This is for the book rights to this story. Paypal payment signs the deal. *** When I use the phrase "How I Lost 8.5 Million Dollars
Selling Pez" it refers to the following. It took 20 years to be able to
invest approx 1/2 million dollars in pez products in 1998 from Haas.
Prior to that investment I had earned 4 million in approx 10 years. The
investment & all the earnings of the previous 20 years was lost
when Pez USA, Pez Europe / Haas duplicated that product in order to
destroy my investment in the product I bought from Pez / Haas. I also
estimate that in the last 12 years since the Pez Color Wars I have lost
an additional 4 million dollars earnings. This all would not have
happened had Pez USA, Pez Austria / Haas not decided to destroy the
value of the product they sold me.
This listing will run for 1 year.
Thank you.
*********************************************************
***** Now On With The Show *****
Three things surprised me while writing this.
The first being that in 1998 buying pez for what became the Color Wars I spent $471,950.00 on Pez dispensers. These purchases from Pez Corp Austria are detailed in the Color Wars chapter. The second surprise was that over an 11 year period of selling Pez I earned $4,530,899.00 in Gross Sales, before losing it all in the Pez Color Wars. Turning a $3,000.00 initial investment into a million dollar business. The third thing that surprised me when I realized it was that for approx 3 years by default I ran Pez USA. The reason I say this is for 2 to 3 years most of what Scott McWhinnie did was in direct response to what I was doing.
*** denotes new entries.
Preface
This listing is for the Book rights to The last Pez Handbook by sj glew The Pez Color Wars, How I lost 8.5 Million Dollars Selling Pez. Here's the pitch; I turned a $3,000.00 investment into a business that earned 4.5 Million dollars. How & Why in the end I lost it all ( I lost over $250,000.00 in the Color Wars alone) then sold the story on ebay.
Not in my wildest dreams while working in the shop, would I have imagined the adventure I was about to take. Yes in the end I did lose it all in the Pez Color Wars, but the adventure is not over. After all if it all had not happened, I would not have this story to tell & I love a good story.
I chose ebay to sell this story because honestly unless I can gain attention to this book idea here, it probably does not have a chance. By putting the process of writing this story here, I hope to generate interest in the book. This may seem an odd way to go about this, but I gave up normal a long time ago when this adventure began. Normal would have been to stay in the shop with 24 years in already & like 3 of my brothers till retirement. No I decided to take a risk on the adventure of a lifetime, doing things I had only dreamed about, not believing were really possible. If I fail, I want to at least have failed knowing I gave this effort everything I had.
Here's to
hoping that maybe a national news cast like Fox News or CNN reports on
how some crazy guy is trying to sell a book for $250,000.00 on
ebay. Unlike an image of Jesus on grilled cheese or corn flakes shaped
like Ohio, some attention to this listing might actually peak some
interest. If a nut is the uniform of the day to get this done, well no
problem. At 58 years old, balding with a pony tail & 8 inch beard,
I think I can pull crazy old man off, if that's what is required.
Actually I've been thinking that a picture of me in an overstuffed
recliner, legs crossed wearing a Hawaiian shirt & pink bunny
slippers would make a great cover for the book. Maybe the chair should
be surrounded by 5 foot piles of Pez dispensers also. Afloat in a sea
of Pez dispensers. Life
is to short not to take chances. This morning one of the people who
helped me put on the first California Pez Convention ( Alex ) died. For me this
is an affirmation that risk & stepping out of your comfort zone is what life is all about. As long as you are alive anything is possible.
Including a book written by sj glew. Now that the story I am writing here is slowly being read by more people who are not in the pez collecting community. How crazy this adventure was, is like a dream somebody else lived. To people not in the pez collecting community it must seem like a fabrication. All I can tell you is, at least 5,000 collectors witnessed most of this. As it all happened it was a topic of conversation on the Pez Community Forum, & also chronicled in the Pez Newsletter. Also, I have receipt for planes, cars, hotels etc & the tax returns for the years mentioned. One more thing, the only reason this story exists & has not been stopped by pez corp is that what is written is true. I have been painfully honest in writing this.
Many of the things I talk about, I would have rather kept private. Problem is once I committed to writing this story, how do I tell the story if I don't tell it all. So here it is warts, ticks & all.
The story begins with me at this computer remembering the events of the past 20 years.
Chapter 1. Personal History.
Let me start with a little background. I am an obsessive compulsive
with a very addictive personality. By the time I met Kathy (my wife) at 19 years
old I had already done the following. Used marijuana, Hash, Tar, LSD,
peyote & Morphine. Injected crystal meth, Dysoxine & Heroin.
With LSD it was always a race to see who could go crazy first. As in
tripping all day then dropping again when my friends wanted to. With
Heroin you either can't do it because it makes you to sick or you can
& never should have. My saving grace was I was to poor & honest
enough not to get addicted.
I am the second oldest of 5 boys, no girls. My mother died in my early
20s. My father worked for Fisher Body in Lansing. When I was 18 years
old he had a job all lined up for me, from which by the way I would
have been retired for 10 years now. I showed up for the interview
barefoot, needless to say they went a different direction. My whole
life has been like trying to fit a square peg (me) into a round hole.
There was a period of time when I worked as a Machinist at Campbell inc
press repair that I wore a straight jacket to work & a 1950s air
raid warden helmet at work as a hardhat. Yes a Straight Jacket the kind
you get in the rubber rooms of a loony bin. I bought it at a medical
supply company & cut it so I could wear it backwards like a jacket.
On the chest area like a row of medals I had 4 gold Catholic medals.
Symbolism or just acting out, you be the judge.
By the age of 19 I had been married & separated, also in & out of the Marine corp. I
joined the Marine Corp in 1968 to escape my life style. By 1969 they
decided it would be better if I went home ( schizophrenic with
something something tendencies) & remember in 1969 if you had a
pulse that was good enough. I had also been married & separated from my first wife. In & out of a
drug treatment program & held an audition at a mental hospital. When I
met Kathy I was a full blown alcoholic at 19 years old. We have been
together since the day we met (as in living together) , within 3 days
she smacked me up side the head & I haven't had a drink or anything
else since that day. It did not take God or a group to quit, just the
fear of a good woman. The first year Kathy & I were together we
slept with the light on. It took over 20 years to clear my head &
become a better person. It is not an exaggeration to say Kathy is a
very patient & good person. At
this point I'd like to tell you my hitch hiking story, from when I was
in the Marine Corp. As weird as using this story might be as an example
of my determination & resolve in different situations. My hope is that this story adds insight. I
decided here in the beginning was a good place to tell it. My hope is
that you will see that once I decide to do something as in write this
book, I have a sort of tunnel vision to the goal. Every day a few
inches forward, every day that much closer to the goal. Every project I
have ever started has shown me that putting forward motion bit by bit
on a goal, eventually accomplishes that goal.
So here is the hitch hiking story. In 1968 I decided one weekend to hitch hike my way home to
see my girlfriend. A rather normal thing, except on the way back to
Quantico Virginia I was arrested for hitch hiking on the Ohio turnpike.
I spent the next 30 days in county jail because I had also forgotten to
get permission from the Marines to go home. In short I did not have a
pass. Because I was detached for schooling at an army base it took the
Marines a month to realize I was gone. While in county lockup because I was technically AWOL (absent without
leave) they kept me in Maximum security. This arrangement was fine with
me as I had no desire to be in with the general population. So I read
books & slept, until a mass murderer or some kind of murderer
showed up. The jail needed my cell to house him. So off to general
population they sent me. Not pleased at all with this turn of events, I
took my first opportunity to object. When meal time rolled around I
took the tin tray of food being handed to me through the bars &
tossed it on the guard. Food fights on TV are a source of humor, in county lockup not so much.
I was placed in the hole. The hole in this jail was a 4 foot by 4 foot
metal closet type cell with a small metal stool in the middle fixed to
the floor. After a few hours the guard came by & said we will let
you out if you promise to behave. I asked him if I could go back to
maximum security. He said nope general population. I told him I liked
the hole just fine, after all it was a private room. For days they kept
asking & I just told them I liked it in the hole. Finally after
about 4 days the mass murderer was transferred out of county, so the
hitch hiker was moved from the hole back to maximum security.
The rest of the Hitch Hiking story. Before I tell this part of the story I want to establish a few things. I love & respect the US Marine Corp & the men & women who serve in it. I joined the Marines to escape my life, drug use & drinking since I was 15 years old. I came to the Marines already damaged goods. Also remember I was 17 & just turned 18 years old when this all happened. Please also remember that this was roughly 1969 during the Vietnam war. When I said warts & all I meant it, even parts I would like to forget. Problem is if I don't tell the whole story, you won't understand who I am or why things that don't seem normal to you, seem very normal to me. We are all the sum & total of our life experiences.
Finally after about 30 days maximum security in the county jail in Ohio I was escorted to my transportation back to the Marine Corp. You see my mother had been burning up the phone lines with the Marines to gain my release. When I arrived back in Quantico I had to stand before my commanding officer. He told me my mother had assured him that I was a good boy & that he was going to handle everything administratively. Basically he was embarrassed that because I was detached to the army for training, that my existence had fallen through the cracks for over a month. Resulting in my 30 days in county lockup in Ohio.
This also meant I had a "ONE WAY" ticket to Vietnam. The problem with this was I knew if the Viet-cong didn't get me, someone from my team might. I did not fit in & my team player skills have always sucked. I'm not good with groups, the indoctrination from boot camp didn't take. Unfortunately I was again thinking independently & challenging authority. In Vietnam this would have been a liability that would have gotten other people killed. Not being totally gone, even I knew what fragging was. So when my commanding officer asked me if I had anything to say. Not wanting to die at 18 years old, I indeed had something to say. After all why should now be different, I always had something to say or at least an opinion.
