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I enjoy the fight but I would happily take the win.
Every month I am reminded of this whole thing in the form of a bill that comes due, $2,100.00 every month. Year in, year out a $2,100.00 payment on the Pez Dispensers I bought from Pez Corporation in 1998. 250,000 reasons not to forget it or let it go. Only 20 more years left to pay.
Rules of the Road.
Rule #1. You must believe in your project with every fiber of your being. Your project is a success, all you need to do is the work.
Rule #2. For your project to be a success, the project must be the thing that excites you. The project needs to be your idea of fun.
Rule #3. When you take on or start a project, you must hit it, hit it hit it. Do not let up. Push it until it almost breaks, then push some more. You need to be relentless. Never give up, never give in.
Rule #4. Open your eyes to the possibility that what you think you were doing, is actually not what you were doing. Projects evolve, you must be able to recognize the change, be open to it.
Rule #5. Turn your deficits into assets. Poor no money, Ah but you have time, use it. Obsessive compulsive, a unique ability to focus like a laser on a project. etc.
Rule #6. Do not allow other peoples opinions of what you are doing to hold you back. You are a unique individual, that uniqueness may be your biggest asset. Try to be like everybody else, to fit in, seek & gain the approval of others, is a one way ticket to mediocrity.
Rule #7. Do things the way you like to do them. Try mimicking others or forcing yourself into habits or patterns that you find unnatural/foreign & you will not succeed. It's your project, from the beginning do it the way you like, otherwise you might as well be working for someone else.
Rule #8. Any project requires a great deal of effort, years & years of tedious work. Day after day, year after year of having faith in yourself. People are gonna think you are nuts. You must believe in yourself before anyone else can possibly believe in you or your project.
Rule #9. You need to hear what others are saying, yet not let it affect your resolve. Criticism is only to test your resolve. Be open to critique that helps the project, but do not let it stop the project.
Rule #10. Trust yourself. If you are wrong you can change it later. Second guessing yourself will only slow progress & kill the uniqueness of your project.
Rule #11. Don't be fragile. If a few harsh words are gonna curl you up with a blankey, you are doomed. Thick skin is required. To be perfectly frank, you need to not give a hoot in hell what other people think of what you are doing. Care about what you think about what you are doing.
Rule #12. Do not gage the success of your project by the big picture. You need to find small wins along the way. This is going to take a long time.
The Black-Market Smuggling history of Pez Collectibles is a rich & storied one. Embrace that history with me. It was fun & exciting. Half the Pez in collections today come from it.
Pez corp has always been a funny company. Pez USA was owned by Pez Austria through a drop box for years & may still be. The company itself & to many high up people have been doing a lot of dicey things for about 20 years. So many people who operate pez injection molding machines, manage pez injection facilities, run pez warehouses, head pez division or at corp have done hinky things that nobody says anything. Top to bottom enough people have sold pez dispensers without full corporate approval that nobody wants to legally open that can of worms. Yes some small fish are fired or pursued, but not anyone who knows where the bodies are buried. So as long as they get there cut or can't say anything cause you are aware of there pez adventures. It is usually handled in different ways. As Scott was handle for becoming to powerful & hacking them off for also being one of the very few honest guys. As they handled the problem that was me.
The company itself has done some pretty dicey things. The heck you say. Well for example the original King Louie, Balloo, Mowgli, Dalmation, Pooh, Thumper, Chip, Wyle, Road Runner, Merlin & Dumbo Pez dispensers. The company quit production for America so they stopped paying royalties for the characters. What you may not know is when copyrights are not renewed a brief limited window exists for the remaining production to be sold. Well these Pez dispensers were sold for years in areas east of Austria, and years later I was sold some very fresh inventory of Dumbo & Road Runner Pez dispensers. That's why I say gray area, because technically items are stolen, but if the company does not legally pursue it. Legally it is not. That omission of action on there part is a passive approval or acknowledgment of the activity. So things are handled different ways.
For those of us who bought pez dispensers in this gray complicated world. It is figured we will keep the secrets because if we don't we will be cut off, no more soup for you. Cash is king part 1. Roughly 10 pez trips x $5,000.00 small trips in the beginning. For the other 60 pez trips $8,000.00 to $9,900.00 per trip. At the time under $10,000.00 cash was the amount you could carry, without having to declare it. It always had to be cash with Europe. The only reason I know this to be true is one guy actually kept records. He stated at a certain point that this was my 50th pez trip & this only represented pez trips to do business with him. I also had about as many pez trips to Canada buying Pez.
By the very nature of what I was doing, it would have been more of a surprise if everybody I dealt with had been upright & honest. Some were good honest people, like everybody in Slovenia. When I bought there, payment was made by deposite in the pez corporate account. I also paid cost in Slovenia per Pez dispenser .23 to .41 cents per, nobody was skimming. Only the first few pez trips to Hungary were cost. The Pez Dealer from Slovenia is a good guy, he bought most of his product from pez workers & owners after the production of pez dispensers was halted in Ormoz. The Austrian Queen seems to be ok also, but I fear for her because she has out of necessity to close a relationship with Gunther (say hi when you report this).
You see several factors work against honesty & good behavior. Always cash only cash, so it is a cash business with very few records kept. The huge amounts of cash we are talking about, over the aprox 20 years this has been going on it has to be millions & millions & millions. My contribution in the worldwide black market of pez dispensers alone was in excess of 1/2 Million dollars & depending how you look at it over 1 million dollars. Example Canadian pez distributors were not supposed to sell to Americans, so a premium was paid & border crossings were tricky. Europeans were not supposed to sell Pez dispensers to Americans, so a premium was paid & border crossings were tricky. People who worked at factories were not supposed to remove or create special Pez dispensers from pez factories or pez warehouses, so a premium was paid. That so much money is involved does not draw the best of human nature out of people. Some people in Europe feel a degree of freedom from repercussions when creating or selling pez items to Americans. Large amounts of money tend to motivate people & skew facts.
For approx 10 years I worked in a very gray area, so of course a lot of , if not the majority of people I did pez business with had a loose relationship with honesty & truth. So of coarse a lot of the things or people I talk about are not going to sound the most positive or big surprise in the end it bit me in the butt. In my defense I wanted out of that factory/shop very bad. I worked with rolls of asbestos, while welding for over 20 years. I would have done almost anything to get out of there. So asbestos or working in a very gray area trying to take care of my family, not a really hard choice. So we come to why would I make what appears to be a nutty attempt at selling a book? Whatever it takes to take care of my family. You know Dave used to make comments occasionally when he thought I was behaving a little country or sappy. Well Dave that really is me.
Significant portion of any sizable Pez collection were illegally obtained.
Rare Pez dispenser color variations are usually the result of someone smuggling a dispenser Pez Corp never intended to be sold out of a factory. Sometimes created for that purpose. Reality being if Pez corp did not sanction the pez dispenser to be created or sold, it is stolen & technically illegal.
Massive amounts of Copyrighted Pez dispensers without a license for US importation & sale have been imported from Canada, Europe & elsewhere over the last 16 years. Pez dispensers smuggled into the US without copyright number easily several million over the last few decades.
An awful lot of no feet Pez dispensers found by workers in warehouses in the 1990s were smuggled out (stolen) of the warehouses by those people. I have first hand knowledge of over 50 instances of these types of thefts. Then sold sometimes in portions, other times in whole to dealers. Honestly where do you thing all that stuff without packaging really comes from?
