The candy isn’t very tasty, and the dispenser doesn’t make much of a toy, but somehow, Pez dispensers have become one of the most commonly collected items there is.  Maybe it’s because I’ve only ever seen the candy sold in gas stations, or maybe it’s due to a vague recollection of an old Married…With Children episode where the Bundy family goes on a vacation and Ed eats a lot of Pez, but I’ve always associated the candy with road trips, and my limited collection of Pez dispensers is like a kind of scrap book of my own travels.

Everyone knows I love weird roadside attractions, so of course I love that the Museum of Pez Memorabilia exists — it’s in Burlingame, California, just south of San Francisco.  It started as a simple display in the computer repair shop the museum owners used to operate, but their Pez collection quickly became the main attraction, and has been open to the public as a museum for almost 15 years.

Calling it the Pez Museum didn’t fly with Pez Candy, Inc., so owners Gary and Nancy Doss named their tribute museum the Museum of Pez Memorabilia, which they say satisfied the candy company — at first.  In 2007, when Gary built a nearly 8-foot tall replica of Pez’s snowman dispenser, he got his little museum into the Guinness Book of World Records with the world’s largest Pez dispenser.  The Doss’ museum is also said to be the only place in the world where you can find all 550+ Pez dispensers ever manufactured by the Pez company.

The museum store sells nothing but Pez merchandise, and the museum and its website are a great tribute to Pez.  And now, Pez is suing the museum.  Sheesh.  The lawsuit complains that “the museum deceives the public into believing they are operating under the authority of Pez,” and asks that the museum destroy the world’s largest Pez dispenser.  The company also expects the museum to turn over any profits it’s made since opening in 1995.  Ouch.

Hopefully, the museum’s lawyers can convince the Pez company to stop being such buttheads and maybe instead of throwing lawsuits around, say thank you for all the positive publicity and free promotion they get from the museum.  The lawsuit is still pending, and for now you can still see the Museum of Pez Memorabilia and the world’s largest Pez dispenser in Burlingame, California.  Hopefully they’ll be there for years to come.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Attractions, In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.