For the next 15 minutes I had a lot to say. I told him that while on leave after boot camp I had taken LSD & shot Heroin. He asked if I had done LSD before joining the Marine Corp? I told him I had, a lot. Which was true, as I remembered one time period when I had approximately 12 tabs of some blue concoction called purple haze or something. I remember vividly, rolled in paper like a pack of Necco's candy & yes I used almost all of them. This was just one time period & not counting Mescaline/peyote. Sheets of paper with a dozen or so drops of LSD & many other colors in tablet form. Yes sir, I had done a lot of LSD, including freaking out twice, which back then was defined as a bad trip. Like I said I had also shot Heroin for the first time while on leave after boot camp.
All this rocked him back a bit & I hadn't even gotten to the good part yet. Not wanting to leave my C.O. hanging I immediately launched into the rest of the story. This part of the story is also true. What can I say, except that I had problems & was a bit of a knuckle head.
I told my C.O. that I had been getting drunk & trying to cut my toes off. He asked me if I was telling the truth? Yes sir it is the truth. With what? A hatchet I bought at a hardware store. Where is this hatchet? In my locker. I was immediately placed under guard outside his office while two Marines went through my locker. After they found the hatchet, another guard was added to my detail which immediately escorted me to the base Psychiatrist.
The shrink thought they had over reacted. After hearing my story he asked me if I still wanted to cut my toes off. I asked him if I was going to be discharged from the Marine Corp. He said, yes you will definitely be discharged. Then nope my toes will survive. I was diagnosed Schizophrenic with masochistic tenancies. Today it would be called obsessive compulsive with a pinch of bipolar. Over the next month while I waited to go home my locker was inspected a couple more times. Not wanting to disappoint, I always made sure to have a hatchet in the locker for them to find.
So what is the point? Simple I have never understood people who can't commit to a goal. If you are willing to pay the price the goal is possible. Not guaranteed but possible. A goal though is definitely not possible if you won't commit to it & pay the price. I want this book to be possible, the price is I have to say it all. I have to commit 100% to the goal & that means not holding back. Telling half the story because it is more comfortable & less embarrassing is not committing to the goal. Besides 40 years later it is kind of a funny story.
I met Kathy about a year later, my story would be very different if I had not met her. At least two of my friends from back then are dead now, both related to drugs. After meeting Kathy within a month I walked away from my old life & all the people I knew in it. I liked her better anyway. It was a very good trade. You now also now understand why we slept with the light on for about a year.
One more quick story. After traveling in Europe buying Pez for about a year, where at the
time everybody smoked. I had the genius idea that I could start smoking
again but only in Europe. Well of course it didn't work. Within a year
I was again 2 packs a day. After a few years I quit again, using the
patch. Problem is like Dick Van Dyke & the gum, I still over 10
years later wear the patch.
Now that I have established my bonifides & you can see how
(obsessive compulsive with addictive tendencies) it made perfect sense
to travel once a month worldwide to find pez dispensers. The transition
was very natural for my personality type.
Collecting has taken on different forms. In the 1970s I began
buying/collecting toys & cereal premiums, later boxes also. My kids
rarely got the prizes in cereal. Being somewhat compulsive obsessive
this has taken on different forms. In the early days I used to drive
around Michigan looking for cool closeout items at toysrus &
collecting cereal premiums. Generally I was in an accumulating period.
In the mid 1980s this led to McDonald's premiums. Accumulating &
making sets, usually 6 of each. This also required driving around the
state because as usual I could not confine myself. I began buying all
the leftovers I could find. While doing this I noticed nobody was
paying attention to the cases & cases of leftover happy meal boxes,
so I bought all I could get. This phase of things peaked when Josh
( my son ) & I decided to do a convention. So we loaded up 2 mini vans full of
happy meals boxes & headed to the hotel. We set up our room &
overflowed into the hall. What we didn't realize was on rare occasions
a special group from McDonald would also come to this convention
unannounced & just set up to sell really cool stuff. When room
hopping started everybody thought we were those guys. Massive amounts of old
happy meal boxes, cheap, we must be them. Word spread like a wild fire
& chaos soon followed. The hotel actually tried to shut us down,
even still we sold out & drove home that night with 2 empty mini
vans.
Another project or scheme that I had going around the same time was
cereal premiums. Mailing away for the free toys or items you got for
sending in upcs. You know the limits they now put on backs of cereal
boxes, that was me. In a one year period I redeemed over 30,000 items
from cereal companies, mostly Kellogg's. After doing it for about a
year I realized there were no limits to how many toys you could send
away for. So I started buying upcs from the refunder ladies, by running
ads to buy them in there news letter. I also began working weekends at
3 recycling locations. Through these methods & a small inheritance
from my grandmother I accumulated a huge amount of upcs & original
cut off the boxes forms. At this point I put my plan in action, I spent
every night for months filling out forms & licking stamps.
The avalanche of stuff that started to arrive caught our little post
office by huge surprise. Finally they just started calling & saying
we have 5 bags of stuff can you come & get it? This went on for
months & months resulting in that line on Kellogg's forms that
limits how many you can mail away for. As I said, that was me. I don't
think until that 1 year period anybody had ever really taken it to that
extreme.
The big difference with the first 2 projects & the pez project were. With McDonald's & the cereal premium project my timing was perfect. I saw the
loophole exploited it & got out at the right time. With the 3rd
project pez dispensers, I saw the loopholes. Different Pez product outside
the US & warehouses with huge amounts of old Pez inventory. Well as
usual I exploited the flaw in the system & accumulated all the Pez dispensers I could.
I mean come on traveling to Europe once a month for years & years,
even I thought that was extreme. Where I fell down was, at the point
where the massive amount of Pez I had accumulated was starting to run out, I
couldn't let it go. It had become a life style
& the money, the money was just to good. Kathy & I used to call
it pez money, even today my frame of reference is. Well it isn't pez
money.
There was one more factor at play, I had grown to love these odd little
Pez dispensers & the relationships I had with the people who collect
them. I broke the cardinal rule, "don't fall in love with your
product". The dance was over but I didn't want to leave. If I had &
had put that that 1/2 million from 1998 into my next project, Party String Lights. I
can't begin to tell you how different things would be right now. Though
if I had, I probably would not be trying to write a book about anything
right now & you would not be reading this. So we will both watch
together & see how this all turns out. If I do sell this as a book,
I plan to invest at least half of it in Party String Light inventory.
With the rest I will try to make a small dent in the Pez project bills.
So I got creative. Have you ever heard the phrase, "Don't get creative"
Well the second part is, it will bite you in the backside. So following
form I spent all I had & all I could borrow on what would have been
my fourth project, Pez dispenser color variations. Me I thought this can't miss, people have been
spending several hundred dollars each on Pez color variations. They are
going to jump at $25.00 each & they did for a few months. I had
not factored in the things I could not control, Andre, Scott &
Gunther. The result were not pretty & I should have known better.
If this was ever made into a movie I think Robin Williams would be
perfect to play me. Somebody emailed & said George Clooney to play me, as to them it seemed like a Clooney type movie. It might be, but I don't see the resemblance. Though I will say this out front, if somebody wants this for a movie, they will find me the most flexible of people on everything about this story they have ever worked with. My best contributions would be on texture not exact content. The ticks & feel of it all. Example; at every point of movement here & abroad I had a personal pat down ritual. The pat down ritual involved; the leather Passport & plane ticket holder, large zipper wallet & two pockets each holding approximately $5,000.00 cash. As a person watching you would see a guy patting four areas of his body about 3 times each until the ritual ended, but nope a few seconds later four more pats just to be sure.
I always wore cargo pants, as they were the only type of trousers that provided the required pockets for travel. Leather passport & ticket holder, left front pocket of trousers. . When traveling the airlines provide paper holders for tickets. Problem is you need something that keeps, tickets, passport, bill of sale & customs forms all together. As this is a group of items needed frequently together at borders, when driving or flying. Large Zipper type wallet, right front pocket of trousers. Never carry a wallet in your back pocket while traveling, as it is just asking to be lifted. Getting a wallet out of a back pocket is easy for a thief, bump & gone. Getting a wallet out of a front trouser pocket, is much harder & you will notice a hand near your groin area. Your wallet is for your show money, the amount you allow others to see when paying for items while you travel. Make the amount in the wallet a believable amount ($300 to $400) so if robbed they feel they got your money. Yet an amount you could afford to lose & not damage your goal.
2 Zip locked bags containing approximately $5,000.00 cash each, usually in 20s & sometimes 50s. One packet per left & right leg pocket with snaps on pockets. Never open these pockets in public, only in a rest room stall or hotel room, to refill wallet. A thief would need to crawl the floor to get at these pockets & you would notice. While traveling your body develops a SPIDEY SENSE for these four areas.
For me it became instinct when leaving one area to another to do the ritual 4 pat, pat down. Get bumped while walking, do the pat down. It is also very important to be aware of your surroundings. Notice people, where they are & if what they are doing could potentially involve you. Don't be friendly, your friends are at home & you have enough friends. Be polite but maintain your space. I also minimized my exposure to potential problems by only conducting business or once a day walking to a meal. Other than that I stayed in my hotel room. In 70 trips I carried well over $500,000.00 cash in small bills. I was never robbed & never even came close to being robbed. *** One more thing about the 2 ziplock bags containing just under $5,000.00 cash each. As most of the cash I took in selling Pez at shows were $20 bills, most of the bills in the ziplocks were $20s. Can you believe it, this upset people who always wanted cash. In the last couple years I would have to change $20s for $100s at banks before leaving for Europe. Very annoying & to me it added an unnecessary degree of exposure to the whole deal. Here I am spending in total over 1/2 million dollars cash with these people, yet down to the smallest details everything had to be done there way.
