The Shocking History of PEZ Candy: Smoking Alternative for Adults?!

Mrs. Lee Habib Mrs. Elmore American stories we tell stories about everything here in the show including yours from the L American stories.com.

Some of our favorite. As you know were a nation of immigrants that it's not just people that travel. It's also their ideas.

One of these ideas is something that many of us loved his kids.

John Peterson of the Pez visitor center is author of patents from Austrian invention American icon needs you to share how it evolved into the brick -shaped candy dispenser. We all know and love today is shown Pez the brand or the candy was invented by a man named Edward Haas the third. He was an Austrian.

The family had been very successful in a variety of businesses to that point and they had a nice business providing baking products and one of the things Mr. Hoss noticed that were people were having a difficult time digesting some of the cakes based on some the ingredients that were in them, and found that peppermint oil was a good way to help in the digestion and the byproduct of that you know is a way to freshen your breath in most of all he really wanted to provide an alternative to smoking. He was very much a man ahead of his time in didn't really think too much of smoking in the health ramifications of that. So his goal was to kinda come up with an alternative to that and he found peppermint oil and through this what's called a coldpressed method were you just can't oppress the ingredients together came up with these little Pez tablets as the product in wanted to see if there was interest the German word for peppermint was for ferments and it's actually quite a long word, so he used the first middle and last letter of the word for ferments which was a PE and Z and he found it was an easily pronounceable word in just about any language. It was a trade markable brand-name so would serve two purposes, and one in it that's really how Pez got its start for the first 20+ years of its creation. There was no dispenser you either bought the product in a little foil role similar to what is offered today or there was a little metal pin that you could carry them in your pocket. If you're old enough to remember. You know you can get Mike Bayer aspirin and a little metal 10 probably associated these days with like a deltoid or something like that you could carry in your pocket and that was really the only way you could get Pez for its initial creation. It wasn't until the late 1940s that his success was growing in and business was increasing that he wanted to try something different with that because he was a bit of a German folk yells out got this great candy on the founder and inventor of this, but if I want to offer it to you.

You gotta put your fingers in that tend to get a piece of candy and it's not really what I want, so he found a freelance designer, a man named Oscar Lucia and commissioned him to come up with some kind of dispensing device for the candy you know he put a little thumb grip at the top and in some spring mechanisms inside to be able to offer them one at a time and that's really how the shape of the dispenser was born. Mr. Hoss started selling these in 1927 in Austria found success rather quickly and expanded the product throughout Europe and other parts of the world and for him. The last great market to conquer was the United States. So 1952 they came to lower Manhattan. They had offices in New York City.

They imported all of the products from Europe and tried to sell them as they had throughout the rest of the world is an upscale adult product and marketed as an alternative to smoking and it really didn't have the success that it had in your affected really did poorly.

Unfortunately, I say unfortunately but actually was.

It was probably one of the best things that could happen to it.

It was the lack of success really that drove Pez to innovate and create the changes that have made us successful.

To this day they were selling the dispenser without character had just had a little thumb grip and the only flavor you could get was peppermint and as I said it didn't really have the success that they had hoped for.

So somebody in marketing said bloodstone a lot of the market. Let's let's think about what were doing and how we could do it differently and they came up with the idea of putting a three-dimensional character had on top of that dispenser and children generally don't like pepper man.

You know the strong flavors like that. So the idea was let's add fruit flavors to the candy, but the three-dimensional cartoon character had on top and let's shift the marketing from adults to children in it changed really the direction of the brand. They found success very quickly and you know it changed the business model here in the United States as well as globally and we been primarily children's product ever since the Pez girl was a it was kind of the grassroots marketing campaign of how they wanted to advertise Pez, you know this is something that nobody was really familiar with so they had these outfits for ladies to where they would hire models to go out in share the brand and a lot of the early ones had like skirts with big pockets so they could keep a lot of the refills in them and they would just go out to events in hand, the candy to people, get them to try this new brand and hopefully get people enthused about what this new product was. It was very cannot girl asked when it started in the 1950s.

So a lot of the early Pez girls, leggy, and this is when the marketing was being directed towards adults and certainly not shifted the 60s and 70s is shifted to children in the 1970s.

You can see what looks like a superhero.

They had no like knee-high boots on the model. She had a cape and instead of the full Pez logo. It just had like a giant pee on the chest so it looked like a superhero and it worked and you're listening to Sean Peterson of the Pez visitor center and telling a story we tell again and again here on the show that a failure and that's the failure to launch the Pez product and work internationally here in the United States what they do, will they learn from the market. They adapted and actually took Pez to a place they'd never been before.