First hand knowledge. Old molds in many cases have happily been reused. Blue Dumbo's to name one. Okay I will name a few others; C class trucks pink, yellow & orange cab black stem, Merlin, Old King Loui, Baloo & Mowgli, an off color Goofy with teeth, Pez Pal Boy & Pez Pal Girl. There are more.
Two interesting points about the above paragraph. The reuse of these pez molds was sanctioned. Blue Dumbo opened an interesting door. Remove the copyright on the back of the head & make him blue, skirt the need for the Disney license. Today in a few pez collections exists a few odd color King Loui, Baloo & Mowgli Pez dispensers. These pez dispensers were an attempt at the Dumbo plan regarding Disney. In the end the JB character change was discarded & pez dispensers were just run as is for Russia. WAY Over 50,000 Disney licensed characters were distributed after the Disney licenses had lapsed. I know this to be fact, first hand knowledge, I bought them. Also at least that much went to Eastern Europe & Russia after the Disney licenses had lapsed for retail sales. I saw it. If I had not bought what I could, that's where mine would have ended up also.
Licensing law is all licensed items must be sold by end date on license or destroyed. Not moved out of sight & quietly distributed to obscure markets. Pez Corporation intentionally moved this product to Hungary & Slovenia to skirt the Disney Licenses. MGM, Warner, Smurf Product etc was handled likewise. Look I saw this, so don't even.
Some of the items were recently made. I also smelled the plastic, trust me I know the smell of new plastic. When you open a box & plastic bag that unpackaged pez dispensers are shipped in. That new plastic smell is overwhelming, similar new car smell but plastic.
Other pez molds have been offered.
None of this is legal, yet in most pez collections all of the above are the more treasured dispensers.
If you I had it to do over, what would I do different? The obvious answer is that I would not have created the pez colors & skipped the pez color wars. Here's the not so obvious answer. I would have confined what I bought & sold to just pez dispensers.
No
pez rings, pins, paper items, lights, plates, banks, cars, yo yos,
inflatables, skateboards etc. None of it. Only actual pez
dispensers. Everything else was just a money drain with little if
any profit. Every time I diverted capital from pez dispensers to
other items, it slowed roll over & momentum. It was like
making a wrong turn & losing 20 minutes to a half hour on a
trip. Time just wasted or in this case, money wasted. Two things
kept diverting me from my goal. ONE. I have a creative side. I love
the creative process. TWO. I felt I needed all that other stuff to
flesh things out, have a better presentation.
With time, looking back I now realize all that stuff was just a big waste of time & money. I should have just stuck to the core project Pez dispensers. In the end it would have been a leaner but more profitable project. Yes the pez colors were a big mistake all at once. Though of equal importance & probably proportion were the non pez dispenser items. My guess is I probably diverted a total of $250,000.00 over the years on pez items that were not pez dispensers. The smarter thing would have been to leave that money in the core pez project & keep rolling it over. All that stuff just acted like a money drain.
Here is what I learned from the whole Pez thing. Don't let the event in your life or project change you. Be who you are no matter who you are with or in front of. Be a miser, take the money home, all of the money. Live as modestly as you can, as no project or event lasts forever. Win a million it makes you crazy. You have to earn a million & lose it so you know how to handle it the second time.
On the above item.
Notice the stencil / stamp on the hood of the truck. This item type was covered in previous chapters. Again why would a plastic molding company that molds PEZ into everything else it makes use a stencil. I believe this trucks & cars like this are made by Andre Zeich in Germany on an ongoing basis. Andre buys & sells closeouts in Germany. I bought a large number of this type of item from him. I know for a fact Andre has initiated production of many Pez type items. Coin plates, light fixtures & I believe cars & trucks with stenciled PEZ on them. Andre has a multi country distribution network through Pez dealers & collectors.
On the above item.
The molds for the above trucks were moved to Hungary in the early 1990s when the injection molding facility was opened in Gyor. The molds were used to produce the black stem orange, yellow or pink cab trucks for distribution in old Eastern block countries & Russia. Trucks using these molds are recognizable as the axles for the wheels are loose where they snap in. There are also recognizable crease flaws in the stem mold, that transfer to the stems. Last I knew these molds were still in Hungary & usable.
You need to remember, Times are very rough in Hungary. Housing foreclosure is high there also. Hungarians don't just sit around, they get out there & earn, whatever it takes.
On the above item.
On this truck specifically. Besides what was stated about these trucks in the previous picture. This truck is the tell, like in poker, the thing that give it away / tells the story. How many times previous to 1998 (Dave & Joes trucks) were colors other than black used for wheels/tires? Let alone Baby Blue, I mean "REALLY". Whenever you see odd colored C class trucks you need to bare these things in mind. I believe The stenciled Hauler is a fake made by Andre Zeich. I believe that many of the component, most likely the entire trucks for the C class trucks pictured above were made in Hungary after the year 2000.
Old molds exist, how many are owned by who & are they active is the question? Were the spaceguns & shooters part of this. Look it is up to you. If you care, try to figure it out. If you don't care, that is you business too & just fine. The listing and email just brought up a lot of old questions that have no answers.
Of all the dispensers I chased, the Frog Merry Melody Maker was the most elusive. In Canada, Slovenia or Hungary I always seemed to be late by a few months. I never was able to get much more than 50 dispensers in any of those locations. In total I had maybe 150 to 200 in ten years of hunting.
The all time worst Pez dispenser I have ever seen is that New Zoo Lion with different color ears. Usually say 1 purple ear & 1 tan ear. Often switched from side to side. Again that dispenser is the worst or best example of collector manipulation I have ever seen. From my point of view it is the worst affront to common sense I have ever seen. An abomination. I mean how obvious can you be & still think people will buy it. Every time I see one, I have a "Really! Are you kidding me" moment.
Woodstock with feathers Pez dispensers. Another Pez dispenser offered to me in Hungary was a Woodstock with black line feathers on his head. When I inspected a sample of this Pez dispenser, I noticed that the Black lines for the feathering had a dull look instead of shiny. Nobody would admit it but it appears that after I asked if they had any Woodstock with feathers Pez dispensers that people had actually taken the time to hand draw the feather lines with a black marker. I turned this Pez dispenser away also. Later when I let Josh do a pez trip with a new girlfriend he wanted to impress, they tried to pass the same Woodstock Pez dispenser off again. Josh called all excited after picking up the pez dispensers saying how lucky he was to get them. Boy was he mad when I told him about them. The Woodstock Pez dispensers were turned back once again.
The final chapter was written on these fake Woodstock Pez dispensers when the yellow stems which had country of origin (Hungary) were needed for some Smurfettes which had no country of origin. As mentioned earlier, country of origin on pez dispensers or packaging was required by US customs. Until I had the Made in Hungary bags specially made these switches were sometimes required. If one of the duffel bags held 4 boxes of Pez dispensers at least 2 boxes per bag had to have country of origin on stems to cover the 2 boxes that did not in each duffel bag. This was always one of the tense moment for me when clearing customs, before I had the Made in Hungary bags.
The other major problem was licensed characters like Disney. Again it required each duffel bag to be topped off with 2 boxes of generic unlicensed (Pez corp original heads) characters with country of origin. US customs always required 2 Tylenol & 2 Tums as this was always the most gut wrenching part of any pez trip, getting the Pez dispensers by customs.
The whole PEZ story is really about operating
below the radar & exploiting a very large corporate loophole.
* Seeing something clearly that it appears nobody else can see or if
they did see it for whatever reason did not exploit it to the max.
