214 215
THE LITTLE BOOK OF BIG PACKAGING IDEAS
(RAY)
Job:10-91261 Title:Rockport : Little Book Of Packaging Ideas
175#_P Dtp:44 Page:215
“In 1927 in Austria, Edward Haas came up with this new peppermint candy. It
was an adult breath mint that was supposed to help adults stop smoking.
From the word ‘pfefferminz,’ they took the first, middle, and last letters, and
came up with PEZ.
“PEZ was carried around in pocket tins until 1948 when they came out with an
‘easy, hygienic dispenser’ that looked like a cigarette lighter. In 1952, PEZ
wanted to expand its sales to the United States, so they added more flavors,
placed heads on the dispensers, and marketed it to children.
“Today, the PEZ Company in Orange, Conn, operates twenty-four hours a day.
To date, it has created about three hundred different dispensers [that] are sold
in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Japan, Germany, and France.
“The whole Seinfeld thing brought PEZ back to life. Everyone had kind of for-
gotten about it. But once Jerry Seinfeld put that PEZ container on his knee in
that one show, it has started to show up everywhere, all over the media. The
“Sightings” area in my Web site is full of places it has been seen on TV and in
movies. E-Bay was actually started by a guy who wanted to help his girlfriend
get more PEZ for her collection.
“I’m not sure why people like PEZ so much. People must see PEZ and
remember the good old days when they were younger. A lot of older people
are into collecting these, and they bring up their kids as ‘pezheads.’
“People might like a certain cartoon character and buy that PEZ character. I
correspond with people in different countries because, of course, they have
different dispensers and candies. Now people are making their own PEZ dis-
pensers: fantasy PEZ. They either mold their own heads or rip the heads off
of other things.
“I think of the dispensers as being cool and incredibly odd at the same time.
I picked up the first one only because I was into Spider Man. I wasn’t into the
candy that much. I just found it bizarre that you crank back the happy head of
these things and candy pops out of the neck. It’s their strangeness that piques
interest. As a collector, it’s interesting to see from the dispensers what was
hot at the time, whether it is Mickey Mouse or Psychedelic Eye dispensers. As
a designer, I enjoy the old advertisements.
“There’s a certain charm to these things that I haven’t completely put my fin-
ger on, but on the other hand, I can’t stop collecting them.”
BENJAMIN SCANLON, GRAPHIC DESIGNER, HOST OF WWW.PEZCENTRAL.COM,
AND PROUD OWNER OF THREE HUNDRED-PLUS PEZ DISPENSERS, IN ADDITION
TO MANY PEZ-RELATED ITEMS SUCH AS FLAGS, STICKERS, MASKS, AND CARS:
158-235 PP_91261.qxp 10/18/06 2:36 PM Page 215
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.