*** I tell ya, I felt like Rodney Dangerfield, no respect. Now looking back after spending way over 1 million dollars buying Pez dispensers. I just can not believe how little control or respect over a million dollars buys. You would think people would jump through hoops for that kind of money. Nope it was I who had to do all the hoop jumping. When, where, what & how, were always controlled by the sellers. Man I had low self esteem to be controlled like I was for the privilege of giving them over 1 million dollars. Allowing them to act like they were doing me a big favor by taking my million dollars. If you get the idea things would be different now, you would be correct. *** Even today the people I bought from in Europe feel I have broken the rules by writing this. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You all were extremely well paid & I played by the rules. This story in great detail explains how that worked out. As the Pez Color Wars unfolded to a man once you all had well over 1 million dollars you did nothing. Wait that's incorrect, you did try to keep me quiet. Saying to raise a fuss was not cool. Andrew that was insulting. By trying to keep me quiet when I railed at Gunther, by selling the Hungarian Pass on ebay. *** Am I the only one who knows that old story about cornering a Lion. You always leave the Lion a way out or he will find one. I came to every one of you: Pez USA, Pez Austria/Haas, German Andre & yes even Andrew concerning the damage the Pez Color Wars did to my business. Generally I was ignored or told there was nothing that could be done. Everybody concerned hoping I would just fade away & it could all be forgotten. You all knew me, is that really how you all thought this would end. Now after 10 years of silence this book is my way out & we will let the chips fall where they may. If you want this for a movie, the specifics of who, why, when, where, how. That's your business, it's your money, I can when asked provide context, motivation & mannerisms. To me the ticks, mannerisms, outrageous situations & general lunacy of it all are what I could contribute to a movie. The art of how to drive on a sidewalk or through downtown Vienna (Wien) where cars are not allowed. Edicat for paying cops on highways in Europe. Oh yes & earplugs. While traveling I usually wore earplugs. Wearing earplugs helps you maintain your detachment from your surroundings while traveling. It helps you be more of an observer & less of a participant. I always preferred to move through it all as though I were invisible, only stepping outside my world when necessary. Recently at a family gathering I wish I had brought my earplugs. One last thing while in this area. I ALWAYS ALWAYS behaved as though I was being followed. When driving I always kept track of cars behind me. I would slow down forcing ones that were there to long to pass. When walking I watched the people around me, keeping track of faces. Never speaking about my business, when engage by a stranger while traveling or seated on a plane. Everything was always general.
I ALWAYS ALWAYS spoke in public or private as though someone was listening, especially on phones. Even at home Josh & I spoke in a code, shorthand when alone. We knew what we were talking about but nothing incriminating was spoke aloud ever between us. Besides these were things I did alone. Final note on this area. From what you have read in the previous
paragraphs, you might be thinking. This guy is a bit paranoid too. It's
not that I'm paranoid, it's just how my mind works. If something occurs
to me, my mind plays out the thread to its possible outcomes. On that
note aren't you making yourself a target with this book?
I suppose I am but for the following reasons, I really don't see a
downside. As far as legal action by pez corp. What was done in the
color wars by pez corp is indefensible. Also like my dad used to say "
You can't get blood out of a turnip". Translation I am flat broke.
Actually I would need to earn over $200,000.00 in order to be flat
broke. So generally speaking I have nothing to lose. As the cautionary
tale says, "Don't pick a fight with someone who has nothing to lose
& only everything to gain".
Finally being a bit paranoid, personal safety enters the mind. On this
one I am covered. Three of my best & closest personal friends are
Mastiffs. This is a very large breed of dog similar to Hooch in Turner
& Hooch. One is a Neo, one a Bull & one a Fila. Not to mention
Lou & Pink, who don't take a backseat to anybody. I sleep like a baby. These are very good dogs & I
love them very much.
So for all of these reasons even a paranoid person can feel comfortable
speaking up. My goal is to tell the truth without fear & in this
book that is precisely what I will do. Besides I believe you will
forgive me a little paranoia after Pez Corp in effect wiped out over 20
years of my life. Over 20 years worth of work erased.
This book is not meant to be vindictive or mean spirited. Simply a
story of what happened, how & why it happened. A modern
day tale of David vs Goliath mixed with Catch Me if You Can. After Pez
Corp took everything I had, the one thing left was the story. After 10
years of brooding I realized the story is what I have left to sell.
In life history is written by the victor. This book is my effort to impact that history.
Chapter 2. The Pez Color Wars
The Pez Color Wars part 1. Within these writings I refer to the Pez Color Wars. What this phrase represents is a 2 to 3 year period where my
involvement in buying & selling Pez dispensers became an open conflict with
Scott McWhinnie, the guy who ran Pez USA at that time. For years I had been a
thorn in his back side, that was just out of reach for him to remove.
It was not until I contracted with Pez Austria/Haas for just under 20 exclusive special Pez color
variations & approx 8 different Crystal Pez, that he finally saw
his opening. The Pez Color Wars, are the time period when I received these
dispensers, started selling them & Scott reproduced most of them
& started selling them also. The Pez Color Wars refers to the clash of
that product in the collector arena & how that battle for sales
affected both of us.
By contracting for such a large group of Pez dispensers from Haas
at a very high price per dispenser. I became vulnerable to attack by Scott
McWhinnie, as in doing this project I had tied up all cash on hand &
all I could borrow. All Scott had to do was, get samples of my product, send them to Haas & place the order to seal my
destruction.
The Pez Color Wars part 2. Black Santa Pez Dispenser. In reality the Pez Color Wars may
actually have started almost on day 1 on my first trip to Ormoz. As it
was there when Marcos gave me that first Black Santa Pez dispenser that the wheels
started turning in my head to create color variations. It was also with
the sale of that Black Santa Pez dispenser that my behind first appeared on Scott's
radar.
As a point of interest, possibly to anyone who reads this story. The Black Santa Pez dispenser is my all time favorite Pez dispenser. For me it is the best & most prized dispenser I ever owned and at one time or another I owned most. I loved this dispenser more than; Make a Face, Mr Majestic, Cocoa Marsh, Sparefrow, Mary Poppins, Bozo, Casper, Bullwinkle etc. I owned them all. The Black Santa Pez dispenser was my most prized. Second was Psycho Lucy. These Two Dispensers are, one actually more rare than the rest & two have better back stories. There are at least 500 plus of the others for sale or in collections & less than 300 of Black Santa or Psycho Lucy. These two dispensers are even more rare than the Owl Melody Maker which numbers well over 300. My guess is 1200 to 1500 Owl MMM exist if not more. Green Hornets number in the thousands. One dealer of Green Hornets has sold hundreds & offered hundreds more.
You know what would actually be very interesting in an effort to rank dispensers in rarity. If an online census was taken for what are considered "RARE" Pez Dispensers. My personal feelings are "RARE" Pez dispensers have never been ranked properly. What there are actually tons of for years have been thought of as rare & priced accordingly. When in reality something like the Black Santa & Psycho Lucy both of whom were not a one off. Both had an approved small production run each of approx 300, in actual fact they are probably the most rare Pez dispensers that ever actually saw a production run.
Marcos first created the Black Santa Pez dispenser with the thought process that some
children in America might like an accurate representation of Santa for
them. This was his Job to create & propose various Pez dispenser ideas. Several
different samples were produced by him & sent around the
corporation to see if others agreed. Which is why other Black Santa Pez dispensers
have been bought from other locations than Ormoz. The feedback &
this may shock you, was it was to controversial. I honestly believe
they felt that the majority customer base would be offended. I don't
know, possibly this may have been the case in 1990 when the project was
first proposed by Marcos. Though surely today in 2009 this is not the
case & to me it is long over due.
For me Marcos was a visionary. There were at least 3 versions of the
Black Santa Pez dispenser from the early 90s, & this was where that spark that
later became the Pez Color Wars first kindled.
Although it was the Pink Rhino MMM Pez dispenser that was the actual trigger &
when I decided to actually do the project. If I remember right John the
cool pez man Devlin was going to pay about $500.00 for this item. I had
been talking to German Andre about this idea by then for a while, but
when John was ready to pay that kind of money I decided the project was
a go. My logic was surely people who till then had been paying at
minimum several hundred dollars each for Pez color variations would jump at
$25.00 each. With how much I had to invest to get them & how much
each one cost $25.00 was what I needed. This was also a fraction of
what people paid for colors prior to the arrival of mine.
What I ask you to understand here is. Yes $25.00 each was over 100%
profit per Pez dispenser. I had to buy approx 1/2 million dollars worth of pez items
as part of the overall package with the pez color project. Had things gone
as planned, it would have taken 5 years at least to sell it all, which
meant tying up half a million dollars for up to 5 years. Which meant
interrupting cash flow & the roll over rate of capital. Plus at
that point $150,000.00 of it was borrowed using my companies line of
credit. Not to mention the cost of operating my pez business, which was
very high. So for all these reasons $25.00 each was the number required
for a five year investment. When $25.00 turned into $10.00 then $5.00
& finally $2.00 to $4.00 per pez dispenser, well you can see how things kinda
went south at the speed of light. The Pez Color Wars part 3. Who & Why. The
product bought for the Pez Color project & the product I was required
to buy from German Andre in order to have the privilege of buying the
pez colors I desired. The
fact that the product bought during the pez color wars totaled $471,950.00
& that in the end I lost $250,000.00 shows how severe the damage
actually was.