Yes there were people doing what I did, but only on a very small
scale. Until I came along, nobody had exploited the flaw in the
system to its breaking point. * Which required trying to stay one
step ahead of the game. Acquiring as many pez dispensers as possible,
as fast as possible, before my personal profile as a pez dealer
closed the window. Doing a very delicate dance with maintaining a
cash flow to continue buying Pez dispensers & not becoming
the biggest bulls eye out there to Scott.
In the end a rather impossible task & I stayed to long at the pez party. It proved impossible to keep a low profile while selling the amount of pez dispensers required to raise the cash to complete the pez project. If I had had the luxury of buying everything at once, then start selling. That would have been a different story. Unfortunately I had less than $3,000.00 to start the project with & I had to earn, to keep going. So the aspect of what I had to do was always in direct conflict with what I wanted to do. Maintaining a low profile became impossible & becoming #1 on Scotts hit parade, inevitable.
Maryann Kennedy once said I could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. I have to tell you it really was not due to any skill on my part. I went from being in the shop for over 20 years where I was always worried about my job, to the adventure of a lifetime & Pez money. So selling was easy & fun, becoming more like show & tell about this great big pez adventure.
Also you may think I bought pez so I could sell
it & make tons of money. Incorrect, I did not buy to sell, I
sold so I could buy. The money was only a means to the end, which was
having lots of something. At this point I wish it had been all about
the money. Unfortunately I have an estranged relationship with
money, in plain talk I do not value it as I should. Though a
warehouse full of product, that I value. Being somewhat compulsive
obsessive (a double & triple, lock or light switch checker)
lots or better yet all of something is what gives me a rush of
excitement. I actually have no use for one of something, but 1,000 of
something now you have my attention.
Selling product is more of a validation that I was right about it all & not just nuts. This book is the same thing, if it sells, I was right & the only way to know is to try. When you spot something no one else can see, there are two possibilities. You are hallucinating again ( and none of us likes that), or you are a handsome & pretty smart fellow. The only real way of scoring is to complete the idea, sell it. If it fails you're an idiot, but if it works you are a genius.
Selling is also a game all of it's own, one that the creative side of me enjoys very much. In order to achieve that one individual sale, a mechanism must be created. Individual mechanisms & an overall mechanism. With this book mechanisms are being placed within it to further the possibility of a posative outcome. I spend weeks at a time configuring these mechanisms. The size or footprint of the overall mechanism is very important, as a large footprint is necessary to gain the visibility (visibility is key in all projects) essential to success. The individual sale.
Money is just a way to make things happen
& push away problems. Pez money removed all feelings of
vulnerability & gave me the sense that I was finally in
control. Not true, but it did feel good anyway.
When money is scarce the project requires it be supplemented with work & creativity. Nothing is free, I have dedicated over 3 years so far to Pez Outlaw Diary, I intend to spend however many more years it takes. Every day I start out with, what can I do to make Pez Outlaw Diary more visible. Success requires dedication to the exclusion of almost everything else. That's the price, if you can't or won't pay it, it's not going to happen.
Even today as bad as things are here in Michigan,
I still do not regret leaving the shop & going off on my
own. When I worked for someone else my livelihood depended on them
& there abilities. Working for myself my livelihood depends on
me & my ability to generate ideas. Knowing that one idea
stands between me & the success I desire. Though it never
really comes down to just one idea, in reality it is tinkering with
the mechanism every day. Never giving up & never giving in.
Every day 365 days a year coming into my office & working
from 10:00 am till 7:30 pm. Finding something positive to work on
every day that moves things forward.
Where the pez project failed & eventually
collapsed was the decline of forward momentum. In other words cash
flow roll over. One dollar becomes two, two becomes four & so
on. Cash flow rollover rate stalled then started going in
the other direction during the pez color wars, creating negative
momentum. Also the last 20 trips to Europe should not have happened as
Pez dispenser cost was higher & retail for Euro pez was
lower. To many people were selling Euro pez on ebay & at
shows causing a price war. In short I had become to comfortable doing
the same thing. I loved staying at the Raba & the routine I
had there. The compulsive obsessive side of me demanded more pez. It
was a form of self gratification carrying approx 9,000 Pez dispensers
per trip home & adding them to the inventory. So I blinded
myself to the reality that profit margin from the trips was no longer
productive.
In my defense, had the pez color wars not happened, the pez dispensers from the last 20 trips would have actually been required to maintain the depth of Pez dispensers on offer. Though with the collapse of the pez colors those trips were only a futile attempt to shore up something that was broken. I think in some ways I was also afraid to move on. The fear of leaving something you know for the unknown, wanting things to not change.
The Following Pez Dispensers are just a few that Pez Money bought.
* Interesting thing about Popeye's pictured left and Mickey Mouse C picture just below left. The pipe for Popeye and Mickey's nose are the same piece.
At one point I had a section dedicated to ideas I thought Pez Corporation should employ to there benefit. Well truthfully, Who Cares?
That Pez Corp should possibly have an RV painted all things Pez like a campaign bus or tons of videos from there factories on there website. Kinda obvious so no much of a genious to state it.
Below is the refined list of the ideas I think make the cut.
Pez Idea #1. Pez stems should be shortened by 1 or 2 bricks. Partly because it would cumulatively save a huge amount of money for the corporation. Secondly it would make everything before it a new bracket of collectible, no feet Golden Age Pez, feet long stem Silver Age Pez, feet shorter stem Modern Age Pez & mini pez. Instantly Pez dispensers currently in warehouses around the world would be collectible.
The best example of a long & enduring collectible is comic books. One of the key reasons is they have been around since Jake was a pup. The other to me is as a collectible comics are categorized in 3 groups Golden age, Silver age & today's or is it bronze then modern. Whichever you get my point.
Pez dispensers are uniquely qualified for this type of classification system. Golden age pez are no feet roughly 1954 to 1987, easy to recognize & categorize. Silver age pez would be roughly 1988 thru 2009, footed pez dispensers with standard length stems. Bronze or present day 2010 forward. All you need to do is make a significant change to the pez dispenser stem. Change length by even 1 pez brick of candy shorter or longer. Also change the patten # code on the pez stem by adding a letter. Like say J4 966 305 , these two simple changes would dramatically change the Pez collecting universe in a very positive way.
The chaos of the last 10 years could be forgiven by pez collectors if a definable silver age pez group could be achieved. Then with modern age pez you could continue Willy Nilly as you please. No longer affecting your most loyal pez customer base. Pez collectors would finally be able to define there pez universe by collecting Golden age pez dispensers & or Silver age Pez dispensers. Leaving Modern age for new pez collectors or as they choose.
To the hobby of collecting Pez. It is very unlikely Pez Corp will do this. So why not within the pez hobby set a proclamation. The Silver age of Pez ends December 31, 2009. All pez dispensers released on or after January 1, 2010 are Modern age pez. Draw a line in the sand for all pez collectors & future pez collectors, by defining what the parameters are.
By doing this you could relieve the burden for pez collectors of having to buy every incarnation of the same pez dispenser. Let them stop. As a pez collector they can now just work on there Silver age pez collection, then work on the Golden age pez dispensers. Pez Corp is running a muck & destroying the will to go on of the average pez collector. I can't believe in the 90s people actually thought they didn't release enough, now the pace is mind numbing.
I'd also like to remind Pez Corp if you change the pez stem in a significant way Old Pez Dealers & New Pez Dealers would pounce on all existing pez dispenser inventory that remains from the Silver Age.
