Sweet memories: PEZ to celebrate 50th U.S. birthday

In the beginning, there was PEZ. In the beginning of eBay, anyway.

Pierre Omidyar started the online commerce site in 1995 so his fiancée could have a place to trade her PEZ collection.

That was the story the company's public-relations director gave reporters at the time, anyway. Omidyar, who believed the Internet was the perfect vehicle for an online marketplace but who worried that angle would not grab reporters, created the fanciful version.

This much is true, though: PEZ, celebrating its 50th anniversary in this country, is a sweet collectible, and it has nothing to do with the three .29-ounce sticks of artificially flavored candies included in the standard PEZ package.

This collectible craze is all about PEZ heads, the thousands of figures — from Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales to Betsy Ross, Daniel Boone and Santa Claus — that have graced the top of PEZ dispensers over the years.

"You have it as a kid, then you go to college, you don't shop anymore. And then 10 years later, you have kids and go: 'Where's it been all these years?' " said Scott McWhinnie, president of PEZ. "It never left!"

A valuable collection

Peter Linski and Mark McMahon of Asbury Park, N.J., bought their house through PEZ. They used the proceeds of PEZ sales at a collectors' convention for the down payment.

The two own peterandmark.com, an online PEZ site. They have sold more than 100,000 PEZ dispensers since 1993. Many are in the $10-to-$50 range. McMahon, a former stage manager for the Public Theater in New York City who now sells PEZ full time, once sold a PEZ head for about $3,500. From 1993 to 1999, the two owned a store in New York City called Cookie Jars Etc.

"I bought a lot of PEZ stuff for Mark one Christmas," recalled Linski, a senior technical analyst for a New York City law firm. "We put some in the store. It blew right out."

A very good year

A turning point for PEZ came in 1993, when Christie's held its first-ever PEZ auction. The same year, PEZ landed on the cover of Forbes magazine.

Millions of PEZ heads have been sold over the years. The dispensers are made in Slovenia, Hungary and China. The candy — orange, grape, lemon and strawberry (with sugar), and orange, lemon and strawberry (sugar-free) — is made at company headquarters in Orange, Conn.

Sorry, no tours. But you can take a virtual tour on pezcollectorsnews.com, a Web site maintained by Richard Belyski, editor and publisher of PEZ Collector's News, a bimonthly newsletter he started in 1995. His 1,500 subscribers hail from the United States, Canada, Japan, Austria and other countries.

Belyski said collectors span all ages and backgrounds: "You go to a PEZ convention and see a senior citizen talking to a guy with tattoos."

The biggest PEZ convention in the country — PEZ-A-Mania — is held in Cleveland every July.

There are about 160 PEZ dispensers on the market. European-made-and-marketed PEZ available at peterandmark.com include Bubbleman and Bob the Builder, and cartoon characters Asterix, Getafix and Obelisk.

PEZ means ...

PEZ started in Austria in 1927 as a breath mint for smokers. The name comes from the German word for peppermint — PfeffErminZ.

Bozo the Clown, Batman, Charlie Brown, Tinkerbell and Uncle Sam have all been PEZ heads, but the only real-life characters ever to appear on a PEZ dispenser are Betsy Ross and Daniel Boone.

There is a Paul Revere-like PEZ, but the company calls it The Captain. An Elvis PEZ appeared in the movie "The Client," but it was made for the movie, and was not an official dispenser.

Most popular PEZ head of all time: Santa Claus.

The simplest PEZ heads can fetch thousands of dollars. An early 1970s Mary Poppins PEZ is worth up to $900 ($950 if she has painted cheeks). Late 1970s Disney eraserlike "softheads" (they were never put on stems) go for $1,000 and up.

An elephant-head PEZ given to President Kennedy on a visit to Vienna in 1961 is worth more than $3,000.

A gold PEZ space gun from the 1950s (it shot PEZ candy) can be worth $1,500 or more, according to "The Collector's Guide to PEZ" by Shawn Peterson (Krause Publications, 2000). And the highest price ever paid for a PEZ item was $6,500 for a space gun on eBay about a year ago, according to Belyski.

PEZ, a privately held company (www.pez.com), doesn't release sales figures, but the company will sell $25 million worth of PEZ in supermarkets, drugstores and department stores, excluding Wal-Mart, this year, according to Information Research Inc.

It all adds up to sweet success for PEZ — part candy, part toy, part novelty item.

"It's not wanting to lose part of your childhood, wanting to bring back your childhood," said Linski, trying to explain the dispenser's mass appeal.