Pez Guy Obituary Dispenses Information, Whimsy

As tipped here yesterday in an exquisitely turned riposte from Awl contributor Katie Baker-Bakes, Curtis Allina, the candy company executive who brought the world the modern Pez dispenser, died recently at the age of 87. In case you haven’t yet read his obituary, you should. It is the most interesting article in the New York Times today.

Did you know:

1) “Pez” is a contraction of pfeffermintz, German for “peppermint,” which was the candy’s original flavor. Invented in Vienna in 1927, Pez was originally marketed to adults as an alternative to smoking. (A useless invention, it turns out, as improved 21st-century science now teaches us that there is no reason to not smoke!)

2) Thus, the long-stem, flip-top dispenser design was modeled after cigarette lighters.

3) There is continuing debate among “Pez historians” as to who came up with the idea to put toy-doll heads on the dispensers for the relaunch of the product, newly fruit-flavored and marketed to children.

4) There is a publishing company called Bubba Scrubba Publications. In 1994, Bubba Scrubba published a book called Collecting Pez, by Pez historian David Welch, who insists that no matter whose idea it was to put heads on the dispensers, Allina was the greenlighter. “The idea came from the United States. And for the idea to have come out of the United States and made it to Austria where it could be approved, Allina was the only guy who could have made that happen.”

5) Allina left Pez in 1979 to join New Jersey-based Au’Some Candies, maker of candy jewelry, Mega Baby Dips and the baldly derivative Wildlife Klik dispensers. (Though a portion of the proceeds from Wildlife Klik candy sales goes to the Wildlife Conservation Society. So that’s good.)