Pez Idea #2. For generic Pez dispensers run random color variations. As in when a hopper gets low just dump a bucket of another color in. Allow the change from color to color, these will truly be one of a kind Pez dispensers. Stop recycling purges, assemble & include them. Randomly insert all these Pez dispensers, again creating chase pieces. Stop worrying about what pez dealers sell these & other Pez dispensers for. As pez dealers bust there hump for you, this is there pay. Besides they usually spend most of it back with you on more Pez dispensers. You see those big sales are the high. Pez dealers are like addicts, they want to feel it again & the only way they can is by buying more Pez dispensers from you. Also nobody hypes Pez more than a dealer trying for his next big Pez sale.
Pez Idea #3. Pez Pops
Austria you burden yourself with the necessity of sending people all over the world ( 1st Slovenia, then Hungary & now china ) to find cheaper ways to make something (pez dispensers) that truly is not who you are. You are burdening yourself with an unnecessary task. Create a very small pez type dispenser out of 1 pack of pez candy with a character shaped sucker head that fits on one end of the pack of pez candy, "Pez Pops". Face it, pez dispensers were only created after the fact, to boost candy sales. Didn't it ever occur to you to just put a candy head directly on one end of the pack of candy. Pez dispensers are not truly what you are about, yet out of necessity they have become what you are about. With this idea you can free yourself at last from the burden of creating something that you only think after 50 years you must do. My guess is you actually make no actual profit on the pez dispenser itself. That the pez dispenser has become like the packaging a cost of bringing your true product Pez candy to market. After all Haas is a confectioary company.
Packs of pez candy by themselves have never sold well so pez dispensers were created to help sell the candy. Well if you put a lolli pop shaped like a cartoon character on one end of the pack of pez candy as a homage to your own product, I believe you could eliminate pez dispensers for approximately half of your candy sales. Cost savings would be huge, as each pez dispenser created runs probably .35 cents & you probably make no money on pez dispensers anyway. As opposed to a sucker heads cost of say .03 cents. You could even subcontract out the production of these sucker character heads.
With this new line of product you could remove at least two sales obstacles. Product placement & Price point. With this smaller product line it would be no problem creating pez packaging that gets you on the coveted candy bar & life saver shelves in checkout areas of stores. On price point, lets face it current pricing of Pez dispensers & candy are hurting sales. Eliminating pez dispensers for this new line of product could get retail of this new line down to about .25 cents.
I understand packs of candy by themselves have very low appeal, which is why you created pez dispensers. I believe the same objective can be reached at a fraction of the cost by simply putting the head in candy form directly on the pack of pez candy. These candy heads could be made out of Lolli Pop candy, little Chocolate heads, Gum shaped heads, Red hot Jaw Breaker heads, Sweet tart heads & even lickerish heads all mounted on one end of the pack of pez candy. Cheaply priced, Good product placement probability & No plastic at all. Talk about going green.
The real beauty of this idea is that you could eliminate most of the costly Pez dispenser injection molding facilities you are currently running down to say just the one in Austria. You could maintain a specialty line of Pez dispensers with candy from the facilities in Austria. While shifting the majority of pez candy sales to this new line. Think of it, eliminating 50% to 70% of plastic cost, cost of the number of pez molds you would need to create & maintain and expensive travel time to the four corners of the Earth working on production of pez dispensers that you probably only break even on. Not to mention the fact that each confectionery facility that produces Pez candy could actually contract out in country for the various candy heads required.
You could test market this new pez product line in the US & Hungary to get a feel for its potential. In Hungary I bet you Robby would know exactly how to flesh this idea out & run with it. By test marketing in the US & Hungary you would get a pretty good idea what global response to this new pez product line would be. Providing an indicator of how far to actually take it. You were half way there with the mini pez dispensers & actually it gives imput on acceptability of smaller Pez product.
Even if this idea caught on like a house afire, I would maintain a specialty line of plastic pez dispensers with candy as an upscale line for your product. If global pez sales hopes/requirements/projections could be met with the new line (Pez Pops), this line could carry the majority cost of operations & global profits. Remember cost of product & operations would now be reduced by approximately 50%. Leaving the line of what would now be the specialty line Pez dispensers with candy as pure gravy.
As the new line, pez candy packs with heads or Pez Pops are now in the checkout area of stores. Pez Pops would be the perfect impulse item located in the impulse item shopping area, priced at the perfect impulse item price. If at all possible .25 cents is the ideal retail target price for Pez Pops. Mom is sure to let little Jimmy or Susy have a Pez Pop if it only costs a Quarter. As a quarter is the new nickel. Product placement of Pez Pops now accomplished through packaging size, the pez specialty lines location in the store is no longer a burden on sales. Now days Pez dispenser location in stores is killing sales as is the price point. Though if Pez Pops are carrying sales & finding a home in checkout this is no longer a burden.
The cost of pez dispenser with candy that is killing you now at $1.00 to $2.00 could be increased to $2.50 to $3.50 no problem. Just increase package size along with the number of refills & poor location of principal pez product line is no longer a burden on sales. As this item is no longer the workhorse, Pez Pops are. So being located in the toy area actually becomes an asset. Where else would a specialty line be & at $2.50 it is one of the cheaper items here. Remember though you can not turn this liability into an asset without Pez Pops carrying the bulk of sales. Making something old new again requires Pez Pops to shine a light on just how special it truly is. You can't have one without the other, they absolutely require each other for success. You can't have a premium line of product without a basic line of product. The presence of one elevates the other. Also remember Pez Pop heads can be made out of Sucker candy, Chocolate, Jaw Breaker candy, Red Hot candy (for special characters like Tasmanian Devil & Yosemite Sam), Liquorish candy & Sweet Tart candy.
My further guess is Pez Pop Heads could also be made out of & in all of the flavors you currently make pez candy tabs in. By using the same compression process you use for pez candy tabs, I bet you could make the heads out of your own pez candy. The compression strike made when creating cavity in head used for mounting head on pack of candy. Here again I think Robby who runs the pez confectionery facility in Hungary could be most useful.
Finally.
I've had people contact me asking if I would provide contacts & basically walk them through how to do it. This is gonna sound harsh, sorry. I've been around doin this for almost 30 years. There are no end to the people who wanna snuggle up for free info. Oh you're different you are willing to pay. OK let's talk for real $250,000.00 and I will take you by the hand, lead you around and show you.
This question/request is very tiresome. Talk Talk Talk, show me for free or thinking $500.00 or whatever is real money. Doin is the only trick. Stick your neck out there & hope it does not get chopped off like me. Big risk, bold action, spend your last dollar, that's how you do it. There is no safe, comfort of your easy chair half effort way, but you wanna pay me $250,000.00 I'll take your hand & walk you around. Otherwise stop asking, It's boring.
Anyone who may have been offended or hurt by the previous comments. Quit being so fragile. The fact that you are reacting the way you are, says get right or forget about trying to do this.
Every month I am reminded of this whole thing in the form of a bill that comes due, $2,100.00 every month. Year in, year out a $2,100.00 payment on the Pez Dispensers I bought from Pez Corporation in 1998. 250,000 reasons not to forget it or let it go. Only 20 more years left to pay.
Let me share one final dream I have in my bucket list concerning Pez. Scott McWhinnie n I appearing on the same stage at the St. Louis Pez Convention for as long as it takes to finish going at each other concerning the Pez Color War. A cathartic event for all to gain closure. I think Pez Collectors would really enjoy the St. Louis Pez Smackdown. I know I'd get a kick out of it, as I believe would Scott. Of course one condition, only after Pez Corporation complied with Chapter 16 n accepted the $200,000.00 I'm offering or if Pez Outlaw Diary was published.
