Hunting for the Holy Grail of PEZ dispensers

If you were a kid in the United States any time in the last 74 or so years, there's a pretty good chance at some point, you had a PEZ dispenser. But you probably had no idea the long strange journey that PEZ candies took, to become part of American life. According to PEZ historian Shawn Peterson, who also works for the company, the candies – peppermint candies, to be specific – were invented in Austria in 1927 by Eduard Haas III, who took three letters from the German word for "Peppermint" and combined them to make PEZ … and eventually candy history. "They actually tried to sell it as an anti-smoking device," said Peterson. "A way to freshen your breath, and an alternative to smoking, very much ahead of his time. And [Haas] had a lot of success with it, and this is how it was sold throughout Europe and other parts of the world." But when the PEZ company came to America in 1952, it was a failure. No one wanted these little mints that came out of a plastic cartridge. "Somebody got the thought and said, you know, we've got this new dispenser. Maybe we add a dimensional cartoon character to the top and we'll change from peppermint to fruit flavors. Let's shift the marketing to children. And it worked." PEZ dispensers were originally without character heads. Once added, sales began to pop. CBS News Did it ever! These days, PEZ U.S. makes some five billion candies a year, which are then rolled together, and paired with dispensers at its headquarters in Orange, Connecticut. …