Dispenser | candy:Pez Candy & Dispenser: Wegmans

In 1927 Austria, Eduard Haas III molded flavoring and sugar into little bricks to create what some say was the very first adult breath mint. The candies Hass offered were favored with peppermint, and he thus dubbed his sweeteners PEZ, an abbreviation of pfefferminz, the German word for the flavoring he used. Haas, a nonsmoker much offended by the habit in others, marketed his candy as an alternative to tobacco consumption with the advertising slogan "Smoking prohibited, Pezzing allowed." The candies, packaged in small tin boxes, remained popular in Europe for a couple of decades, but historians fail to report whether or not the product had any effect on cigarette sales.

In 1948, Oscar Uxa developed and patented a small mechanical box for dispensing a single PEZ candy at a time. A few years later, Haas decided to peddle his PEZ and dispenser in postwar America. At first, Americans ignored Haas's candies. Rather than abandon his efforts in the United States, Haas revamped the product in 1954.

Haas transformed his adult breath mint into a fruit-flavored-and-multicolored candy marketed to kids. The mechanical dispenser intrigued kids from the start: Haas fashioned a three-dimensional head of a popular cartoon character for the lid. Combining candy with pop-culture heroes made PEZ a sweet success among American kids. Kids took to buying PEZ in such huge quantities that the American factory has had to run three shifts of workers daily to keep up with demand. PEZ sells 3 billion candies a year even though PEZ USA does very little advertising.

For PEZ, variety sells well. The company has produced the candies in apple, chocolate, cherry, grape, lemon, orange, licorice, and other flavors. (Some flavors, however, failed miserably, like the chlorophyll and flower offered in the 1960s.) The dispensers also come in many variations. PEZ figures represent animals, holidays, monsters, trucks, and hundreds of popular characters from comics, cartoons, television, and movies like Mickey Mouse, Superman, the Simpsons, Popeye, the Muppets, Peanuts, Star Wars, Bugs Bunny, Smurfs, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Many of the figures come in several color variations as well. At any time, PEZ USA keeps about 60 to 70 different dispensers in production.