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Every month I am reminded of this whole thing in the form of a bill that comes due, $2,100.00 every month. Year in, year out a $2,100.00 payment on the Pez Dispensers I bought from Pez Corporation in 1998. 250,000 reasons not to forget it or let it go. Only 20 more years left to pay.
Rules of the Road.
Rule #1. You must believe in your project with every fiber of your being. Your project is a success, all you need to do is the work.
Rule #2. For your project to be a success, the project must be the thing that excites you. The project needs to be your idea of fun.
Rule #3. When you take on or start a project, you must hit it, hit it hit it. Do not let up. Push it until it almost breaks, then push some more. You need to be relentless. Never give up, never give in.
Rule #4. Open your eyes to the possibility that what you think you were doing, is actually not what you were doing. Projects evolve, you must be able to recognize the change, be open to it.
Rule #5. Turn your deficits into assets. Poor no money, Ah but you have time, use it. Obsessive compulsive, a unique ability to focus like a laser on a project. etc.
Rule #6. Do not allow other peoples opinions of what you are doing to hold you back. You are a unique individual, that uniqueness may be your biggest asset. Try to be like everybody else, to fit in, seek & gain the approval of others, is a one way ticket to mediocrity.
Rule #7. Do things the way you like to do them. Try mimicking others or forcing yourself into habits or patterns that you find unnatural/foreign & you will not succeed. It's your project, from the beginning do it the way you like, otherwise you might as well be working for someone else.
Rule #8. Any project requires a great deal of effort, years & years of tedious work. Day after day, year after year of having faith in yourself. People are gonna think you are nuts. You must believe in yourself before anyone else can possibly believe in you or your project.
Rule #9. You need to hear what others are saying, yet not let it affect your resolve. Criticism is only to test your resolve. Be open to critique that helps the project, but do not let it stop the project.
Rule #10. Trust yourself. If you are wrong you can change it later. Second guessing yourself will only slow progress & kill the uniqueness of your project.
Rule #11. Don't be fragile. If a few harsh words are gonna curl you up with a blankey, you are doomed. Thick skin is required. To be perfectly frank, you need to not give a hoot in hell what other people think of what you are doing. Care about what you think about what you are doing.
Rule #12. Do not gage the success of your project by the big picture. You need to find small wins along the way. This is going to take a long time.
The Black-Market Smuggling history of Pez Collectibles is a rich & storied one. Embrace that history with me. It was fun & exciting. Half the Pez in collections today come from it.
Yes most of what I did traveling & buying Pez dispensers was technically illegal in those countries. I broke a lot of rules if not actual laws. Why do you think I was so secretive about everything? Why do you think I felt safe after 10 years had passed to write Pez Outlaw Diary? Statute of limitations laws, that's why. An awful lot of fact fudging & little lies were used to get things done. Laws & rules were rearranged if you will allow me to put it in a sunny light. Where do you think the whole Outlaw thing comes from, that I adhered to the straight & narrow?
What I did could not have been done by following the law. I am also well aware of the fact that a couple individuals I did business with in Europe were caught doing similar things & prosecuted. The nitty gritty of it all is that only each individual person I dealt with & myself know these things and only I know the overall picture. Besides it has been ten years & I no longer travel or buy pez dispensers. Also any possible evidence is long gone. Funny thing is, it was when I tried going legit, buying legally from Pez Austria in 1998 that things went south. The irony does not escape me.
Did all the money go to Pez corp, sometimes but it was rare. Did some steal the product, yes I believe they did. Most odd color variation in pez collections today did not have corporate approval to be sold. Even the black Santa Pez dispensers were technically stolen as pez corp did not & never would have allowed there release. So technically every pez color variation not mass produced for sale by pez corp is a stolen pez dispenser. As are many rare pez dispensers still sold today. When a guy makes a special Pez dispenser & sells it into the pez hobby it is a stolen item. When someone finds or found a group or boxes of no feet pez dispensers & sells them to pez dealers. Do you think pez corporate sanctioned it, not very likely. One individual high up maybe, but it was not a Haas decision so it was stolen.Pez corp has always been a funny company. Pez USA was owned by Pez Austria through a drop box for years & may still be. The company itself & to many high up people have been doing a lot of dicey things for about 20 years. So many people who operate pez injection molding machines, manage pez injection facilities, run pez warehouses, head pez division or at corp have done hinky things that nobody says anything. Top to bottom enough people have sold pez dispensers without full corporate approval that nobody wants to legally open that can of worms. Yes some small fish are fired or pursued, but not anyone who knows where the bodies are buried. So as long as they get there cut or can't say anything cause you are aware of there pez adventures. It is usually handled in different ways. As Scott was handle for becoming to powerful & hacking them off for also being one of the very few honest guys. As they handled the problem that was me.
The company itself has done some pretty dicey things. The heck you say. Well for example the original King Louie, Balloo, Mowgli, Dalmation, Pooh, Thumper, Chip, Wyle, Road Runner, Merlin & Dumbo Pez dispensers. The company quit production for America so they stopped paying royalties for the characters. What you may not know is when copyrights are not renewed a brief limited window exists for the remaining production to be sold. Well these Pez dispensers were sold for years in areas east of Austria, and years later I was sold some very fresh inventory of Dumbo & Road Runner Pez dispensers. That's why I say gray area, because technically items are stolen, but if the company does not legally pursue it. Legally it is not. That omission of action on there part is a passive approval or acknowledgment of the activity. So things are handled different ways.
For those of us who bought pez dispensers in this gray complicated world. It is figured we will keep the secrets because if we don't we will be cut off, no more soup for you. Cash is king part 1. Roughly 10 pez trips x $5,000.00 small trips in the beginning. For the other 60 pez trips $8,000.00 to $9,900.00 per trip. At the time under $10,000.00 cash was the amount you could carry, without having to declare it. It always had to be cash with Europe. The only reason I know this to be true is one guy actually kept records. He stated at a certain point that this was my 50th pez trip & this only represented pez trips to do business with him. I also had about as many pez trips to Canada buying Pez.
By the very nature of what I was doing, it would have been more of a surprise if everybody I dealt with had been upright & honest. Some were good honest people, like everybody in Slovenia. When I bought there, payment was made by deposite in the pez corporate account. I also paid cost in Slovenia per Pez dispenser .23 to .41 cents per, nobody was skimming. Only the first few pez trips to Hungary were cost. The Pez Dealer from Slovenia is a good guy, he bought most of his product from pez workers & owners after the production of pez dispensers was halted in Ormoz. The Austrian Queen seems to be ok also, but I fear for her because she has out of necessity to close a relationship with Gunther (say hi when you report this).
You see several factors work against honesty & good behavior. Always cash only cash, so it is a cash business with very few records kept. The huge amounts of cash we are talking about, over the aprox 20 years this has been going on it has to be millions & millions & millions. My contribution in the worldwide black market of pez dispensers alone was in excess of 1/2 Million dollars & depending how you look at it over 1 million dollars. Example Canadian pez distributors were not supposed to sell to Americans, so a premium was paid & border crossings were tricky. Europeans were not supposed to sell Pez dispensers to Americans, so a premium was paid & border crossings were tricky. People who worked at factories were not supposed to remove or create special Pez dispensers from pez factories or pez warehouses, so a premium was paid. That so much money is involved does not draw the best of human nature out of people. Some people in Europe feel a degree of freedom from repercussions when creating or selling pez items to Americans. Large amounts of money tend to motivate people & skew facts.