Confessions Time Again. Yes it bothers me that people call these Pez
dispensers The Misfits. Let me ask you, if you spent 1/2 million
overall to create something wouldn't it annoy you if people refused to
call it by the name you gave it. If Scott McWhinnie had actually come
up with these pez dispenser ideas then fine call them Misfits, but he did not. His
production was the equivalent of the Clone Wars. They were copies,
duplicates, posers, wanna bees, stand ins any name you want, but what
they were not were original. Since when do we call an original product
by the name of the copy. I
paid with the end of my company & the end of my reputation for the
original Pez Holiday colors & Pez Crystals. As big a deal as it would be
if Pez Make A Face were copied. I never understood why it never seemed to
bother Pez collectors that the Pez Holiday Colors were copied.
The Pez Holiday Colors project & the Crystal project were the first use of Glow in the Dark
Plastic, Crystals (clear plastic) & pez color variations in large
quantity. It had never even occurred to Pez Corp to make dispensers
using Glow in the Dark or Clear Plastic prior to my pez dispensers.
Here is the list of Pez dispensers I bought in 1998 for approximately
1/2 million dollars which includes the Pez Holiday Colors & there real
names. This list is the entire group of product bought from German
Andre / Pez Austria & is the principal product involved in the
pez color wars. $21,100.00 for One Shipping
Container full of Pez Body parts. This was the 105,500 carded pez body parts I
was forced to buy as a precondition to getting the pez colors produced. I
hated this deal, I think I paid 20cents each. In the end it was one of
the smarter things I was forced to buy in the pez color project. I gave them away as inducements to buy at certain dollar levels & elevated
pez sales quite a bit. Also face it at a quarter each in the end I was not
going to lose money. So yeah even though forced to buy them I came out
ok on these. I could have moved double the amount I bought.
Mex-Tex Pez dispenser 3,060 pieces. This Pez dispenser was done with a Tan face so it
could be the first Hispanic Santa. I was reluctant at the time to go
with another black Santa Pez dispenser out of deference to the ones that had preceded
it. Today the decision would be different I would have done Black head
glow in the dark hat & beard. The Tan face was half hearted I
should have made him the way I really wanted to. Diablo Pez dispenser 3,060 pieces. Black Skull. Just a no brainer, the name & the color.
Jaundice Witch Pez dispenser 3,060 pieces. Yellow head, white hat, brown hair Witch. Almost a good
idea. Original concept being that naturally an old witch would have
jaundice color skin.
Mex-Tex Pez dispensers, Diablo Pez dispensers & Jaundice Witch Pez dispensers. Total cost $43,230.00
3,060 pieces Orange Snowman Pez dispensers. no great shakes can't even remember what I called it.
*** I now realize from my notes that this one was German Andres idea.
At that moment I was at a loss, he suggested it & I just said ok
whatever.***
26,016 Santa Play World Pez
28,000 more Pez body parts
1872 Psych Eyes Pez dispensers
o snowman, santa pw, more pez bp & psych eyes Total cost $36,000.00
1,050 Peter Pez coin plates Total cost $5,250 2,160 Pez Aral Gas Play Worlds Yellow Hair 2,160 Pez Aral Gas Play Worlds Red Hair 205 more Psych Eyes Pez dispensers
1,728 of original 4 color Pez dispensers. That I was told was "production over run"
& if I didn't buy would be sold elsewhere. Actually what was left
of Andre's production, that he wanted to get rid of after grabbing all
the quick sales he could behind my back.
Pez Arals, Psychs & lot of 4 loose colors Total cost $26,000.00 11,520 of 4 different Glow in dark Ghosts Pez dispensers 2,880 Gargomel Pez dispensers Pez Glow Ghosts & Gargomels Total cost $24,480.00
3,456 pieces Detys Pez dispensers. Don't Eat the Yellow Snow. No regrets yellow head
snowman with a comic back story done in initials. He was perfection.
3,456 pieces VooDoo Mama Pez dispensers. Black head, Orange hat, White hair Witch. Again no regrets she was awesome.
3,456 pieces
David W. Pez dispensers. Kinda weak. Brown face lion meant to bring reality to the
dispenser. Should have done a different character for this one, yellow
witch & orange snowman. Like Pez Pal boy & Pez Pal Girl in Black. The
only good thing about this dispenser is it's name, an homage to David
Welch & his contribution to the hobby of collecting pez. All Pez price
guides really need to stop using the carpetbagger name misfit lion
& call it by it's correct name. David W.
3,456 pieces Pinky Pez dispensers. Named after the Pink Elephants a drunk might see. Dark nose because he has a snoot full. Detys, VooDoo, David & Pinky Pez dispensers Total cost $55,296.00
1,236 each of 4 Different Shell
Gas Pez Pal, Gold, Blond, Gray & Orange Hair. This was
German Andre getting creative. Lamely using the gimmick of different
colors of hair like it was a huge deal. Still I was forced to buy this also as a precondition to getting the Pez colors produced. Total cost $32,136.00
2,361 pieces Buyout
of loose Pez Colors. 248 Mex-tex Pez dispensers, 302 Diablo Pez dispensers, 177 Y Witch Pez dispensers, 284 O snowman Pez dispensers,
280 Pinky Pez dispensers, 309 David Pez dispensers, 389 VooDoo Pez dispensers & 372 Detys Pez dispensers all loose. From German
Andre. A very large wooden crate of loose
Pez colors, Andre (the Snake) had produced on the side & was selling
behind my back to other dealers undercutting my prices. He said it was
overproduction & if I did not buy it. He would sell elsewhere. I
knew better but the price was cheap & it helped defray some of the
losses so I bought it. Total cost $4,720.00 936 Pez dispensers each x 8 dif = 7,488 total of Original
8 Crystal Pez dispensers. I payed $6.00 each. My idea including the name. Early on in the color project I
asked about clear head Pez dispensers Crystals. I was told it would be to
difficult to do. Several months later Andre said, "Hey remember those Pez
Crystal head dispensers you wanted, I got them for you 8 different
Ghosts & new Zoo" Pez dispensers. Quite a few of these original Pez Crystals have the
imperfections stated as the difficulty in making them. Air bubbles in
the clear plastic. Total cost $44,926.00
1,680 pieces Pez Silver Hair Shell Gas Play World. Again my guess is Andre
made these for himself, then realized how long it takes to sell.
Total cost $12,600.00 3,456 pieces Bear C Pez dispensers & 3,456 pieces Bear D Pez dispensers. Black
& Brown Ice Bear Pez dispensers. Great pieces. I loved them. I think I called
them Bear C & Bear D. The Bear D Pez dispenser was the brown one named
after Donna a really terrific person who worked for me back then. The Bear
C Pez dispenser was named after my grandson Corey. Total cost $27,648.00 216 Tyke Pez dispensers. Total cost $648.00 2,935 pieces Large advertising Pez Balloon stickers. Total cost $880.00
3,456 each x 3 dif = 10,368 pieces. Pal S, J, & M Pez dispensers. I loved these
three Pez dispensers, I think they were my most creative Pez dispensers. Glow
in the dark heads with Hip-Hop hats. Also the first use of Glow in the
Dark plastic for heads or anything else for that matter. Named after my
kids Steph, Josh & Moriah. Total cost $41,472.00 1,500 pieces Pez Take Off Play World. Total cost $7,500.00 11,520 pieces of 4 different carded Nintendo Pez dispensers. Total cost $19,584.00
If my math is correct The items listed above comes to $403,470.00
Total. The other roughly $68,000.00 comes from 3 buys my records suck
on. Approximately 4,000 loose Joes trucks Pez dispensers, Approx 4,000 Pez Pal Mariner Play
Worlds, and a large amount of Double cards with Dinosaur Pez dispensers & Pez body
parts side by side.
The figure of $471,950.00 comes from a fax I sent to German Andre on
9-15-98. In it I stated after adding receipts up to 9-15-98 the total
was approx $350,000.00. Using this figure as a bludgeon to try to get a
better price on the proposed Pez Space Gun project. On 9-28-98 I sent him a
cashiers check for $11,000.00 on 10-19-98 a cashiers check for
$27,400.00 & on 11-10-98 a cashiers check for $83,550.00 as the
final payment for product bought in the Pez Color Wars. This is where the
$471,950.00 figure comes from and as you see above from list of Pez dispensers bought & amounts paid $403,470.00 is accounted for. I know the other $68,000.00 was spent just can't find the records on it.
I also bought the rest of Joes Pez trucks from Joe & Dave sometime in the year of 2,000.
My absolute favorites of all the colors made in 1998 were Diablo, VooDoo Mama & Pals S, J & M. Hands down these were my favorites & the ones I was most proud of. I also thought Detys & Pinky were at the very least, funny.
So here's a Dr Phil moment for
you the reader. Pez Corp has a customer who is willing to & spends 1/2 million dollars
in one year buying Pez dispensers from Pez Corp to resell. In doing so
this customer also brings several unique innovations to that product.
How does Pez corporation reward this customer? They do everything
possible to destroy that investment. Call me stupid but this does not
sound like good business practice.
After reviewing my
records from 1998 I'm actually surprised that I only lost $250,000.00
when it was all done. I believe that because I was willing to take the
hit & reacted quickly to the events as they unfolded. That I
reduced a potential 1/2 million dollar loss by half. I'm with you in my
disbelief on these numbers. To me now 10 years later these amounts seem
huge & not believable. What can I say, my circumstances have
changed a great deal and for that I have Pez Corp to thank.