Danny failure leads to success. When we come back more from Sean Peterson, author of Pez from Austrian invention to American icon here on our American story books. If you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about American history from word innovation culture and faith brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things good in life. If you can't get the Hillsdale bills that will come to you with a free and terrific online courses go to Hillsdale.edu to learn and we returned to our American stories and to Sean Peterson with the story of Pez the manual candy dispenser. The first traditional head on a stem that you're familiar with today, was a witch for Halloween and I was 1957 and in the first licensed character was 1958 that was pop by and then we followed that with a couple of additions to the seasonal line we had at Santa for the first time we been doing Santa ever sense. It's coincidently one of our best selling player number one seller to this day. We added an Easter line with the Easter Bunny that year and in about 1959, 1960, Casper and Bozo came into the mix, and in 1961. We did Mickey Mouse with Disney for the first time I think were actually the second longest license partner with Disney next to Donald Duck orange juice we been working with Disney consecutively since 1961, so we probably produce more Disney characters over the year than any other license and how many are there referring to the dispensers and this is what collectors like to talk about and argue.

You know I mention Santa Claus. We've done many many iterations of Santa Claus in is it a variation or is it a different dispenser and you know there's really no right or wrong answer. So if we had to go with just different character heads on top of the dispenser base somewhere in the 1400 issue number range right now but if you start factoring in variations in you know there's really no right or wrong answer as to what constitutes a variation start adding zeros to that and it easily goes into thousands upon thousands right now we have 15 different flavors that we offer the six core fruit flavors and that's cherry, grape, lemon, strawberry, orange raspberry, you know the things that you're familiar with. We do force our flavors and then we do some seasonal flavors candy corn for Halloween. We do cotton candy just introduced a new Dragon fruit flavored to go with our game of thrones gift set that we introduced and we do sugar cookie for Christmas, and vanilla cupcake for Easter so that gives us 15 current flavors that we offer, but we rotate things in and out every few years we try to introduce something new to do that. We usually retire a different flavor to try to keep it fresh and in different there's been many many dozens of different flavors offered throughout the year. We just retired cola and chocolate. We made those for probably a couple of decades, and finally decided it was time to retire and try something different. We produce here at the factory about 12 million individual candy tablets per day.

There's certainly some top collectors out there that have some incredible collections. There's people is really surprising you know they'll go in and do buyouts of other collectors in which things they already have, and they've got. Like many warehouses in their basement to you know and they may have 5000 of the same dispenser but that's part of the enjoyment for them. They like just having the quantity of it. And then there's other people that focus on not having duplicates, but they want something different and they have thousands upon thousands. You know in their collection so it's really up to how you want to enjoy in and collect. It's what makes the hobby so much fun as you know, everybody's got their own take on it, but that there certainly some really impressive collections out there. When you look at what people been able to put together the factories been here since 1973. This is the site that they chose when they first decided to to manufacturer. They ended up moving the offices from New York City to here in Connecticut and in the early 70s, and we been manufacturing in this facility ever sense.

And then the visitor center came to be. I think the original idea was around 2006, and it actually came from me I approached the company they were familiar with me through some of the books that I published about the history of peasants and documented all the various dispensers and things like that and they were using books. People would come into marketing and they would share my book with them and you know looking get some ideas from this and see what we've done and when I approached they kinda knew who I was at that time and met with the CEO of the company and I said I know you guys haven't done this before, but I think it be a great idea if you had some kind of historical Museum aspect to the business and you know may be a retail piece attached to that the people could come in and get a sense of the Pez history and how it's changed and evolved and have an opportunity to sell them all things Pez right right there at the same facility in if you like the idea had like to be the guy to put that together and run it for you. He said were just not ready for that step yet.

But let's stay in touch so I took every opportunity that I could for the next few years to remind him that I'm still around and had interest in doing this and it was about late 2009. He called in and said you know if you're still interested, let's talk about doing this actually from Kansas City. So not only did I have to move a household. I had to move an entire collection halfway across the country and we figured out how to do that and got me here to Connecticut and began the process of constructing the visitor center.

So while we were doing that we got a general contractor started figuring out who can supply giant Pez dispensers and Pez related fixtures in all the cool stuff that we have here in the visitor center started that process and then I began work on on the website Pez.com figuring out how to get the online store aspect together that all took about a year and 1/2 and in the meantime, the visitor center is being constructed and then we finally got it open December 2011 to me coming into work every day. You know, I see this every single day and I still find myself stopping and looking around just kind of enjoy the space and I am the one that that you know, put the stuff on the walls and put everything in the display cases. But I still enjoy you know, 10 years later attended still so much fun for me to have not only a place for my collection. But being able to share with everybody. Now that comes in to see us.