For approx 10 years I worked in a very gray area, so of course a lot of , if not the majority of people I did pez business with had a loose relationship with honesty & truth. So of coarse a lot of the things or people I talk about are not going to sound the most positive or big surprise in the end it bit me in the butt. In my defense I wanted out of that factory/shop very bad. I worked with rolls of asbestos, while welding for over 20 years. I would have done almost anything to get out of there. So asbestos or working in a very gray area trying to take care of my family, not a really hard choice. So we come to why would I make what appears to be a nutty attempt at selling a book? Whatever it takes to take care of my family. You know Dave used to make comments occasionally when he thought I was behaving a little country or sappy. Well Dave that really is me.
Significant portion of any sizable Pez collection were illegally obtained.
Rare Pez dispenser color variations are usually the result of someone smuggling a dispenser Pez Corp never intended to be sold out of a factory. Sometimes created for that purpose. Reality being if Pez corp did not sanction the pez dispenser to be created or sold, it is stolen & technically illegal.
Massive amounts of Copyrighted Pez dispensers without a license for US importation & sale have been imported from Canada, Europe & elsewhere over the last 16 years. Pez dispensers smuggled into the US without copyright number easily several million over the last few decades.
An awful lot of no feet Pez dispensers found by workers in warehouses in the 1990s were smuggled out (stolen) of the warehouses by those people. I have first hand knowledge of over 50 instances of these types of thefts. Then sold sometimes in portions, other times in whole to dealers. Honestly where do you thing all that stuff without packaging really comes from?
First hand knowledge. Old molds in many cases have happily been reused. Blue Dumbo's to name one. Okay I will name a few others; C class trucks pink, yellow & orange cab black stem, Merlin, Old King Loui, Baloo & Mowgli, an off color Goofy with teeth, Pez Pal Boy & Pez Pal Girl. There are more.
Two interesting points about the above paragraph. The reuse of these pez molds was sanctioned. Blue Dumbo opened an interesting door. Remove the copyright on the back of the head & make him blue, skirt the need for the Disney license. Today in a few pez collections exists a few odd color King Loui, Baloo & Mowgli Pez dispensers. These pez dispensers were an attempt at the Dumbo plan regarding Disney. In the end the JB character change was discarded & pez dispensers were just run as is for Russia. WAY Over 50,000 Disney licensed characters were distributed after the Disney licenses had lapsed. I know this to be fact, first hand knowledge, I bought them. Also at least that much went to Eastern Europe & Russia after the Disney licenses had lapsed for retail sales. I saw it. If I had not bought what I could, that's where mine would have ended up also.
Licensing law is all licensed items must be sold by end date on license or destroyed. Not moved out of sight & quietly distributed to obscure markets. Pez Corporation intentionally moved this product to Hungary & Slovenia to skirt the Disney Licenses. MGM, Warner, Smurf Product etc was handled likewise. Look I saw this, so don't even.
Some of the items were recently made. I also smelled the plastic, trust me I know the smell of new plastic. When you open a box & plastic bag that unpackaged pez dispensers are shipped in. That new plastic smell is overwhelming, similar new car smell but plastic.
Other pez molds have been offered.
None of this is legal, yet in most pez collections all of the above are the more treasured dispensers.
If you I had it to do over, what would I do different? The obvious answer is that I would not have created the pez colors & skipped the pez color wars. Here's the not so obvious answer. I would have confined what I bought & sold to just pez dispensers.
With time, looking back I now realize all that stuff was just a big waste of time & money. I should have just stuck to the core project Pez dispensers. In the end it would have been a leaner but more profitable project. Yes the pez colors were a big mistake all at once. Though of equal importance & probably proportion were the non pez dispenser items. My guess is I probably diverted a total of $250,000.00 over the years on pez items that were not pez dispensers. The smarter thing would have been to leave that money in the core pez project & keep rolling it over. All that stuff just acted like a money drain.
Here is what I learned from the whole Pez thing. Don't let the event in your life or project change you. Be who you are no matter who you are with or in front of. Be a miser, take the money home, all of the money. Live as modestly as you can, as no project or event lasts forever. Win a million it makes you crazy. You have to earn a million & lose it so you know how to handle it the second time.
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| picture courtesy of Moser Photographic |
Notice the stencil / stamp on the hood of the truck. This item type was covered in previous chapters. Again why would a plastic molding company that molds PEZ into everything else it makes use a stencil. I believe this trucks & cars like this are made by Andre Zeich in Germany on an ongoing basis. Andre buys & sells closeouts in Germany. I bought a large number of this type of item from him. I know for a fact Andre has initiated production of many Pez type items. Coin plates, light fixtures & I believe cars & trucks with stenciled PEZ on them. Andre has a multi country distribution network through Pez dealers & collectors.
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| picture courtesy of Moser Photographic |
The molds for the above trucks were moved to Hungary in the early 1990s when the injection molding facility was opened in Gyor. The molds were used to produce the black stem orange, yellow or pink cab trucks for distribution in old Eastern block countries & Russia. Trucks using these molds are recognizable as the axles for the wheels are loose where they snap in. There are also recognizable crease flaws in the stem mold, that transfer to the stems. Last I knew these molds were still in Hungary & usable.
You need to remember, Times are very rough in Hungary. Housing foreclosure is high there also. Hungarians don't just sit around, they get out there & earn, whatever it takes.
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| picture courtesy of Moser Photographic |
On this truck specifically. Besides what was stated about these trucks in the previous picture. This truck is the tell, like in poker, the thing that give it away / tells the story. How many times previous to 1998 (Dave & Joes trucks) were colors other than black used for wheels/tires? Let alone Baby Blue, I mean "REALLY". Whenever you see odd colored C class trucks you need to bare these things in mind. I believe The stenciled Hauler is a fake made by Andre Zeich. I believe that many of the component, most likely the entire trucks for the C class trucks pictured above were made in Hungary after the year 2000.
Old molds exist, how many are owned by who & are they active is the question? Were the spaceguns & shooters part of this. Look it is up to you. If you care, try to figure it out. If you don't care, that is you business too & just fine. The listing and email just brought up a lot of old questions that have no answers.
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| Frog Melody Maker |
Of all the dispensers I chased, the Frog Merry Melody Maker was the most elusive. In Canada, Slovenia or Hungary I always seemed to be late by a few months. I never was able to get much more than 50 dispensers in any of those locations. In total I had maybe 150 to 200 in ten years of hunting.
The all time worst Pez dispenser I have ever seen is that New Zoo Lion with different color ears. Usually say 1 purple ear & 1 tan ear. Often switched from side to side. Again that dispenser is the worst or best example of collector manipulation I have ever seen. From my point of view it is the worst affront to common sense I have ever seen. An abomination. I mean how obvious can you be & still think people will buy it. Every time I see one, I have a "Really! Are you kidding me" moment.
Woodstock with feathers Pez dispensers. Another Pez dispenser offered to me in Hungary was a Woodstock with black line feathers on his head. When I inspected a sample of this Pez dispenser, I noticed that the Black lines for the feathering had a dull look instead of shiny. Nobody would admit it but it appears that after I asked if they had any Woodstock with feathers Pez dispensers that people had actually taken the time to hand draw the feather lines with a black marker. I turned this Pez dispenser away also. Later when I let Josh do a pez trip with a new girlfriend he wanted to impress, they tried to pass the same Woodstock Pez dispenser off again. Josh called all excited after picking up the pez dispensers saying how lucky he was to get them. Boy was he mad when I told him about them. The Woodstock Pez dispensers were turned back once again.
