PEZ Visitor Center is the exit to take off of I-95 in Orange

By Scott Benjamin

Fun Fact: “You’re Not Famous Until They Put Your Head On A PEZ Dispenser,” company slogan.

ORANGE – Elvis hasn’t left the building.

He is prominently featured in a display case, as Jimmy Fallon is photographed holding an Elvis Presley PEZ dispenser.

In fact, the King even does encores.

Goldie Hawn, Emmitt Smith, Alice Cooper, Dr. Phil, Huey Lewis and Dan Quayle are smiling as they hold their dispenser which looks like it was made from a photograph of “Elvis On Tour” circa 1972 when the King sold out four shows at Madison Square Garden.

How did that come about?

Sitting in the second floor of the PEZ Visitor Center in Orange, Shawn Peterson, who runs that operation and the company’s online sales, said a collector who has an Elvis web site contributed it. Peterson said it is just “speculation,” but the collector probably had access to charity events and brought the Elvis dispenser and asked those A-list folks to pose with it.

“I use it as space filler when I don’t have a collector to feature in that case,” he explained. “It has been up for about six to eight months.”

“[Elvis] was a very limited dispenser,” Peterson added. “When it was available it did well.”

Speaking of Dan Quayle: If you have manufactured sets with every president from Washington through Obama, why not a Dan Quayle PEZ head?

There is a museum named after Quayle in the town in Indiana where he graduated from high school, and he was the best golfer to ever serve as vice president.

“He was vice president, and we only did the presidents, and that ended in 2015,” Peterson commented in an interview with Patch.com.

Were the presidential sets popular, since the first 44 chief executives are now displayed at the Visitor Center?

“They were are the time,” said Peterson of the various sets that were marketed between 2011 and 2015

Since PEZ has had a corporate headquarters and factory in Connecticut since 1975 – even before ESPN - and a Visitor Center since 2011, then why not have a Ned Lamont dispenser?

Consider: Lamont is a Yankees fan, and after scoring a 13-point victory in his bid for a second term last November, the unidentified gubernatorial aides – the ones who play WIFFLE BALL each Sunday in the YMCA gym against the unnamed state commissioners – tell us that any day Strat-O-Matic will announce that after analyzing his statistics, Lamont will be named the hottest thing associated with the Yankees this side of Aaron Judge.

There are no plans for a Lamont dispenser. However, Peterson said Connecticut’s 89th governor shops at the Visitor Center.

“He likes the candy,” Peterson remarked. “I’ve met him several times coming in to buy a couple bags of candy. He has signed a dispenser for us that we have on display.”

That was in 2019, when he was accompanied by Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, who signed one side of a PEZ truck and Lamont wrote, “Gov. Ned” on the other side.

Fun Fact: On June 14, 2000, the Chicago Cubs were the first Major League Baseball team to host PEZ dispenser day at the ballpark.

Speaking of Major League Baseball: PEZ used to make dispensers with the logos for some of the teams.

Peterson said Major League Baseball is very “market driven. People in Kansas City are not interested in the Yankees. It made it a tougher license. It is regional interest. It limits the distribution and marketing. It was a nice idea. We’re used to national marketing and national sales.”

What are the dispensers that even Greenwich billionaire Steve Cohen, the owner of the Mets, would stand in line to buy?

“Santa Claus remains the number one,” commented Peterson, who has the title of Director of Consumer/Business Management for PEZ and literally wrote the book on the company: “PEZ From Austrian Invention to American Icon, which was published in 2016, plus, before that, a Collector’s Guide.

“It needs to be iconic,” he remarked. “Does it fit with our brand as well as theirs? We don’t do things to capitalize on the moment so to speak. We try to maintain something that we think it relevant now and hopefully two or three years from now and maximize your investment.”

“It is essentially the same product,” Peterson said of the candy, which was first made in Austria in 1927.

“How you stay relevant is what you put on the head,” he explained. “We can decide what is on a PEZ Dispenser. So it makes it kind of fun. You can take what kids are interested in and make you as relevant as you were 40 years ago.”

What else is popular?

“Disney and Star Wars,” said Chris Jordan, who in 2016 was named by the PEZ collectors as PEZ Head of the Year. She sells Pez Dispensers that are stored in her home and two warehouses in Kearney, Mo., not far from where Peterson used to live.

Peterson remarked, “Call them evergreens. It is something that has resonated with the public. I was a kid in 1977 and saw Star Wars and it is still relevant today. There is continued interest. It is multi-generational.”