The majority of business that we have and people come through the door. You know to this day. 10 years later.

I think that's the thing that surprises me most itching of people that had no idea they were going to be here today and I just saw the signs along the highway in the Pez factory in we know what that is.

But let's go. We've never been, and they come in and the positive comments and feedback them that we hear from people is just like that, you know it's up. It's amazing. We had no idea there was this much to Pez and to me that's exciting and really one of the goals behind this for me was just to share with people it's it's been a big part of my life I've been doing this for over 30 years and I'd still really enthusiastic about it. It's exciting there are still things that we know are yet to be discovered and you know being able to share that with people and hopefully create that spark of interest that may be wants to get them involved to her that maybe there's going to start their own collection themselves, for you know maybe think about Pez a little bit differently the next time they see it in the store they been to the factory and they watched where it was being packaged in and saw how we make the candy kinda gives you different appreciation for the Brandon and what we do so that that's really the most exciting thing for me and it was just kind of a happy mistake trying to adapt to the market and had they not done that nobody would've probably heard about Pez it would just been a footnote in history of mentor or an alternative to smoking. Like many products that have come and gone certainly wasn't intentional, or the original idea of it but he knows being able to adapt and just find the right market. It changed and created a sense of Pez being part of pop culture ever since you know it's a relatable brand that everybody knows and a special thanks to Madison for bringing us this terrific story and a special thanks to Sean Peterson of the Pez visitor center and by all means pick up his book has Austrian invention to American icon in Amazon the usual suspects and if you're in the Connecticut area and that's orange visit the Pez visitor center. Better still, if you can't get there.

Go to Pez.com and take a virtual tour and by the way, since the partnership with Disney and Mickey and many other partnerships with brands and with characters and you can find the Muppets Sesame Street characters Marvel characters Star Wars characters Wizard of Oz Scooby Doo Looney Tunes Mario ninja turtles Simpsons Pokémon and Angry Birds. The story of Pez you on our American story, then we returned to our American stories and for many of us our first job is one of our most memorable which makes sense first jobs help shape people and for many of us become our first taste of real adult responsibility up next story about a first job as our regular contributor from Delaware Brent Timmons with his story will during my high school and college years I worked at a restaurant in the Fenwick crab house Fenwick Island Delaware.

The restaurant was owned by Kashi and Mabel Evans from 1962 to 1983 in February 2006, I sent this letter to Mrs. Evans. Mr. Evans had previously passed dear Mrs. Evans, this correspondence is long overdue. There were a few things I've been meaning to tell you this is no exaggeration. I have a dream about the crab house two or three times a year. It is always a similar dream. I come into the kitchen. Years after having worked there and I'm expected to cook, but it is been so long that I can't remember what to do. It is a traumatic or anything I just realize that time is past and I need to relearn the job those years in the kitchen must've made quite an impression for me to still be dreaming about the crab house.

I became aware of job openings through Michael. It was the spring after we got our drivers license 1977 Mike came to school one day and said he had gotten a job at the crab house asked what he would be doing washing dishes and peeling potatoes are the only two chores I can recall I could do that. I thought working with my best friend Mike would be ideal and nervous phone call to Mr. Evans ended with an invitation to come to Somerville to interview for a job. He told me where you lived a White House in view of ricks laundromat, the only house with a picket fence. I drove to Somerville to a house with a picket fence in view of ricks. No one came to the door neighbor alerted me that I was at the wrong house you lived in the other only house with a picket fence.

I passed the interview and had landed my first job. Perhaps it was my relation to my grandfather Elias, a good friend of Mr. Evans the made him feel obligated to give me a chance. Well that and how hard could it be anyway despite my inability to find your house.

I did find the crab house on that first day of work I drove down with Mike thinking the company would help with first-day jitters.

I've known a few people who had worked there. My older brother buddy include the lasted about a week.

My first day on the job. I came under the instruction of little Daisy will was only a couple of years older than I see much more mature and wise. He became one of my mentors at the crab house seemed flawless and his job. He was universally accepted as our peer leader while will was our peer leader we also had our teacher leader Dave Baker coached basketball and taught school how to define these guys. David been there 13 years and will about five by the time I came they were wholeheartedly devoted to the restaurant but most of all, devoted to the crab house family. I had great respect for both of them. You know as well as I crab house would've been a very different place without them I learned from them what to find the proper relationship between us employees and you and Mr. Evans the owners that first summer I washed dishes, and did occasionally potatoes. Although you had that nifty potato peeler.

I learned that if you left the potatoes into law. You ended up with potatoes.

