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"In many ways this is a tale of warning to anyone who thinks going into business with Pez Corporation is a good idea. After all if 1/2 million dollars business in one year will not get you some respect from Pez Corp, nothing will."
When you work your entire life to get ahead and something or someone reaches into your life to destroy everything like Pez Corporation did to me. That is receiving the Hand of God.
WANTED PEZ OUTLAW, DEAD OR ALIVE.
Pez Corporation wanted me DEAD. When that wasn't possible PEZ did the next best thing. Pez Corporation destroyed my company, ruining me financially. A unique method was employed. Pez Corporation destroyed the value of there own product, which by the way I bought from them.
I can hear Pez Corporation as we speak. Will you just Die already Pez Outlaw, PLEASE! I may only be the gum on the bottom of there shoe, but I ain't goin nowhere.
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. So you tell me, think I'm gonna be forgettin about this any time soon?
For 10 years I was a Pez Outlaw, watched and Hunted. Pez Corporation had a small army of volunteers reporting my every move. So I planned carefully to avoid notice, maintaining a low profile when buying. There is an irony here, buying was done low profile, selling was always high profile, very flamboyant. I hid out at the Raba Hotel when buying in Europe, only leaving when absolutely necessary. Cash was used to reduce the money trail. Meetings were quiet, often in the wee hours of the morning.
During my Outlaw years there were only three people I trusted, Kathryne Ann, Joshua & Mike Mitros. I always had to worry about what I said or did making it's way back to Pez Corporation. So I spoke in a vague sort of language that avoided being explicit. I never talked about details of my business on telephones.
I worried about repeat patterns of movement. I always kept track of cars & people who might be following me. On highways & roads I'd slow to a crawl if necessary forcing people to pass me. Walking I'd double back etc to force obvious movement.
The trap Pez Corporation eventually sprung on me was an opportunistic play by Pez Corporation, that cost me every penny of 1/2 million dollars. My dream project was the catalyst for Pez Corporation to destroy me.
My purchase of the Holiday Colors from Pez Corporation provided the weapon Pez USA had been waiting for. For 10 years I had eluded them, then with one move I handed them my head on a platter. All Pez Corporation had to do was commit Fraud n they had me.
The Holiday Colors were the trigger for first LIES, second FRAUD by duplication, third market manipulation & price war.
I could not compete when Pez USA sold the Misfits for what I paid for the Holiday Colors. Easy for them as they paid approx .25cents each for the Misfits. What can I say. I was an idiot for believing Pez Europe when I was told, Yes of course the Holiday Colors are yours exclusively. Many faxes were exchanged to confirm the exclusivity before I placed the order & paid for them.
Once I received the Holiday Colors & heard Pez USA was going to duplicate them. I sent all the faxes confirming exclusivity to Pez USA & Pez Austria. The fax machine literally ran for a couple hours late one night sending everything to them. So now you know Pez USA & Pez Austria both have thick file I sent them showing that I was promised the Holiday Colors had been promised to be exclusive.
Pez USA gave no response, just lies and propaganda about the Holiday Colors to PCN. Pez Usa knew everything that they said was a lie from the beginning. Intentional lies because like I said they had the documentation. I know because I sent it to them. So they knew the Holiday Colors were legit, yet told PCN they were Fake.
They knew I had been promised exclusivity because they to this day have in there files the faxes I sent stating it. Yet Pez USA broke the promises given by Van Melles. They also Breached the Implied Contract that the nature of special color variation states very blatantly on it's face by the words actually used. Special Color Variations. Who bothers to order Special Color Variations at a premium price, if the expectation is not that they remain Special & exclusive.
Pez Austria actually responded to my late-night hours worth of Faxes. Gunther Leitener himself faxed back acting as though he did not know me. Stating if Pez USA & I had a problem, basically that we should work it out. Acting as though Pez Austria had no part. Gunther had the Faxes because I sent them. Pez Austria accepted & fulfilled my order for the Holiday Colors. Pez Austria accepted the Payment for the order. Then almost immediately reproduced the very same items down to the last detail for Pez USA. So they were culpable by facilitating the Fraud.
Two final points here
My late-night faxes laying out the entire discussion that led to the Holiday Colors also detailed what I paid per dispenser. Which by no coincidence was how Pez USA knew what to charge per dispenser on there new website. Exactly what I paid wholesale to Pez Austria was Pez USA's retail.
The other point. If you as a reader or Gunther Leitener himself have ever wondered why I seem to have a bone to pick with Gunther in Pez Outlaw Diary. His response to that file of faxes I sent Pez Austria. I was desperate on the edge of a cliff pleading for a hand to save me. Gunther's cold detached response of Pez Usa & you need to work this out. That is why. Gunther you knew better & you knew what Pez USA was about to do. Yet Gunther you looked away & did nothing. Gunther that is exactly why you are prominently in the book. This I do not forgive. What Scott did I should have expected but you Gunther betrayed me personally.