In
some 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. The only reasons that makes any sense to me is that
because of greed & jealousy Pez Corp destroyed a new client that
spent 1/2 million in one year on there product. All normal logic would
make you think a company would kill to acquire a new corporate account
of 1/2 million dollars.
The really ironic part of all of this is
that before I tried to go legit by doing business directly with pez
corp I earned over 4 million. After trying to go legit buying directly
from Pez Corp, I lost everything & went $250,000.00 in debt. Those
numbers alone should give you some indication of what kind of business
partner Pez corporation can be. Who woulda thunk that doing business
around the edges was better than partnering with Pez corp.
Kinda reminds me of the movies where a criminal tries to go legit. The
criminal figures after handling business in a criminal world, that
corporate types would be pussy cats. Only to find out Corporate types
are more dishonest & less trustworthy than crooks. As with life I
can't remember how these movies end.
To me in life we all do things that are bad, but there is bad & there is Bernard Madoff bad.
When
Pez Corp reproduced the product that in effect cost me 1/2 million
dollars to buy from them. They knowingly destroyed that investment
& it was obvious to everybody watching that, that was the intent.
That investment was the result of & represented 20 years worth of
work by me to achieve it. For me what Pez Corp did was Bernard Madoff
bad.
When a company does something with the sole intent & net result
being to wipe out the life savings of a person. Call me stupid but is
that not why Bernard
Madoff is in prison today. I invested in
Pez Corp product, then Pez Corp intentionally with malice of
forethought put a plan into action that's sole purpose was to destroy
that investment. With no regard for the impact that this act of
Corporate Thuggery would
have. I can not say it any plainer. In my opinion there is no
difference between what Pez Corp did to me in the Pez Color Wars & what
Bernad Madoff did, except that Berny went to jail.
Funny thing is years ago my main objection was that I was promised
these pez dispensers were exclusive to me. With the passage of years my
temper has mellowed, after all I only had faxes that stated these pez
were exclusive to me from my broker. If all it had been about was someone breaking
there word, like oopsie I fibbed I take it all back. Well maybe you
could let that go, not me, but I'm saying maybe someone else could.
Now ten years later after reflecting, the real problem I have should
this ever end up in court. This is where the teacher in class says take
notes this will be on the test. The real problem is & was the
intent of the action of duplicating my 1/2 million dollar 1998 investment.
The duplication had one purpose & only one purpose, it was created
with the sole intent of destroying my 1/2 million dollar investment in Haas product. By doing so to also destroy a business that
took me 20 years to build. You gotta be a pretty nasty customer
(coughmafia) to be able to live with that.
You have to be asking
yourself. How can this guy say these things & not get in legal
trouble with Pez Corp? The answer is easy. The statements are true,
therefore not slander but simply a statement of fact. Take for example using the phase "Corporate
Thuggery" to describe Pez Corps actions in the Pez Color Wars. In order to
prove I slandered them they would have to explain how duplicating all
that product was an innocent act. One problem here, Scott McWhinnie
openly stated why he copied the colors & what he hoped to achieve
by doing it. OOPs. Did Madoff wipe out what people had spent a lifetime
saving? YEP. Did Pez Corps actions in duplicating Pez dispensers they sold me
wipe out 20 years of work? YEP! It would also be interesting, to me anyway. To have Pez USA explain how there website when it first came on line mirrored the product I paid just under 1/2 million dollars for. Was that just a coincidence or was the intent to destroy the value of the 1/2 million dollars in product they (Haas) sold me. The skulduggery went even further. In order to duplicate my product samples of all my dispensers were bought through middle men & used to duplicate my product for Pez USA's website.
Pez
Corp is just waiting it out, hoping this never amounts to a book or
movie. Then this whole sordid episode can just be forgotten. Right now
this listing is like that tree that falls in the forest. If nobody sees
or hears it, did it really ever happen? I really need for this listing
to go viral on the internet. If it does not go viral, Pez Corp will win
& it will be as though it never happened. *** A personal note here To Pez USA, Pez Austria / Haas. I am not going to just go away. As long as there is breath in my body, I will pursue this. Your behavior as a corporation in the Pez Color Wars will never be acceptable to me. I guess you could call me a "bitter ender" on the subject of the Pez Color Wars. My suggestion is take another look at the offer in "New Offer to Pez Corp. USA, Pez Europe Haas ebay item # 300385628323". Specifically the section on wiping the slate clean. Personally I think we would all feel better if we could put the Pez Color Wars behind us. Barring that I will continue to shine a light on this whole episode. I will not go away & I will not be silent. Funny
story about Pez body part from this time period. The Funs (a chain of
novelty & collectibles stores; Big fun, Uncle Fun & Sister Fun)
which is how Mike Metros referred to them. Anyway the Funs also bought
a container of Pez body parts from German Andre. While at the Raba in
Hungary, I came down for breakfast one morning & had an urgent fax
from Mike Mitros. In it he was asking if I could help, stating that the
container of Pez body parts that the Funs had bought was hung up at a
customs port of entry. I had made the whole process look so easy that
the Funs thought anybody could do it. I can't remember what I told
Mike, probably that they should hire a broker. I have no idea if they
ever got that container cleared.
No I did not offer my broker to the Funs. No I did not share the
customs number or any of the things I had learned or about which ports
of entry were best. I'm kinda superstitious in this regard. I figured I
only had so much luck in these matters & giving some of it away
would not be wise. All by myself I was already running the string
pretty thin.
Did you know that the original idea about Pez body parts was that they were
like Pez Make A Face? This was actually said to me by Marcos & Ljuba
(Ormoz Slovenia) in one of the hush hush talks we had. Marcos was all
excited about this really big new project he referred to like Pez Make A
Face. Obviously corporate thinking was Pez body parts were somehow a way to
capitalize on the fact that Pez Make A Face was always said in books to be
the Holy Grail of pez dispensers & at the time selling for 2 to
$3,000.00 each.
Shoulda Coulda Woulda. Pez Boy & Pez Girl Black head. Actually any
male or female Pez dispensers in every ethnicity. In 1998 the pez pal boy
& pez pal girl with black heads was a planned project, but once word of Scott
duplicating everything started. The project was scuttled.
Shoulda Coulda Woulda. More C class pez trucks. During 1998 I also had
plans to make Pez Trucks all black & Pez trucks all glow in the dark. I
believe as things started going south German Andre shopped this idea to
Joe & Dave which resulted in what you know as Joe's Pez Trucks. You may
also not know that Dave Gutterman was Joe's partner on these Pez trucks
& the money man behind them. The reason I know this to be true is
that Dave used his investment in CDs to fund this project & that
after a year he wanted out. Resulting in me purchasing the
remaining inventory of pez trucks from Joe & Dave at cost.
All time Fantasy. To have control of a Pez injection molding facility
for 1 day ( 12 hours ) & get all the product created. Minimum of 10
injection molding machines. My selection of non licensed molds for
pez heads & minimum of 20 colors of plastic pellets. I would create
Pez dispenser HEADS ONLY. All the pez heads created within the 12 hours would remain as
components (not assembled) for assembly by me later. Three days prior
to select pez molds & plan the 12 hour run. Stems for pez heads would also be provided. Since
we all know I am not a shrinking violate I will also state the
following. There would not have been any Bubble Boy release by Pez USA
had I not sold 2 for approximately $1,000.00 each, causing Scott
McWhinnie to wig out & other dealers to start selling there's.
There would not have been Crystal pez dispensers at all if not for the
Crystal Pez Project that was part of the Pez Color Wars. There would
not have been color variation Pez Dispensers sold by Pez Corp &
others in any significant quantities had it not been for my Black Santa
Pez Dispensers & the Holiday Colors Pez Dispensers that were part
of the Pez Color Wars.
Bubble BoyPez Dispensers in all colors,
Crystal Pez dispensers of all types & Color variation Pez
Dispensers of all types in any significant quantity all are a direct
result of the Pez Color Wars. So in effect all of these Pez Dispensers
& those that followed are my children as they were born of this
time. The Crystal & Color variation Pez Dispensers that have
followed to this day are all born as a direct result of the Pez Color
Wars. So they too are my children. None of this would have happened had
it not been for the Pez Colors project, The Pez Crystals Project or the
Pez Color Wars.
For the record, the name Crystal Pez Dispenser that you use to
describe clear Pez heads in various colors is the name I gave the
original 8 Crystals. Not just my idea but also my term as the title for this group of product. Yes I am not ashamed to toot my own horn. If I don't the facts will be lost. I paid $6.00 each for the original 7,488 Crystal pez dispensers made to my specification of clear plastic heads. I believe $45,000.00 gives me the right to claim the idea & the name I gave them. The following stats are to illustrate how the 11 years I sold Pez dispensers went. These are the gross sales that can be documented with the tax returns for these years.
Pez
Year #1 = $191,817.00 gross, Pez Year #2 = $291,902.00 gross, Pez Year
#3 = $448,277.00 gross, Pez Year #4 = $754,069.00 gross, Pez Year #5 =
$569,330.00 gross, Pez Year #6 = $426,163.00 gross, Pez Year #7 =
$552,277.00 gross, Pez Year #8 = $412,758.00 gross, Pez Year #9 =
$253,844.00 gross, Pez Year #10 = $331,459.00 gross & Pez Year #11
= $299,003.00 gross.
This
11 year time frame represents once things were up & running,
selling Pez through final closeout of the bulk of the remaining Pez
inventory. These numbers were taken from the tax returns for each year.
In Pez Year # 4 a couple of my employees actually received The 4th year
was also the year my accountant called me & said, "Do you realize
you are going to make $750,000.00 this year". It was all pretty crazy,
going from $35,000.00 a year to Pez Money. I accomplished all this by
seeing something, then throwing everything I had at achieving the goal.