The size of golf balls and cherry tomatoes and also learned or actually relearn to make salad related salad on that table in the back porch next to the coleslaw mix. I was standing there one day during cucumbers. It took no great skill cut both ends off and feed them through the slicer but I managed to fumble on step one. I was cutting the ends back to where the seed started. Mr. Evans came strolling and see what we were up to why you cutting so much off the end of the cucumber. The question well, that's the way my mother doesn't not respond.

It was then I first learned about the quick wit and intolerance for impertinence of Mr. Evans.

How long is your mother been in the restaurant business bellowed I don't think I intentionally determined cut cucumbers in a way that was different from how I was told to, but I did learn that day. The importance of paying close attention to instructions we've gotten many a laugh. Recalling that story.

My mother especially enjoyed may have been about my second year. My pertinence reared its ugly head again. I was a slow learner. Mr. Townsend is very very old man would come in to eat several times a week.

I didn't really grasp the significance of what Mr. Evans was doing for him at the time because I was young and self-centered.

Mr. Evans Woodham prepare Mr. Townsend's dinner. It was usually no make that always broiled chicken breast, no skin sautéed asparagus and boiled potatoes. Mr. Evans viewed the task of cooking for his old friend, is a privilege I viewed it as just a chore sometimes Mr. Evans would cut up the chicken himself but often he would come to me and asked that I go get a chicken duty hours as I was one of the resident to confront guys by this time in my crab house career advanced to clam man job.

I took over for Rex, I thought that I was very busy one night when Mr. Evans requested that I cut up two chicken breasts for a little exasperated and wondering why he couldn't do it himself. I said Mr. Evans. I'm really busy right now all answer is not too busy to work for me. He shouted I've missed the whole point. Mr. Townsend's studio to have an old friend that I love to serve. I had my first serious relationship while working at the crab house.

She was a wonderful girl.

Mr. Evans loved her, but he felt it was important to constantly tell me hazards of first relationships.

He warned me over and over about these hazards, I ignored him and finally figured out on my own, that maybe they should not occur. Your senior year of high school I had my second serious relationship right after ending the relationship with my first also a waitress at the crab house. She was a wonderful girl as well. Mr. Evans loved her as well to the did not warn me about second relationships. This mistake was that he should've won the girls about me, not the other way around, and you been listening to Brent Timmons share with great detail. Great emotional memory to his first job at the crab house from everything from his duties who well, his loves his first two months, springing from that employment is nothing like working to get to know people, especially in the business like that in a time you spent together and the stress you suffer through together and the slow times you get through together when we come back more Brent Timmons on his first job.

The crab house and the things you learn from it and perhaps is still gleaning some wisdom from more with Brent Timmons. His first job here on our American story, and we continue with our American stories and Brent Timmons story on his first job Fenwick crab house in Delaware working for cash or in Maple Evans might point out that this story is actually a reading of a letter he wrote to Mabel Evan.

When we last left off. Brent was telling us about some of the lessons he learned there from the pitfalls of young love to have a cut encumber property. Let's continue with the story. I mentioned that I'd taken over the job of clam man for Rex. Rex had a way of joking indicating that I really enjoyed one day while training me on the clam schema.

He mentioned that if you're not sure if the clam is good or not you can tap to together they make a solid clicking sound. They are both good.

If one is dead. It won't hold its shell tightly together and it will make a dull thud. It was legitimate instruction.

Think never knew about Rex, you may have over emphasized the necessity of this task, because I took him to mean that you should do this on every clam put in a bucket for steaming so if you were to observe me doing plans you would've heard and incessant tapping.

I can be a little compulsive and it became a compulsion to Clams together and wanted to clam in the steamer Mr. Evans called me doing this early all asked why I was knocking the clams together and I told him not importantly mine. You and I was checking to see if they were good. Rex told me to do it. I added I'd learn from the cucumber episode to follow instructions to the T.

Mr. Evans roared in laughter from that day on he referred to me as not to knock it makes me laugh just thinking about it. The following spring working some before the season started, he had forgotten what nickname had given me. I reminded him and knock knock stuck the rest of my time at the crab.

Eventually I moved up to line cook. It wasn't until recently that I realized I wasn't really cut out to be a line cook.

My favorite thing to do it. Crab house was the cook out of Siberia to Siberia was a long stroll to the other end of the kitchen and was given that name due to its remote location Siberia two was a smaller line in that kitchen. I like Siberia to because I would have just a couple of waitresses would be able to work on one or two orders at a time when I realized just a few years ago is that I am not a great multitask person. I don't do well trying to do a bunch of stuff all at once, thus my attraction to the small line and Siberia. My next favorite job was Siberia.