The final chapter was written on these fake Woodstock Pez dispensers when the yellow stems which had country of origin (Hungary) were needed for some Smurfettes which had no country of origin. As mentioned earlier, country of origin on pez dispensers or packaging was required by US customs. Until I had the Made in Hungary bags specially made these switches were sometimes required. If one of the duffel bags held 4 boxes of Pez dispensers at least 2 boxes per bag had to have country of origin on stems to cover the 2 boxes that did not in each duffel bag. This was always one of the tense moment for me when clearing customs, before I had the Made in Hungary bags.
The other major problem was licensed characters like Disney. Again it required each duffel bag to be topped off with 2 boxes of generic unlicensed (Pez corp original heads) characters with country of origin. US customs always required 2 Tylenol & 2 Tums as this was always the most gut wrenching part of any pez trip, getting the Pez dispensers by customs.
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| Bullwinkle Pez Dispenser |
In the end a rather impossible task & I stayed to long at the pez party. It proved impossible to keep a low profile while selling the amount of pez dispensers required to raise the cash to complete the pez project. If I had had the luxury of buying everything at once, then start selling. That would have been a different story. Unfortunately I had less than $3,000.00 to start the project with & I had to earn, to keep going. So the aspect of what I had to do was always in direct conflict with what I wanted to do. Maintaining a low profile became impossible & becoming #1 on Scotts hit parade, inevitable.
Maryann Kennedy once said I could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. I have to tell you it really was not due to any skill on my part. I went from being in the shop for over 20 years where I was always worried about my job, to the adventure of a lifetime & Pez money. So selling was easy & fun, becoming more like show & tell about this great big pez adventure.
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| Cocoa Marsh Pez Dispenser |
Selling product is more of a validation that I was right about it all & not just nuts. This book is the same thing, if it sells, I was right & the only way to know is to try. When you spot something no one else can see, there are two possibilities. You are hallucinating again ( and none of us likes that), or you are a handsome & pretty smart fellow. The only real way of scoring is to complete the idea, sell it. If it fails you're an idiot, but if it works you are a genius.
Selling is also a game all of it's own, one that the creative side of me enjoys very much. In order to achieve that one individual sale, a mechanism must be created. Individual mechanisms & an overall mechanism. With this book mechanisms are being placed within it to further the possibility of a posative outcome. I spend weeks at a time configuring these mechanisms. The size or footprint of the overall mechanism is very important, as a large footprint is necessary to gain the visibility (visibility is key in all projects) essential to success. The individual sale.
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| Zorro W/Logo Pez |
When money is scarce the project requires it be supplemented with work & creativity. Nothing is free, I have dedicated over 3 years so far to Pez Outlaw Diary, I intend to spend however many more years it takes. Every day I start out with, what can I do to make Pez Outlaw Diary more visible. Success requires dedication to the exclusion of almost everything else. That's the price, if you can't or won't pay it, it's not going to happen.
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| Frankenstein, Wolf Man & Creature Pez Dispensers. Photo from a group of these I bought from Dave Hall. |
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| Pez Pal Pirate, Police Man & Fire Man Pez Dispensers. |
In my defense, had the pez color wars not happened, the pez dispensers from the last 20 trips would have actually been required to maintain the depth of Pez dispensers on offer. Though with the collapse of the pez colors those trips were only a futile attempt to shore up something that was broken. I think in some ways I was also afraid to move on. The fear of leaving something you know for the unknown, wanting things to not change.
The Following Pez Dispensers are just a few that Pez Money bought.
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| A bunch of Pez Pal Nurses |
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| A bunch of Snow White Pez Dispensers |
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| Approximately 20 Display cases of No Feet Pez Dispensers Mint in Cello. Super Hero, Disney etc. |
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| Popeye Removable Pipe |
* Interesting thing about Popeye's pictured left and Mickey Mouse C picture just below left. The pipe for Popeye and Mickey's nose are the same piece.
At one point I had a section dedicated to ideas I thought Pez Corporation should employ to there benefit. Well truthfully, Who Cares?
That Pez Corp should possibly have an RV painted all things Pez like a campaign bus or tons of videos from there factories on there website. Kinda obvious so no much of a genious to state it.
Below is the refined list of the ideas I think make the cut.
Pez Idea #1. Pez stems should be shortened by 1 or 2 bricks. Partly because it would cumulatively save a huge amount of money for the corporation. Secondly it would make everything before it a new bracket of collectible, no feet Golden Age Pez, feet long stem Silver Age Pez, feet shorter stem Modern Age Pez & mini pez. Instantly Pez dispensers currently in warehouses around the world would be collectible.
The best example of a long & enduring collectible is comic books. One of the key reasons is they have been around since Jake was a pup. The other to me is as a collectible comics are categorized in 3 groups Golden age, Silver age & today's or is it bronze then modern. Whichever you get my point.
Pez dispensers are uniquely qualified for this type of classification system. Golden age pez are no feet roughly 1954 to 1987, easy to recognize & categorize. Silver age pez would be roughly 1988 thru 2009, footed pez dispensers with standard length stems. Bronze or present day 2010 forward. All you need to do is make a significant change to the pez dispenser stem. Change length by even 1 pez brick of candy shorter or longer. Also change the patten # code on the pez stem by adding a letter. Like say J4 966 305 , these two simple changes would dramatically change the Pez collecting universe in a very positive way.
The chaos of the last 10 years could be forgiven by pez collectors if a definable silver age pez group could be achieved. Then with modern age pez you could continue Willy Nilly as you please. No longer affecting your most loyal pez customer base. Pez collectors would finally be able to define there pez universe by collecting Golden age pez dispensers & or Silver age Pez dispensers. Leaving Modern age for new pez collectors or as they choose.
To the hobby of collecting Pez. It is very unlikely Pez Corp will do this. So why not within the pez hobby set a proclamation. The Silver age of Pez ends December 31, 2009. All pez dispensers released on or after January 1, 2010 are Modern age pez. Draw a line in the sand for all pez collectors & future pez collectors, by defining what the parameters are.
By doing this you could relieve the burden for pez collectors of having to buy every incarnation of the same pez dispenser. Let them stop. As a pez collector they can now just work on there Silver age pez collection, then work on the Golden age pez dispensers. Pez Corp is running a muck & destroying the will to go on of the average pez collector. I can't believe in the 90s people actually thought they didn't release enough, now the pace is mind numbing.
I'd also like to remind Pez Corp if you change the pez stem in a significant way Old Pez Dealers & New Pez Dealers would pounce on all existing pez dispenser inventory that remains from the Silver Age.
Pez Idea #2. For generic Pez dispensers run random color variations. As in when a hopper gets low just dump a bucket of another color in. Allow the change from color to color, these will truly be one of a kind Pez dispensers. Stop recycling purges, assemble & include them. Randomly insert all these Pez dispensers, again creating chase pieces. Stop worrying about what pez dealers sell these & other Pez dispensers for. As pez dealers bust there hump for you, this is there pay. Besides they usually spend most of it back with you on more Pez dispensers. You see those big sales are the high. Pez dealers are like addicts, they want to feel it again & the only way they can is by buying more Pez dispensers from you. Also nobody hypes Pez more than a dealer trying for his next big Pez sale.
