The Pez candy dispenser is a pop culture icon.
There’s no mistaking the tilted heads that dispense pastel colored candy stacked in a narrow column.
Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty have graced Pez dispenser heads and recently Anna and Elsa from the movie “Frozen” have also joined the line-up. Next year, expect to see the ‘Batman vs Superman’ movie characters making an appearance. Also expect new flavors like banana.
Pez was originally invented in Austria in 1927, but the company’s only factory and headquarters are located in Orange, CT. It is owned by the Haas family who are descended from the inventor of the candy, Eduard Has III.
Here are 5 things you might not have known about Pez:
1. Requests for personal Pez heads are made every day. The company turns them down. A Kim Kardashian dispenser request was recently given the thumbs down.
2. Santa Claus is the highest-selling Pez dispenser, since it was created in 1955.
3. The most expensive Pez dispenser sold for $13,000. It was a political donkey made in 1961. Only two were ever made.
4. All the Pez distributed worldwide comes from one factory in Orange. It produces 12 million tablets of Pez every day and uses up 50,000 pounds of sugar every 4 days. Over 3 billion Pez candies are consumed in the U.S. alone each year.
5. Pez was originally created with a peppermint flavor to try to get Austrians to quit smoking. The campaign proved to be quite successful in Austria. However when Pez came to America in the early 1950s, it didn’t quite have the same effect.
The company then started producing flavored tablets which got popular with American kids, and the rest is history.