Remember I started with less than $3,000.00
You also would be safe
in assuming that because I sold 4.5 million dollars in Pez over 11
years, that the amount of Pez I bought was closer to 2 million dollars.
As my markup averaged 100%. My records on pez bought are not as good as
gross sales, as about 1/2 of my buys were cash.
My deals with
German Andre buying Pez dispensers alone totaled $471,950.00 in 1998. I
also know that I spent over 1/2 million in cash on over 1/2 million Pez
dispensers in mostly Hungary, approx 70 trips (Hungary, Slovenia &
Austria) averaging $9,000.00 per trip on product. Hotels, flights &
cars were usually paid by credit card. Which totals 1 million dollars
spent on Pez between Germany/Austria & Hungary alone. *** My company was devastated when Pez USA, Pez Austria & Haas duplicated most of the product I bought in 1998. I had told
people this product was mine exclusively as that is what I had been
told when I invested almost 1/2 million dollars. People who bought from
me lost all trust in my word after this.
***
Problem is, even before the rumors that Scott was going to launch his
website with my product, other rumors hurt sales. Months before Scott
had people buy samples from me, to duplicate my product he started
rumors that my dispensers were fake. Richie should be able to provide
more on this , as it was reported that Scott had stated my dispensers
were not authorized or some such thing. Which led people to question if
I was having dispensers made outside of Pez Corp.
***
I have no idea why, but this rumor seemed to pop up every time I
acquired a bunch of Pez dispensers. I seemed to have to constantly
assure people I did not have a factory that was churning out Pez
dispensers. I never knew who was starting these rumors for sure. Though
with the colors it was Scott, & I have a pretty good idea the King
& his minions started the other rumors. As at one point, one of his
minions returned a very large order saying that they were not real.
These rumors were passed down the chain until people like the person
who ran Pezamania were saying that I was making pez in my basement as
almost fact to other collectors. ***
These rumors were a constant battle throughout the time I sold Pez.
Though the one started by Scott McWhinnie that the Holiday colors were
fake was the hardest one to dispel. If I remember right this rumor was
even reported in the newsletter. If I'm wrong I will correct this. ***
Though once Scott decided to copy my product everybody realized it was
real. It always puzzled me why most of the low end dispensers I found
were almost always suspected. Yet massive quantities of much older
dispensers never were. It might have something to do with who was
starting all the rumors about my product being the same person who
owned that massive quantity of older product. I also always wondered
why his first thought when I found older dispensers was that they were
being made for me. Why was this always the first & only way he
thought it was possible that I could acquire older dispensers. ***
I believe I bought more Pez, Sold more Pez & spent more money on
Pez in the 1990s than any other Pez dealer. Problem is I was totally independent & that nobody had a vested interest in my success. Only
those who had an interest in my failure. So when my product was
questioned there were very few strong voices to put the rumors down.
The King though it seems has a never ending group of boosters. It would
appear many have a vested interest in his continued success. The fact
that an entire international corporation conspired to put my little
enterprise out of business, yet ignores the Kings activities to me says
it all. Ten years & I am Dead. Twenty years & counting, Long
Live The King.
The second aspect of the color wars was that for approx 3 years by default I ran
Pez USA. The reason I say this is for 2 to 3 years most of what Scott
McWhinnie did was in reaction to what I was doing. Examples: I sold Pez
Bubble boy then after passing on him, he started selling Bubble boy.
Canadian & Euro Pez dispenser were often different which I
exploited to the max, so distribution networks & product
distributed was changed. I created the Crystal pez dispenser concept
& name, so Scott started selling Crystal Pez. I imported Body
parts, so soon Scott imported body parts after initially saying no to
them. I created the Color Project, soon Scott was selling the identical
product. I imported Glow in the dark Ghosts after a year Scott imported
Glow in the Dark Ghost. You might remember for the first year Scotts
Ghosts were a cream color, until he saw mine in Glow in the Dark. One
year later his were also Glow in the Dark.
*** Here is the big one.
Scott McWhinnie always worried I was making more money on Pez than he
was with my mail away program. Soon Pez USA had a mail away program,
which by coincidence (not at all) sold initially all of these items I
have just mentioned. The entire Pez USA mail away program was started
with & in reaction to my product & mail away program. It
actually went so far as Scott McWhinnie had people buy samples of my
product for him, so he could use the samples to copy exactly all of the
dispensers from the Pez Crystals Project, the Pez Colors Project &
the Glow in the Dark pez dispensers.
*** A few of my other
responsibilities during the 3 years I ran Pez USA by default were.
Product development, market testing for viability of new concept pez
dispensers & the only significant advertising of Pez dispensers.
Besides general promotion of pez by way of premiums, written materials
& give aways. I performed my duties with great joy.
*** So by
default because so much of what Scott McWhinnie did for about 3 years
was as a direct result of what I did & the fact that for 3 years
all of the innovations in Pez product were copies literally of my Pez
dispensers. I feel very comfortable saying I ran Pez USA for 3 years.
This control over the company also extended to at least two trips to
Europe by Scott that were solely about my activities.
*** Over the
years I have heard many times people say how cool it would be to run
Pez USA. Let me tell you by default I did run Pez USA for 3 years &
it was no fun at all. If I had made $250,000.00 for running Pez USA
instead of losing $250,000.00, maybe then it would have been fun.
Chapter 3. Canada Where it all Started
This all began with a trip to Canada buying Canadian cereal boxes for my collection. While there I noticed a big 5 foot tall clown rack of pez dispensers. After looking it over I noticed that on it were things like Rhino Melody maker Pez dispensers, Duck Tales Pez dispensers & Tom And Jerry Pez dispensers. Doing toy shows in the US I was aware of dealers like Sue & others who were selling these Pez dispensers for $25.00 each. Realizing I could buy these Pez dispensers up in Canada for $1.50 & sell them at toy shows & in Toy Shop magazine for $10.00, I cleaned the rack out of non US Pez dispensers. What followed was big success in both. My toy shop advertisements went from about a dozen Pez dispensers on a page of other toys I was selling. To Two full page advertisements every 2 weeks of almost all pez dispensers. 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. 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. 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 had almost made it to Indiana while fuming in my head over something about this buy. 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 & my first advertisement containing pez, I realized a couple things. There was a demand for pez dispensers not available here in the US & that this product was readily available just across the border in Canada. What followed was my primer for the European trips. For about a year & 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 & later even British Columbia by way of Seattle.
My trips to Zellers in Ontario became so frequent that the stores thought I was the regional rep for Pez. To them I was this guy meticulously going through the racks reorganizing them. I always left the racks looking good & very organized. They must have just not noticed I was buying bags & bags of Pez dispensers retail as I left. I didn't start buying from the wholesale distributor of pez dispensers in Canada until later. 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 & pretty bad food. Chapter 4. Slovenia
Flight to Ljubljana.
After waiting all night on benches in a small corner of the Vienna
airport finally it was time to board. We walk out onto the airstrip
& are directed to board Sky Kings plane. Pilot copilot & 4
seats for passengers. One of the seats occupied by the overweight male
stewardess handing out sandwiches from Rubbermaid containers. This did
not look good. The flight turned out to be quite similar to a ride on a
scary roller coaster with the male stewardess in your lap more than his
own seat. Something to do with flying over the Alps in winter in a
small plane, wind currents, downdrafts & low altitudes. We drove
clown cars down through the mountains after that. The single most
beautiful drive you will ever take is a winter drive from Vienna to
Ljubljana through the mountains. The air is crisp & clean. The
scenery unmatched anywhere in all my travels. Whenever I think of the
most beautiful sights I have ever seen it is that drive in winter.
Though driving clown cars through serious mountains can be a harrowing
experience.
We arrive in Slovenia after taking our
first & last clown plane ride. I will never get on another small
plane for the rest of my life. Honestly people say this & are
usually exaggerating, But I literally thought I was going to die on
that plane. After spending some time to regain our composure off we
went to Rent a Clown Car. Josh & I had already decided we would not
be using the return ticket to Vienna. Here's something you may not
know. You can rent cars in Eastern European countries & drive
anywhere. But if you rent say in Vienna or Germany you must get special
paperwork, which is checked at borders to drive into Eastern block
countries. After leaving the airport we find our way to the Kolinska Pez warehouse & packaging facility in Ljubliana. Really terrific people, they invited us in for espresso, saying they had no problem selling us whatever Pez dispensers they had, that we wanted. Explaining that the Pez dispensers they had was limited, that Ormoz the plastics plant was where we needed to go for Pez dispensers. Two things to note here; they actually had quite a good selection of Pez dispensers, though a month ago they had Pez dispensers I would drool for like rooster mmm, pig mmm, wyle, foghorn, etc. Second Pez corp downsized this facility, within 2 years they were selling soup & catchup.
Anyway they said Ormoz had all the pez dispensers. Though this information came with big warnings & concerns by them. Ormoz you see is very close to Zagreb & Zagreb was at war at that time. The whole Cerbs vs Croates thingy that involved ethnic cleansing. You see if you took a wrong turn near Ormoz, within 20 minutes you would have been smack dab in the middle of a war. That's not good. Second thing the road from Ljubliana to Ormoz they said was very dangerous, a lot of people were dying on it lately. Now I am really encouraged. The drive down was interesting, a bit hilly with steep drop offs at roadside. Though the real problem was it was 1 lane north & 1 lane south without even a yellow line to divide them. To complicate things even further drivers in either direction treated it as though both lanes headed north or south at the same time. Remember this is me the guy the King of Austria thought was the worst driver in the world, who could not believe I was allowed to drive at all. Fair due though I learned my European driving skills in Slovenia, Slovak, Czech & Hungary. Just driving in your own lane on that highway was a duel with death.
