
Speaker 1: in college were very valuable down the road. And nothing
Speaker 1: is quite as nice as moving out and being on
Speaker 1: your own in art school, it came with a hefty price.
Speaker 1: It is now ten years later. I've been working steadily
Speaker 1: this whole time, and I'm still paying off my college
Speaker 1: student loans and I make a good amount of money.
Speaker 1: That's just sad. And I know so many people were
Speaker 1: 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 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 about college altogether. Sometimes it's very useful. Yoh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just not the end all b l for everyone
Speaker 1: on the planet didn't 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, 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 blog spot
Speaker 1: dot com. I imagine you can go check out her
Speaker 1: stuff there when 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, you can tweak
Speaker 1: to us at s y SK podcast. You can join
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and has always joined us sort at home on the web.
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