Everyone has owned a PEZ dispenser at some time in their life.

Kids love candy and kids love toys. What better product to hit that core demographic than a candy dispenser that looks like a toy? Enter PEZ. Or rather, enter PEZ decades ago. After a bit of research, I have determined that PEZ is, and always was, awesome. What better place to talk about the toy candy dispenser than here at Toy-TMA? Grab your preferred PEZ flavor housed in your favorite cartoon character’s head and let’s get started.

A Delicious and Efficient History

As with all good articles (more or less), we should start with the basics and the history of PEZ. PEZ can trace its origins back to Austria in 1927. Yeah, that’s right, PEZ wasn’t even an American thing at all. In fact, PEZ gets its name from the German word for “peppermint,” Pfefferminz. The creator, a confectioner named Eduard Haas III, derived the name from the first, middle, and last letter of Pfefferminz, creating the strange yet wonderful word PEZ, usually spelled in all caps as I’ve been doing, so deal with it.

Although it’s difficult to imagine, PEZ didn’t always come in the dispensers we’ve come to know and love. PEZ first came packaged in small tins, similar to Altoids. Eventually the “regulars” type dispenser was created to look like a small cigarette lighter. The reason for this was because PEZ were marketed as an alternative to smoking. Add that to another reason why PEZ are great for kids.

I swear, these are for kids...I think. Was I talking about candy?

PEZ wouldn’t make it to the United States until 1952, and it still wasn’t until 1955 when someone got the idea to place heads on the top of the dispensers. As it turns out, PEZ had been marketed mostly to adults until then, but the shift towards the character heads placed the core demographic at children, as well as collectors. Pretty standard heads first appeared, such as Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus, but over the years more popular cartoons and icons have been ported over the candy dispensers.

Collecting Candy for a Living

That’s why you still remember what PEZ is today, though please note, PEZ inc still considers itself a confectionery company rather than a toy company. This, of course, hasn’t stopped collectors from paying exorbitant amounts of money for what amounts to a candy holder shaped like Bugs Bunny’s head. The highest price anyone’s ever paid for an official PEZ dispenser is $7,000 for a Mickey Mouse softhead model, apparently a factory prototype never released to the public. That’s $7,000. That’s a whole lotta candy tablets right there.

I wonder how much Seinfeld's PEZ dispenser went for...?

But do be careful in your quest to collect every and all PEZ dispenser. Because of the value and rarity of some dispensers, fakes have popped up everywhere. One guy paid $11,000 for what PEZ experts (don’t ask me who they are) later proved via chemical testing was a really, really well made fake. That’s the point I draw...