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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart Happens. Hi am Marcia Brain with today's question what

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Speaker 1: does PEZ mean? Most people have had Pez candy at

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Speaker 1: one time or another as kids, and a surprising number

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Speaker 1: of adults are hooked on the stuff as well. It

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Speaker 1: turns out Pez was originally intended to be used by

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Speaker 1: adults and didn't move into the kid's market until twenty

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Speaker 1: five years after its creation. Pez candy was invented in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seven by an Austrian food company executive named Edward

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Speaker 1: has the Third. The original candy, basically a compressed sugar

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Speaker 1: tablet flavored with peppermint oil, was marketed as an alternative

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Speaker 1: to smoking. The name came from the first, middle, and

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Speaker 1: last letters of the German word for peppermint. Originally, Pez

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Speaker 1: came in small tins, but in nineteen Hassas Company introduced

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Speaker 1: the first Pez dispenser. The original dispenser was designed to

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Speaker 1: resemble a cigarette lighter. To make an appeal to the

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Speaker 1: intended market of adult smokers, The company introduced the character

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Speaker 1: heads and fruit flavored candy in nineteen fifty two when

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Speaker 1: it brought Pez to the United States. The appeal to

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Speaker 1: kids was obvious candy that's also a toy. Over the years,

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Speaker 1: hundreds of different character dispensers have been introduced and then discontinued.

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Speaker 1: The dispenser body or stem has also changed slightly. In seven,

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Speaker 1: for example, supportive feet were added to the base so

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Speaker 1: that these things could stand up on your desk. One

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Speaker 1: way to roughly date a particular PEZ dispenser is to

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Speaker 1: check the patent number molded on its side. The main

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Speaker 1: numbers on US dispensers are Patent number two million, six

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Speaker 1: hundred twenty thousand, sixty one, issued in nineteen fifty two,

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Speaker 1: Patent number three million, four hundred ten thousand, four hundred

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Speaker 1: fifty five issued in nineteen sixty eight, Patent number three million,

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Speaker 1: eight hundred forty five thousand, eight hundred eighty two issued

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, Patent number three million, nine hundred thousand,

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Speaker 1: six hundred eighty three issued in nineteen seventy six, and

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Speaker 1: Patent number four million, nine hundred sixty six thousand, three

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Speaker 1: hundred five issued in nineteen nine. PEZ dispensers are a

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Speaker 1: major collector's item today, most likely because of a combination

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Speaker 1: of personal nostalgia, the connection to pop culture, characters and

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Speaker 1: the limited run on individual dispenser designs. Many individual dispensers

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Speaker 1: sell for hundreds of dollars, and a few sell upwards

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Speaker 1: of a thousand dollars. Be sure to check out our

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