I've been thinking a lot lately about Moral Equivalency. I think it may be the reason I did nothing when Pez Corporation first Breached the Implied Contract. I believe I did nothing because I felt I somehow had it coming after years of being a Pez Outlaw to Pez Corporation. It took 10 years of reflection to find my perspective. That and being financially & morally devastated.
What I have come to is this. If you are a bank robber or a car thief does that give say Walmart the right to cheat you if you come in there store to purchase something? Is it legal to hold up even a known thief at gunpoint? The answer is no in both cases.
Also to be clear. I bought from executives & warehouse managers. People empowered by Pez to do what they did. If Pez Corporation had a beef with my purchases they should have looked at there own corporate family values. I asked each. Do you want to sell? Here is money. I never stole any Pez, to the contrary all tolled I spent 2 million dollars buying Pez.
I may have been a Pez Outlaw but I was an honest Outlaw. I paid for everything I ever received. Besides even if I had stole the Pez, which I did not. One thing would have nothing to do with the other. Pez Corporation still would not have had the legal or moral right to commit FRAUD through Breach of Implied Contract with a client.
On the Smuggling. It was smuggling because I knew it was. Nobody except Pez USA had the legal contract to import Pez Dispensers. Unfortunately for Pez USA they were incompetent. They did not cross all the T's or dot all the I's. Leaving me way to many pathways for bringing Pez into the USA and that's generous. There were so many holes, it was like Swiss Cheese.
Again though. Pez Corporations incompetence did not give them the right to commit FRAUD through Breach of Implied Contract.
I had a lot of guilt about my business because it was built on navigating weakness, flaws & incompetence. I walked very close to the line & knew it. Which is why when Pez Corporation defrauded me I felt I somehow had it coming. It took Ten years for me to realize there is no Moral Equivalency.
Whatever I may or may not have done is not rational for a company to commit fraud on one of it's clients. Again Walmart would not have the right to cheat one of it's customers just because they knew the customer was a bank robber. There is no moral equivalency. One thing or action has nothing to do with the other. It's just rationalization of your behavior pez corp.
Pez Corporation has been hiding behind a rationalization of Moral Equivalency for over 12 years. Pez Corp you defrauded me out of my life's savings, $250,000.00.
The Diary is meant to be the story of what happened, how and why it happened. After 12 years of brooding I realized the story is what I have left.
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|  | $4.95 |
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| Batgirl Soft Head |
You would think people would jump through hoops for $2 million dollars, wouldn't you? I know I would, especially now. Nope it was I who had to do all the hoop jumping. When, where, what and how, were always controlled by the sellers.
Even today the people I bought from in Europe feel I have broken the rules by writing this.
In life history is written by the victor. I hope to impact that history.
A Pez Outlaw is Born.
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| picture courtesy of Rudi |
The clown Pez Racks pictured at the left were in my experience unique to Canada. I must have bought & sold about 18 of them. The Pez distributor for Canada had a heck of a time getting the stores to hang on to them. Stores would throw them away, give them away or sell them
After that first trip to Canada I attended my first Pez convention in Cleveland. Not to sell, strictly as an observer, to see what was going on. I became aware that these pez conventions even existed because of the little classified adds run by some guy called "John the Cool Pez Man Devlin". I had notice his little classified add of 2 lines trying to buy pez for about a year. I up to then thought "this guy is some kind of weirdo". Who calls himself "the cool pez man"? This guy has to be some kind of geeky nut. After that first trip to Canada I notice another add under his for the Cleveland Pez Convention. At the time there were maybe 3 advertisements in Toy Shop Classifieds concerning Pez on a regular basis & that was it for Pez. John the cool pez man, John Laspina & Dave Welch. I always noticed The cool pez man, I mean how do you not notice a guy calling himself the cool pez man, But this month there was a classified for a pez convention.
I decided to drive down for the Saturday part of the Pez Convention. When I arrived the first thing I noticed was that it was a very small affair. The main sellers or tables were David Welch, John Laspina, Sue Sterfeld & I believe this is where I first met the guy with the freaky name "John The Cool Pez Man Devlin". There were other pez dealers but these are the people who stood out to me.