What have been the most popular Disney dispensers?

“Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy,” Peterson related. “They have stood the test of time.”

“It is a longstanding business partnership that we have had with [Disney],” he explained. “They share upcoming works and tell us what their plans are for future development in some cases that will translate well to a dispenser, and we decide if that makes sense.”

“It’s a full-time job for people to figure out what is going to be on a PEZ dispenser,” Peterson said. “We have a marketing team that decides what the next licenses are going to be.”

Fun Fact: The PEZ dispensers are sold in over 80 countries.

On a recent afternoon, a group of shoppers are standing in the lobby taking photographs of each other in front of the large case of dispensers on display, the same way Gov. Ned and Lt. Gov. Susan did four years ago during their joint trip to PEZ.

Peterson began collecting when he was 20 years old - more than 30 years ago. Most of the pieces displayed at the Visitor Center are from his collection.

“When I started there were no books, no Internet, nothing about PEZ,” he recalled.

He worked at Hallmark in Missouri for 20 years, including stints in the distribution center and the archival collection division.

“I started asking people how to write a book,” Peterson remarked. The result was “Collector’s Guide to Pez: Identification and Price Guide.” It went through three editions.

“That book got the attention of the PEZ company,” he said.

“They [previously] were aware of me, but didn’t know much about me,” explained Peterson.

While at a collectors convention in Stamford in 2006 Peterson “proposed the idea of a visitor center” to the executives at PEZ.

In a phone interview with Patch.com, Jordan said, “His dream was always to work for PEZ.”

Peterson worked 14- and 16-hour shifts the first year that PEZ had a booth at the Big E, and eventually became project manager for the Visitor Center, which opened in December 2011.

Fun Fact: The first PEZ candy flavors advertised in the United States were peppermint, lemon and chlorophyll mint.

Jordan said that over the last 15 years, PEZ has “directed more things at collectors.”

“They used to not cater to the collectors at all because they saw us as a nuisance,” she commented. “Now I think they realize that we do impact their bottom line.”

Said Peterson, “That’s why the Visitor Center came through.”

Jordan remarked, “Shawn has been huge in the collector community and he has been innovative at PEZ. Special things they do now are specifically directed at the collector, and Shawn has been a huge part of that.”

“In the early 1990s it was 12 new dispensers a year,” she added. “Now you might get 12 new dispensers a month.”

“The collectors community loves the plastic toys,” Jordan exclaimed. “But, in truth, it is the relationships you make with the most wonderful people that you would every want to meet. These are the most of my friendships. These people are generous and kind and considerate. It is not cut-throat, the way it is with some other hobbies.”

She said the dealers set up their displays in hotel rooms as early as Wednesday.

“You go room to room to do your shopping,” she explained. There are also seminars on collecting.

Then on Saturday there are 800 people, all interested in PEZ, in the hotel ballroom.

Jordan said, ‘It is just overwhelming. Nobody walks by my booth and says, ‘I don’t like these things,’ “

Fun Fact: In 1993 PEZ was on the cover of Forbes.

What’s the difference between living in Missouri and Connecticut?

“The cost of living,” exclaimed Peterson, who resides in Waterbury. “It is far more expensive to live here than there. You’re paying for the location.”

“However, there are many things that you can do within a fairly short drive,” he related regarding the proximity to New York City and Boston.

Some economic surveys list Connecticut near the bottom in being business-friendly.

“It is a much more difficult state to be in business-wise,” Peterson acknowledged.

Yet, he added that PEZ is “ideally situated. We’re right off I-95. We’re within throwing distance. That highway has benefitted us many times with jam-ups and delays. People see the [billboard] sign and they stop in.”

“Summer is our peak time,” said Peterson. “Also, weekends and holidays, when kids are not in school.”

As with other attractions, the pandemic, “Kind of wrecked everything, since we had to shut down for a while,” he said.

Peterson commented that what had been 80,000 visitors annually has dropped to 65,000 to 70,000. Yet, he said he is confident that in the near future that figure will again reach 80,000.

After all, what other building hosts Mickey, Elvis, George W., Luke Skywalker and has a truck dispenser autographed by Gov. Ned.

Resources:

Interview with Shawn Peterson, Patch.com, Thursday, January 19, 2023.

Phone interview with Chris Jordan, Patch.com, Sunday, January 22, 2023

Phone interview with Shawn Peterson, Patch.com, Wednesday, January 25, 2023.

PEZ From Austrian Invention to American Icon, Shawn Peterson, History Press, 204 pages, 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...