*** Josh did a lot of the driving on these trips & it scared the heck out of both of us. My job was navigation.
Of course we got lost. I remember screeching to a stop when Josh yelled that sign says Zagreb 20 miles. Whoa did we ever stop & turn around. We spent that night at some weird hot spring spa. Kinda cool if you like taking a swim in hot sulfur waters in a ex KGB retreat atmosphere.
Ex KGB Resorts. This place was actually pretty cool in a KGB sorta way. At the center of everything was this old looking glass enclosed swimming pool with a brick changing room attached, surround by wooden cabins for rooms. Lockers the whole bit. It was the pool that was the big deal. The pool was fed by a hot sulfur spring, so you swam in hot sulfur water. Of course we tried it. It was a very unique experience & as we were lost when we found it, I could not tell you for the life of me where it was. A lot of these experiences were very unique & the last remnants of something soon gone forever.
Ex KGB Towers. At the borders of most old Eastern Block countries there were at regular intervals Guard Towers. They reminded me of water towers here but flatter & more saucer in shape with windows & a wrap around porch. These were the big ones, there were also smaller ones made of wood that reminded me of Park Ranger Towers over here. There were still a lot of cold war things standing in the early 90s.
One more thing that always struck me as odd. After crossing customs leaving Hungary, you would get on the Highway to Vienna. At the first overpass on the side of the hill was this wooden building that looked like a club house. It was manned with Austrian cops of one sort or another in the early to mid 90s because I saw them. In the later 90s, they appeared empty. This area was the same area where during the 1956 Hungarian revolt against Communism, where the Hungarian people fled across the border into Austria to escape the tanks that the USSR had sent in to squash the rebellion. The reason I know this is on one trip to Hungary I read a book that went into a lot of the details about the 1956 Hungarian revolt & the exodus from Hungary afterward.
I've got to tell you about the toilets in a lot of old eastern block countries. You know how when your sitting doing your business here it is a straight shot down in this country. Well that portion is way forward in the bowl, your business in the old country quite often lands on a flat raised area like table & just sits there till you flush, sometimes it leaves, sometimes not. To further aggravate the situation, above the toilet in our cabin was an open propane heater. So it baked the toilet & its contents. Sorry if this bit of color grossed you out and the only reason I tell you is it really grossed me out. Next morning we arrived at the pez plastics factory in Ormoz. First thing I noticed was very long lines of cars at one side of the factory. After watching for a while I realized they were dropping off assembled Pez dispensers & picking up components for Pez dispensers to be assembled. People from the surrounding community were doing home assembly of pez dispensers. Until that moment I had no idea this was done. Later I found out this at one time or another was how it was done at most injection molding plants in Europe. Which means just like the Queen of Austria found pez dispensers & components for Pez dispensers in the community around the factory in Linz. You too could find them in the communities surrounding factories in Pamplona Spain, Ormoz Slovenia, Gyor Hungary & early production in China. One thing you need to know is workers especially home assembly workers always have pez stuff in there garages.
Josh & I were admitted in & escorted to the upper level where the offices were. As we waited on the glassed in balcony, we were able to take in the view of the entire manufacturing area where production of pez components was actually done. In the dozen visits I made to this factory before Pez Austria bought it outright & banned me. A few years after that Austria shut it down & moved everything to Linz & Gyor. Ormoz now makes brooms & dust pans. I always enjoyed standing there & just watching for about 10 minutes, before announcing I was there. The lady who ran the place greeted me & invited me into her office. I explained what I was hunting for. She called Ljubliana & was told she could sell to me. Before they showed me what they had I was introduced to Marcos.
Marcos was there pez test shot guy & pez experimenter in chief. This guy loved his work. He took us to a cabinet which housed there pez collection. I later gave him a pez space gun & a pez shooter for there collection. Most facilities had a pez collection of one sort or another. In Ljubliana it was different pez dispensers on a beam around the top of the a room in the warehouse. Seeing the pez collection one piece jumped out at me, it was a black Santa Pez dispensers. Like I said Marcos loved his work, he was a very enthusiastic guy when it came to testing pez colors. Josh & I went nuts you'd think we had just seen an alien. We were told he had made a small run of these Pez dispensers because he thought the company ought to do this. Austria had decided it was to controversial to produce. COKO PEZ an African caricature on the box for chocolate pez candy was ok, but a black Santa Pez dispensers was to controversial. This would be big news to approximately 20% of the population in America for whom Santa is actually black. So for me Marcos was correct.
Marcos Creations.
Black Santa Pez dispensers. red hat ones & white hat ones.
Psycho Lucy Pez dispensers. White paint on face instead of black. I asked Marcos if he could make a Lucy Pez dispenser with white eyes. Somehow in translation this came out a White face Lucy Pez dispenser. So he created normal Lucy Pez dispenser but all face detailing done with white paint. This Pez dispenser was thought of because of the Lucy with White eyes. Marcos created about 300 of this Pez dispensers for me. I named her Psycho Lucy because my first reaction when he showed this Pez dispenser to me was. She looks Psycho.
Lavender thin ear Easter Bunny Pez dispenser.
Pink thin ear Easter Bunny Pez dispenser. Marcos created the lavender & pink bunny Pez dispensers to show executives & try to generate interest in this thin ear bunny being colors other than just white. The idea was rejected so I got a few lavender & approx 30 pink bunny Pez dispensers.
Multi color Dino Pez dispensers from the Flintstones. These were odd color combos. Anybody got the info, as I can not remember. Only got 2 or 3 of these Pez dispensers.
Ljuba, the name of the lady who ran the factory. Ljuba told Marcos to show us what they had. Thumper Pez dispensers copyright removed on green stem. I'm specific about this one because at the time John said he had doubts it was a real Pez dispenser & changed the stems for a while till he accepted them after finding out they had actually been sold at stores in Ireland. Which made me wonder who he might think had the ability to manufacture Pez dispensers outside of pez corporation. Until that specific situation I never even considered the possibility. That's neither here nor there though, it just made me wonder. Anyway we got thumpers Pez dispensers, dalmation Pez dispensers, wyle Pez dispensers, pooh Pez dispensers, chip Pez dispensers, camel mmm Pez dispensers, duck mmm Pez dispensers, frog mmm Pez dispensers & all sorts of good stuff. We were ready to pay & I do mean pay. Another phone call was made to Breda. Breda was the name of the gal who ran things at Ljubliana. Breda told Ljuba .23 cents each, direct deposit into the company account. So off to the bank we went so I could directly deposit the total into the corporate account. It was always this way in Slovenia, really decent honest & nice people to know. Before we left though Marcos came after us. He had a bag of pez dispensers he wanted to give us. In the bag were a few Black Santa Pez dispensers, pink & lavender bunny Pez dispensers & the dino color variation Pez dispensers. Also a couple of new dinosaur pez dispensers. We asked him to sign 2 of the dinosaur Pez dispensers, which he did while making jokes in Slovenian about being elvis.
*** I sold these signed by Marcos Pez dispensers in about 2007, whoever got them has a real piece of pez history that they are probably unaware of. *** Another little side story here. After that first trip to Slovenia Josh & I would drive down from Vienna to Ormoz. On one trip through the mountains we stopped so Josh could go skiing. Josh went up & down that mountain all day, so much so that he could barely walk when we left. I don't ski, but I did take the lift to the top so I could take in the view. Very impressive view & since I'm not crazy about heights just doing it was also impressive.
On about my third trip to see Ljuba she let me know before I got there that they had several hundred black Santa Pez dispensers for me. Marcos had been a busy boy. On the drive down I became very worried about this just being way to many to exist. I even considered burning or burying a couple hundred of the black Santa Pez dispensers by the side of the road, feeling the hobby would freak at so many. Well something happened & when I got there they said they could only let me have about 30 of the black Santa Pez dispensers.
They were beginning to get heat from Pez in Austria. A few trips later I walked in and some tall Austrian guy saw me on the balcony. As usual I had stopped to look out onto the factory floor for a few minutes. He came closer then said those infamous words "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE". Busted, he then turned & disappeared into an office. Seconds later Ljuba snatched me by the arm & yanked me into her office. Saying you gotta get out of here, I'll meet you at the coffee shop across the road in an hour. Feeling lower than a snake I left, all the while people who had become friends avoiding eye contact. When Ljuba got to the coffee shop she told me Pez Austria had bought Pez Ormoz. That the Austrians were on the warpath because Scott was going nuts about me. That everybody knew what I looked like & if she sold Pez dispensers to me any longer she would lose her job. I never saw Ljuba or Marcos again & within a few years Pez Ormoz was making dust pans. My combined trips to see Ljuba or Breda were about a dozen in all. Though a year after Pez cut off business with Ljubliana I did see Breda one last time, she had about 1,000 road runner Pez dispensers so I drove down to see her & buy them. I guess this is probably when all the trouble began. I had to keep a really low profile in Europe & use a middle man to buy Pez dispensers from here out. This is also about the time I started staying at the Raba in Gyor, only leaving to meet my guy or get something to eat. Gunther & everybody else wanted distance. They still wanted the over $9,000.00 per trip in cash please and there were way over 50 trips to Hungary alone buying Pez dispensers. About a dozen to Slovenia at under $5,000.00 per trip buying Pez dispensers. A few to Austria at under $4,000.00 each buying Pez dispensers. Australia about $15,000.00 for one trip buying Pez dispensers. Sweden about $9,000.00 for one trip buying the pez pal mariner playworlds. Spain & South Africa were a bust less than $1,000.00 each. None of these figures includes expenses, this was just for pez dispensers. It also does not include containers or air freighted Pez dispensers bought.