One. It was not as busy as the main kitchen and much less chaotic.

So even when it did get busy down there. There were fewer things to distract me from cooking plus working in Siberia one only met you would be the first to get off work.

I don't know if everyone else knew this about my abilities are not. If they did, they were sensitive enough not to make a big deal out of it, but my guess is that you all understood our strengths and weaknesses and put us where we would work the best. It was wise on your part as I look back much appreciated all mine. One of the things I really enjoyed was the preseason work. I enjoy going with Will and Mr. Evans down to the crab house before we (I like being in that select group of people could be on the inside.

Perhaps I was really seeking to be a right hand. I wanted to be a go to guy for Mr. Evans on a Saturday morning after the restaurant season had ended. Mr. Evans called me at home. He invited me to go to University of Delaware football game with you.

It was the same day that my grandfather chose to dig out his potatoes yearly task for one Saturday in the fall it would plant rows and rows enough to feed everyone in our family who wanted them for the entire winter we would all go and dig them out after he turned over the dirt with the tractor.

There was an all day affair digging loading them in the baskets and transporting them to the pumphouse for storage. I enjoyed it to a degree, but also viewed it as sort of an obligation partly so we could share in the free potatoes all winter and partly because pop-up couldn't do it alone. Today Mr. Evans called. I can't really say I was totally thrilled about going to the game.

I never been to a college game and there were the potatoes. Looking back, I'm sure my family would have given me the go-ahead to go to the game but I dug potatoes instead.

I should've gone to the game with you and Mr. Evans.

I should've taken advantage of your generosity.

It was a great privilege to have been invited to spend the day with you in my shortsightedness I missed. There is a brick wall front of Prince George's Chapel dog sections of it and then replaced over the years due to cars driving through it. Some of those effects were due to Kendra West driving her car through it. Late one night after work she fell asleep on her way home. I don't exactly know what did but I recall hearing that you either loaned her the money to buy a car.

I gave her some money towards a new car. Either way, it was a very generous and caring thing for you to do and I took note of it. It was completely in character for both of you. One summer Dorothy had a hernia repaired. He made a place for her out front seating customers while she recovered. Perhaps it was a wise move on your part. She was so cheerful and chatty cute but I was very aware that you were taking care of her until she was well enough to go back to waiting tables while I was dating Sherry invited us to a New Year's Eve party and hope the old landing country club. I think perhaps it was the Rehobeth beach.and country club was a very classy affair as one would expect the old folks that the jitterbug and whatnot we felt privileged to spend the evening with. I knew that we were much more than a couple of kids just work for you and that is my whole point.

Mr. Evans made us all part of your lives.

We were not just employees who loved us. We loved you back because you earned it by investing yourselves in our lives. I learned in those five years that life isn't just about work is more about people. When you do it right. Some of us end up dreaming about it for the next 24 years.

I've often wondered if I could have better spent my summer someplace other than the crab house at least one spring I was considering looking elsewhere for a summer job.

I waited until late spring to call Mr. Evans and let them know I would like to return to the crab house that year. Mr. Evans seemed to know what I've been contemplating he didn't say much about it but he said just enough to let me know.

It bothered him that I felt the need to consider going someplace else. I can only recall thinking about not returning that one year.

If I had, in fact done something else with my summers, I would not of learned about the pitfalls of young relationships, first-hand experience, I shall be sure to try to relate to my own children I would've missed the opportunity to work with a wide variety of young kids all kinds of backgrounds. The crab house was a training ground for relationships I would've missed all of that and I would not have had the opportunity to work with a couple 50 years my senior, and to develop a friendship with that couple that went far beyond an employee employer relationship. I don't think the fruit of that experience is over yet. I fully expect someday to have an opportunity to befriend young men and women 50 years my junior and be able to influence their lives as you and Mr. Evans deadline and at that time, I expect to hear an almost audible bell go off in my head and I'll say to myself, this is why I spent five of the most impressionable years of my life at the crab house with Mr. and Mrs. terrific job on the production by monthly and a special thanks to Brent Timmons for sharing his story of his first summer job.

By the way he did that by reading a letter. Written Mabel Evans theater has been cash for the owners of the Fenwick crab house where young Brent did so much learning working for a couple 50 years older than him well. That memory still burns in him because he's now hoping to transfer his knowledge to a generation or two generations behind him. That's how so much of our learning happens, it gets passed along from generation to generation. We love sharing these intergenerational stories is old and young have a lot to give each other the story Brent Timmons.

The story of her first job of first loves, and so much more here on our American story