Pez Idea #3. Pez Pops
Austria you burden yourself with the necessity of sending people all over the world ( 1st Slovenia, then Hungary & now china ) to find cheaper ways to make something (pez dispensers) that truly is not who you are. You are burdening yourself with an unnecessary task. Create a very small pez type dispenser out of 1 pack of pez candy with a character shaped sucker head that fits on one end of the pack of pez candy, "Pez Pops". Face it, pez dispensers were only created after the fact, to boost candy sales. Didn't it ever occur to you to just put a candy head directly on one end of the pack of candy. Pez dispensers are not truly what you are about, yet out of necessity they have become what you are about. With this idea you can free yourself at last from the burden of creating something that you only think after 50 years you must do. My guess is you actually make no actual profit on the pez dispenser itself. That the pez dispenser has become like the packaging a cost of bringing your true product Pez candy to market. After all Haas is a confectioary company.
Packs of pez candy by themselves have never sold well so pez dispensers were created to help sell the candy. Well if you put a lolli pop shaped like a cartoon character on one end of the pack of pez candy as a homage to your own product, I believe you could eliminate pez dispensers for approximately half of your candy sales. Cost savings would be huge, as each pez dispenser created runs probably .35 cents & you probably make no money on pez dispensers anyway. As opposed to a sucker heads cost of say .03 cents. You could even subcontract out the production of these sucker character heads.
With this new line of product you could remove at least two sales obstacles. Product placement & Price point. With this smaller product line it would be no problem creating pez packaging that gets you on the coveted candy bar & life saver shelves in checkout areas of stores. On price point, lets face it current pricing of Pez dispensers & candy are hurting sales. Eliminating pez dispensers for this new line of product could get retail of this new line down to about .25 cents.
I understand packs of candy by themselves have very low appeal, which is why you created pez dispensers. I believe the same objective can be reached at a fraction of the cost by simply putting the head in candy form directly on the pack of pez candy. These candy heads could be made out of Lolli Pop candy, little Chocolate heads, Gum shaped heads, Red hot Jaw Breaker heads, Sweet tart heads & even lickerish heads all mounted on one end of the pack of pez candy. Cheaply priced, Good product placement probability & No plastic at all. Talk about going green.
The real beauty of this idea is that you could eliminate most of the costly Pez dispenser injection molding facilities you are currently running down to say just the one in Austria. You could maintain a specialty line of Pez dispensers with candy from the facilities in Austria. While shifting the majority of pez candy sales to this new line. Think of it, eliminating 50% to 70% of plastic cost, cost of the number of pez molds you would need to create & maintain and expensive travel time to the four corners of the Earth working on production of pez dispensers that you probably only break even on. Not to mention the fact that each confectionery facility that produces Pez candy could actually contract out in country for the various candy heads required.
You could test market this new pez product line in the US & Hungary to get a feel for its potential. In Hungary I bet you Robby would know exactly how to flesh this idea out & run with it. By test marketing in the US & Hungary you would get a pretty good idea what global response to this new pez product line would be. Providing an indicator of how far to actually take it. You were half way there with the mini pez dispensers & actually it gives imput on acceptability of smaller Pez product.
Even if this idea caught on like a house afire, I would maintain a specialty line of plastic pez dispensers with candy as an upscale line for your product. If global pez sales hopes/requirements/projections could be met with the new line (Pez Pops), this line could carry the majority cost of operations & global profits. Remember cost of product & operations would now be reduced by approximately 50%. Leaving the line of what would now be the specialty line Pez dispensers with candy as pure gravy.
As the new line, pez candy packs with heads or Pez Pops are now in the checkout area of stores. Pez Pops would be the perfect impulse item located in the impulse item shopping area, priced at the perfect impulse item price. If at all possible .25 cents is the ideal retail target price for Pez Pops. Mom is sure to let little Jimmy or Susy have a Pez Pop if it only costs a Quarter. As a quarter is the new nickel. Product placement of Pez Pops now accomplished through packaging size, the pez specialty lines location in the store is no longer a burden on sales. Now days Pez dispenser location in stores is killing sales as is the price point. Though if Pez Pops are carrying sales & finding a home in checkout this is no longer a burden.
The cost of pez dispenser with candy that is killing you now at $1.00 to $2.00 could be increased to $2.50 to $3.50 no problem. Just increase package size along with the number of refills & poor location of principal pez product line is no longer a burden on sales. As this item is no longer the workhorse, Pez Pops are. So being located in the toy area actually becomes an asset. Where else would a specialty line be & at $2.50 it is one of the cheaper items here. Remember though you can not turn this liability into an asset without Pez Pops carrying the bulk of sales. Making something old new again requires Pez Pops to shine a light on just how special it truly is. You can't have one without the other, they absolutely require each other for success. You can't have a premium line of product without a basic line of product. The presence of one elevates the other. Also remember Pez Pop heads can be made out of Sucker candy, Chocolate, Jaw Breaker candy, Red Hot candy (for special characters like Tasmanian Devil & Yosemite Sam), Liquorish candy & Sweet Tart candy.
My further guess is Pez Pop Heads could also be made out of & in all of the flavors you currently make pez candy tabs in. By using the same compression process you use for pez candy tabs, I bet you could make the heads out of your own pez candy. The compression strike made when creating cavity in head used for mounting head on pack of candy. Here again I think Robby who runs the pez confectionery facility in Hungary could be most useful.
Finally.
I've had people contact me asking if I would provide contacts & basically walk them through how to do it. This is gonna sound harsh, sorry. I've been around doin this for almost 30 years. There are no end to the people who wanna snuggle up for free info. Oh you're different you are willing to pay. OK let's talk for real $250,000.00 and I will take you by the hand, lead you around and show you.
This question/request is very tiresome. Talk Talk Talk, show me for free or thinking $500.00 or whatever is real money. Doin is the only trick. Stick your neck out there & hope it does not get chopped off like me. Big risk, bold action, spend your last dollar, that's how you do it. There is no safe, comfort of your easy chair half effort way, but you wanna pay me $250,000.00 I'll take your hand & walk you around. Otherwise stop asking, It's boring.
Anyone who may have been offended or hurt by the previous comments. Quit being so fragile. The fact that you are reacting the way you are, says get right or forget about trying to do this.
Every month I am reminded of this whole thing in the form of a bill that comes due, $2,100.00 every month. Year in, year out a $2,100.00 payment on the Pez Dispensers I bought from Pez Corporation in 1998. 250,000 reasons not to forget it or let it go. Only 20 more years left to pay.
Let me share one final dream I have in my bucket list concerning Pez. Scott McWhinnie n I appearing on the same stage at the St. Louis Pez Convention for as long as it takes to finish going at each other concerning the Pez Color War. A cathartic event for all to gain closure. I think Pez Collectors would really enjoy the St. Louis Pez Smackdown. I know I'd get a kick out of it, as I believe would Scott. Of course one condition, only after Pez Corporation complied with Chapter 16 n accepted the $200,000.00 I'm offering or if Pez Outlaw Diary was published.
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Pez Outlaw Diaries & Price Guide - Pez, The 1/2 Million Dollar Fraud?
PEZ | Pez Outlaw Diaries | Pez Price Guide PEZ
Pez. The 1/2 Million Dollar Fraud, PEZ Pez. A Story of Fraud, Dishonesty, Betrayal, Envy and Greed.
Pez Outlaw Diaries & Price Guide - Pez, The 1/2 Million Dollar Fraud?
PEZ | Pez Outlaw Diaries | Pez Price Guide PEZ
