PEZ

It was over 60 years ago that a man named Eduard Haas created a compressed peppermint candy. By using the first, middle and last letters of the German word for peppermint (PfeffErminZ), the name Pez was derived. Then in 1952, Pez was brought to the United States, and the introduction of fruit flavors and character heads made their debut. Prior to the early 1950s the dispensers had no character heads, these early versions were actually made for adults and came with a thumb grip.

The early dipensers are known by collectors as "Regulars." Since the creation of character heads, there have been over 250 different types. Besides the popular T.V.and cartoon characters, there have been several of the company's own creations, one in particular is the Pez pal series. These were done in part with a comic strip character named Pezi. He would change into several disguises and solve mysteries. The popularity of collecting pez dispensers has increased dramatically in recent years. And it's no wonder, with pez being mentioned in movies, T.V. and newspapers. There are even organized conventions that you can attend.

Actually, this node is illegal. According to http://www.pez.com/HTML/Legal.html any usage of PEZ, or any trademarks, service marks, or logos are registered and unregistered Marks of Pez Candy, Inc. In fact, on that web page they are VERY explicit in stating that no use of said terms is allowable whatsoever, particularly on web pages. They list some sample web pages which would be illegal, such as "THE PEZ STORE", "THE PEZ MUSEUM", "THE PEZ COLLECTOR", and quite a few others. I suppose it would be illegal to link to their website, as to do so you would have to violate their trademark just to display the URL.

Just to do my part to keep Everything from being shut down, and Nate thrown in jail, Pez, "THE PEZ STORE", "THE PEZ MUSEUM", "THE PEZ COLLECTOR", Pez Candy, Pez Candy, Inc., and www.pez.com are all registered or unregsitered trademarks of Pez Candy, Inc.

While it is true that PEZ Candy, Inc. has a stated policy of not producing dispensers modeled after real people, nonetheless they have done so twice in the past.

The people so honored were:

1. Betsy Ross
2. Daniel Boone