COLLECT CALL

Sweet on Pez: the dispensers, not the candy

Dan Peffley displays part of his Pez collection in his Maumee home.

The Blade/Amy E. Voigt
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Dan Peffley displays part of his Pez collection in his Maumee home.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Collect Call is a new, monthly feature about people who have collections. Let us know about yours and send photos if possible to tlane@theblade.com or call 419-724-6075.

He was a reluctant collector, nudged into it by others who relentlessly added to the red Santa Pez he received as a Christmas gift in 1996 and set on his entertainment center. Had he dropped the plastic dispenser in his sock drawer instead, he wouldn’t have 1,000 of them lining his basement wall and more in boxes.

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"My friends started giving them to me and then all of a sudden I had 30 and I figured what the heck, I might as well collect them. And then it got out of control," said Dan Peffley, who works in Maumee as a financial planner.

Oddly enough, he doesn’t care for the candy.

The uncluttered Petersburg, Mich., home he shares with his wife, Kelly Peffley; daughter, Samantha Schultz, and Wilbur, a 14-year-old pot-bellied pig, provides scant clues that both he and Kelly are collectors — she’s got 80 boxed Barbie Dolls, and he’s also accumulated about 50 pieces of Foghorn Leghorn (the Looney Tunes cartoon rooster) paraphernalia.

"I think he’s the coolest cartoon character there ever was, and have since I was a little kid," he said. "I love his personality; he’s very sarcastic, very antagonistic."

Most of his Pez dispensers are organized by group and stand on two-inch-wide pine boards spaced from ceiling to floor. They’re behind sheets of clear Plexiglas, thankfully eliminating the need to dust. The vast majority are about four inches tall (some are half-sized), and reflect late 20th-century pop culture: Santa (some with eyes, some without), Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Miss Piggy (some with eyelashes, some without), Kermit the Frog, Big Bird, Hello Kitty, the Orange County Choppers, Shrek, Batman, Mickey Mouse and entourage, and the first five presidents of the United States. But of course, holidays from Valentine’s Day to Halloween are represented, Some, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sponge Bob, have identical heads but stems of different colors.

Part of Dan Peffley's Foghorn Leghorn collection.

Mr. Peffley’s favorite is also the most expensive: a Foghorn Leghorn dispenser he purchased for $150 on eBay, next to fellow Looney Tuners, which cost in the $50 to $80 range, such as Henery Hawk, Road Runner, and Wile E. Coyote.

Pez, a tiny, pressed mint, was invented in 1927 in Vienna by Eduard Haas as a breath freshener and was marketed to adults. The letters p, e, z, were pulled from the German word for peppermint, pfefferminz.

In 1948, a dispenser for the candy with a hinged top was designed to look like a cigarette lighter with hopes it would appeal to smokers. In the 1950s, Mr. Haas arranged for a U.S. distributor and when Pez didn’t take off with adults, he targeted kids by adding dispenser heads of Santa, a space gun, and a robot. The simple candy is made in Connecticut and Austria, and dispensers are manufactured in China and Hungary.

By the 1990s, collectors were publishing a newsletter.

Mr. Peffley hasn’t figured out a compact way to display scores of his items, many in original packaging: trucks, key chains, flashlights, watches, lip balm, lunch boxes, cereal boxes, and bobble heads. Some are a foot tall, such as the Hulk, a music-playing Charlie Brown, and a dog-treat dispenser. There’s a tiny Pez video game, a motorized twirler, and battery-operated cartoon figures that move forward to take a candy from the dispenser.

The collection, including a rack in his office, has spurred many conversations. Another benefit: it’s low-cost. He usually spends $1 to $3 per dispenser. Neither he nor Mrs. Peffley sell any of their items, and do very little searching online.

"We’ll be out somewhere and bump into one," he said. "We don’t really think about it. It just kind of happens."

Kelly Peffley collects Barbie dolls.

But it’s fun to seek when they’re traveling. A few months ago in New York City, they visited toy store FAO Schwarz and Mrs. Peffley found a Statue of Liberty Barbie.

In the American history vein, she has dolls dressed as Colonial, Pilgrim, Pioneer, American Indian, and Civil-War nurse Barbies. There are Barbies dressed as characters in the X-Files, Star Trek, James Bond, the Addams Family, and one who hangs with a Frank Sinatra doll. There’s a Wizard of Oz series, Barbie clad in a Curious George-patterned dress, Wonder Woman, and Nutcracker Barbies. Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and the Princess and the Pea, all pristine in boxes or cases

Her interest was piqued 15 years ago when her brother gave daughter Samantha a Barbie caped in orange satin for Christmas. She liked it.

"But not as much as I did. I didn’t know it could be that glamorous, that elegant," she said. "You’re not going to be everything, but Barbie can be."

Eighteen dolls are displayed in a multi-shelf case in their bedroom. Her favorites are three glittering Barbies dressed in elaborate gowns a la Cher designed by Bob Mackie: their price: about $200 each.

What’s the ultimate fate for their accumulations?

"We tell our daughter that’s her inheritance," said Mrs. Peffley.

Contact Tahree Lane at: 419-724-6075 and tlane@theblade.com.