My Town Monday: PEZ

These are some of the PEZ dispensers we have in our house. One of the kids collected them for a while.

PEZ candies were first marketed in flat tins as compressed peppermints around 1927 in Vienna, Austria.

PEZ comes from the German word for peppermint: PfeffErminZ. Love that word trivia!

About 3 billion little brick PEZ candies are eaten in the U.S. each year.

The first PEZ dispensers were called "regulars". They were shaped like a cigarette lighter and dispensed breath mints for adult smokers. In 1952, the PEZ Candy Co. stuck heads on the dispensers and fruity candy in them and began marketing to children. Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse were a couple of the earlier heads.

By now, you're probably scratching your head and wondering why there's a post on PEZ with the heading My Town Monday.

Because.....we have a PEZ museum and store in California!

Yes! The Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia is located about ten minutes south of the San Francisco International Airport. The museum/store is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm. Here's the address and phone number: 214 California Drive, Burlingame, CA, 94010, (650) 347-2301.

The museum/store began life in 1995 as a computer store. Owners Nancy and Gary Doss also collected PEZ dispensers which they displayed around the computers. Dispensers like the Pineapple PEZ worth $3500 and the Make-A-Face Potato Head Pez worth $5000. Within a year, the computer store morphed into a PEZ museum/store.

Per the Silicon Valley Mercury News.com, the Pez Candy Co. from Linz, Austria is suing the Burlingame Museum for the money earned during their fourteen years in business. They are also demanding the melting down of the Doss' giant 7 ft, 10 in snowman PEZ.

Anyway, at this point the museum is still open. And if you happen to have any extra spending money post holiday season...

You can stand next to the world's largest PEZ dispenser (as determined by the World Guinness Book of Records) and feed it $14.95. In return it will spit out a regulation-sized snowman PEZ dispenser.

Or you can purchase such items as the 1970's fireman PEZ dispenser for around $75.

If, however, you're low on cash like the majority of us...

You can visit Blogger Bookworm Readers for a chance to win a copy of i so don't do spooky or an ARC of said book.

Or you can click over to The American Cheerleader magazine who are giving away five copies of i so don't do spooky at their online site.

Pretty smooth transition, eh? :)

So, go win some books and don't forget to pop over to the My Town Monday blog to see what wild and crazy things others in the group are posting about.

Have a great First Monday in 2010!!



sources:
http://www.pez.com/v/site_pages/aboutus.
htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pez
http://www.burlingamepezmuseum.com/
http://www.worldslargestdispenserofpez.com/
http://www.mercurynews.com/year-in-review/ci_12812553