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| From left to right. Me, Mary Anne Kennedy, John "The Cool Pez Man" Devlin and sorry I can't remember. |
My intention was to just observe then leave, which is what I did. Dave Welch appeared to be the big deal, the guy everybody wanted to be a friend of. The Coolest Kid in Class. Dave is a good friend, but I have to admit I'm never quite sure where he is coming from, until recently when I received a very nice email where he opened up a little & gave me the advice of a friend. (On a personal note: Dave unlike your experience, with me a verbal & faxed agreement/contact was broken. Things didn't just go south as things sometimes do. People took direct actions in direct conflict with known agreements, with the intent of ruining my investment. In other words Scott & Gunther directly & consciously reproduced the Colors with the intent of causing my investment to suffer from there actions. I will probably never think those actions were acceptable.) John Laspina seemed to be the guy who wanted everybody to like him, which turns out fine because everybody indeed likes him. Sue Sternfeld was the show, the person who commanded attention & was completely on her game. That freaky guy who called himself "the Cool Pez Man" Him I remembered. He was the most genuinely nice person I met in my entire involvement in Pez & a friend for 10 years. Through him I met & grew to care a great deal for Marryann Kennedy who for me was the mother of the hobby of collecting Pez. When I decided to put on the first California convention the cool pez man was there & helped in any way he could, asking for nothing in return. Thank you "John the Cool Pez Man Devlin" the hobby has always benefited from your involvement.
At that convention I did buy 1 thing, a box of Smurf Pez dispensers from Sue Sternfeld. Today I don't remember why, but I was so mad about something concerning this purchase that I drove 1 hour past my turn north back to Michigan. I never bought from Sue again, though I did sell a bunch of Pez dispensers to her, including I think a thousand dollar pez bubble man. So in the end all worked out fine.
After my first trip to Canada, my first pez convention and my first advertisement containing pez, I realized a couple things. There was a demand for pez dispensers not available here in the US and that this product was readily available just across the border in Canada. What followed was my Pez Outlaw primer for the European trips. For about a year and a half I traveled to Canada every month to buy Pez dispensers at Zellers stores. I went to every store in the Ontario Province (many multiple times), I know this because I had a list of all the stores. Before I was done searching for pez in Canada, I had traveled from Toronto to Saskatoon and later even British Columbia by way of Seattle.
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| These multiple piece head Tom & Jerry Pez Dispensers were common on the racks up in Canada at the time. Picture Courtesy of Rudi. |
This is where my life as a Pez Outlaw began. For one simple reason. You are not supposed to bring Pez Dispensers licensed to sell in Canada into the US for resale. Bringing them in required a great deal of preplanning. Where to cross borders, how to refer to them and how to refer to what you were doing. Different Pez Dealers handled the border different ways. Some hid the pez and flat out smuggled them in. Some shipped them in. I even heard of one dealer who used a drop site, though I never quite understood that one. I always preferred to hide my pez in plain sight, using friendly border crossing points. Using the the outward appearance of some crazy guy doing a nutty thing. Becoming that guy, the pez guy.
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| Merry Melody Pez Dispensers were aqlso common in Canada at the time. Picture courtesy of Rudi. |
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| The Rhino Pez Dispenser in this picture is the one that got me thinking about going up to Canada. Dealers at toy shows were selling them for $25.00 each, back in 1992. This got me thinking, "I bet I could sell a few hundreds of these at $10.00 each." I actually sold a few thousand. I purchase probably 500 cases of the eight different Melody Makers pictured here. Picture courtesy of Rudi. |
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| Some of the carded Pez I brought back from Canada. I was always accused of just being a dealer. Fact is I had a huge collection. Walls and walls covered in Pez. Plus about 10 Plexiglas Cabinets FULL of Pez dispensers. Which was separate from my massive inventory. |
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| Ria & Me at Pezamania 6 |
It was at toy shows While selling Pez in the early days that I started hearing stories about Europe & Pez Warehouses. I met a lady, I think her name was Maria, she whispered a story about a place called Kolinska in Slovenia. She said it was a warehouse, that had a store also, where you could buy pez. I also was told by Dwayne D. about the train trip he and his girlfriend took in Eastern Europe & how they brought back Silver Glow Pez dispensers. Feeling like I had enough info, Josh & I planned my first trip to Europe to buy Pez dispensers. I scraped together just under $3,000.00 & we were off. I really can't remember today if the first trip was Kolinska or the crazy drive through Eastern Europe of 4 countries in 2 days. Either way the game was afoot, shoe factories, border guards, crazy driving and pretty bad food.
Shortly After My Trips To Canada Started. I came out with the first Pez Handbook. These were always fun.
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sorry I have no images of Pez Handbook 8, 9 or 10
The Pez Handbooks were always printed in Black and White. Each Pez Handbook was approximately 30 pages in length. Handbooks were meant to be promotional material and a sales tool. Even though I had a $3.00 price tag on them. I gave away almost every one with in person or by mail sales. For most issues I printed 300 to 500 copies. The handbooks had stories, convention promotion and a price guide. The last 2 pages were always items I had for sale. Plus as many pictures of Pez Dispensers as I could jam in it.
The Pez Handbooks were alway the most popular Pez item I had for collectors. I was always being asked to include the latest issue.
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