Most of the Pez dispensers I got from Linz were moved to Gyor & that's where I picked them up. Yes they moved Pez dispensers to Hungary from Austria then I drove the very same Pez dispensers back to Austria in duffel bags & flew out of Vienna. Nutty I know, but this is how things had to be done. By now nobody wanted to know me or be seen with me, everybody at the company knew what I looked like. I was issued a middle man. You know, go to such & such address. This is who you buy Pez dispensers from, from now on. They told me to keep a low profile & to keep my mouth shut. They told me what Scott was saying, where he was & when he was is Europe. Chapter 5. Hungary Over a 10 year period I spent well over 1/2 million Dollars cash on Pez dispensers in Hungary. At least $250,000.00 of that was in the form of bribes, or money skimmed off the top for services rendered. Everybody got a piece of the Pez Money for there role in the pez dispensers that were provided. Even though people were well paid, getting the Pez dispensers I wanted was always more difficult than you would think considering how much people were being paid. I just
have to tell you a short story here that may give you perspective on
why all this was possible. Most of the Pez dispensers I bought were in
Hungary. Early on in my trips to Hungary my middle man told me about a
bank robber in Hungary. This bank robber would hold up a bank then make
his getaway by swimming across the river that cuts through many towns
in Hungary. The problem for police was, to much river & not enough
bridges. So the bank robber was making fools of local law enforcement.
Everybody in Hungary loved this guy, he was a modern day folk hero. His
adventures were followed with obvious excitement by almost everybody I
talked to. He was front page in every newspaper & the top of news
broadcasts on TV.
After approximately 40 years under communist rule most Hungarians had a
very deep disdain for authority & a very strong entrepreneurial
desire. Most of what people had done for 40 years was under the radar.
That is anything that was actually going to help them better there
lives. So me, I appeared at the right time, in the right place, when
& where what I wanted to do was possible.
Joshua & I driving
all over eastern Europe ( Czech, Slovak, Hungary, etc) in a little
clown car looking for pez dispensers & the factories. I had been
buying Pez dispensers store to store in Canada for years at Zellers, so I figured why
not in Europe. I had heard about the silver glow Pez dispensers from Dwayne D.
Also a customer mentioned you could buy at the pez warehouse in Ljubliana.
So we drove from country to country store to store with some success.
Though trying to find pez factories & pez warehouses was not so easy. We found a shoe
factory, we found a look alike candy manufacturer, but not pez. So I
stopped a taxi showed him the address on a Pez dispensers package & we
followed in the clown car, which led us to the pez yellow house in Gyor
& my first meeting with Gunther. The company name of the Pez Yellow House located in Gyor is Pez Hungarocandy. Head of operations for the Pez Yellow House was Gunther Leitner. I say was as I have no idea what his title is today. Last I heard Gunther & Robby were making trips to China setting up & overseeing pez operations there. I asked the Queen of Austria what Gunthers title is today when she emailed about this listing, but she never responded after that.
Inside the pez yellow house we were talking to the people who worked there about buying some pez dispensers, when a man in a plaid sports jacket came out of an office. He approached the conversation listened for a bit then introduced himself. Getting no recognition he said "Don't you know who I am". Then he said "I know what you want, I'm the guy you need to deal with". He turned grabbed a postit, wrote something on it & signed it.
*** I sold this postit on ebay a couple of years ago. While it was listed for sale Andrew emailed me & told me how uncool it was to sell this postit. All these years later & they still thought I had to play by there rules. Me I thought, are you kidding me. After being wiped out financially during the Pez Color Wars they still expected me to take it & like it. How Bizzare, How Bizzare. Anyway I don't think the person who won this postit really realizes how significant a piece of Pez memorabilia that little postit is. That postit signed by Gunther brought over 1/2 a million dispensers to the hobby of collecting pez. The price it sold for on ebay was about $20.00, the actual value as an iconic mile marker in the hobby of collecting pez is more like $2,000.00 when you truly appreciate what it is.
*** I have no dog in the fight concerning the Pez postit signed by Gunther as I no longer own it. I'm just saying if any piece of paper ever collected by Pez collectors is worth $2,000.00 that postit is, as that little postit signed by Gunther Leitner single handedly impacted the course of pez collecting in the early 1990s & for the next 10 years.
He gave us an address & said go here. When we arrived at the address, we showed the postit to the guard & the gates opened. Once in the warehouse the manager snapped to & took us to a pile of boxes containing older pez dispensers. We selected what we could afford & paid Gunther. I believe though that he was very disappointed. Being one of my first few trips, we only spent a few thousand dollars. Not a lot of money in the beginning, as we were just figuring this whole thing out. Though from my point of view a very successful encounter, we got a little of everything. The pez trucks sold out in a few days, so within two weeks, I went back to Gunther on a trip just for Truck Pez dispensers. The
pez truck trip. This trip was intended to be a quick trip of just a few
days. In & out just to get more truck pez dispensers. As I said they
sold out in just a few days, which shocked me. The rest of the
pez dispensers I bought on my first meet with Gunther were hard to find but
I had had them before from Canada. The pez trucks though were unknown at
the time as they were exclusive to Hungary. They had been created at
Pez Gyoroplaste when the old C class pez truck molds had been reused to start
up the factory.
The Truck Pez dispensers. Movable wheels C class. These pez trucks were made when
Pez Gyoroplaste was first opened. Old C class pez truck molds were brought in
along with some other old pez molds for the start up of this pez injection
molding facility. Pez Pal Boy & Pez Pal Girl were among other old pez molds
used in those early days. This product was manufactured for
distribution in the old Eastern block & Russia. Because the pez truck
mold was old & a bit worn, somebody had the genius idea to glue the
wheels in place so they would not fall out. Luckily only about 1/3 of the truck Pez dispensers were
glued.
Black Trailer Orange Cabs C class Pez dispensers. Approximately 3 to 400 brought to US by me.
Black Trailer Yellow Cabs C class Pez dispensers. Approximately 4 to 800 brought to US by me. Black Trailer Pink Cabs C class Pez dispensers. Approximately 2,000 to 3,000 brought to US by me. So
I flew in & out of the Budapest airport. On this trip
Gunther sold me appox 3,000 of the C class truck Pez dispensers. Orange, yellow &
pink cabs with black stem Pez dispensers. Man was this exciting, early days, a really
rare Pez dispenser & they sold very fast. This was also the first time I
stayed at the Raba. I bagged the truck Pez dispensers, checked out of the hotel &
drove from Gyor to the Budapest Airport. Turned my car in & went to
the gate to check my bags. This is where things went horribly wrong. At
check in I was greeted by a cold war throwback customs inspector. He
wanted to see my bill of sale, though what I realized the next day was
he really wanted a bribe. Problem was I never got a bill of sale from
Gunther, again that whole gray area of business thingy. Boris says to
me after a long conversation, " well just check in take your flight
& your bags will follow later". Yeah right Boris I don't think so.
Delta offered to rebook me tomorrow same time no extra cost. Great, got
my car back, took my bags & drove back to the pez yellow house. Luckily
Gunther was in Austria so I was able to talk an underling into writing
me up a bill of sale for the Pez dispensers.
Not
wanting to fool around with the hotel for just one night. Cost of room
plus tips to get the duffel bags up & down from the room. I decided
to just spend the night in the McDonals parking lot, as I had noticed
earlier that truckers used it. What I had not realized was that a
lively trade went on all night also by prostitutes. I'm all for free
enterprise but early in the morning a group of them & there pimp
woke me up. Business for the night had died down & I think it was
time for another type of business. Doors locked I was out of there
& at the airport in record time to spend the rest of the night. Next
morning at check in & no Boris. I mean no customs guy at all. There
I stood with a difficultly acquired bill of sale & nobody wanted to
see it. I showed it to Delta & they could have cared less. On my
way to the gate I spotted ole Boris watching me from around a corner
wishing for the good old days. Boris, pimps, prostitutes & Mickey
Ds. Just a quick trip in & out that I would never forget. Prostitutes. Being from the Midwest,
until I started traveling in the old Eastern block countries buying Pez dispensers. I had no
experience with Prostitutes, let alone aggressive ones. My first
exposure to this was Josh & my first trip into Hungary. At that
time approximately 1994 there were nearly 3 miles of roadside stands
along the main drag before you got to Gyor. These stands were open 24
hours selling clothing, stuffed animals, fruits, vegetables, pop,
garden gnomes, just all kinds of stuff. The stands were frequented by
travelers & long haul truckers. Before they cracked down it was
also one of the main areas of prostitution & let me tell you it was
not subtle. If you stopped & got out of your car you were
approached by at least by 3 different women.
Later
once the new freeway opened & killed the roadside stands, the girls
moved to just outside city limits of Gyor on the main road. In the
summer it got pretty interesting, thin material slacks that were more
like black panty hoes, very tightly worn. Out & out flashing by
lifting there tops as you drove by to get your attention. This was the
case outside a lot of the bigger cities in the old eastern block
countries we traveled in, in the early days of my travels. Not to
mention nightly activities at Micky Ds on the highway to Budapest.
There was also a Gypsy woman (Gypsies are looked down on by most
Hungarians) that had a group of girls in downtown Gyor who always
approached me on the way to Pizza Hut. Sometimes it was like running a
gauntlet.
I never
cheated on Kathy in any way shape or form. Though being male & not
dead I did find it interesting. The single most interesting encounter
was while walking to supper. I was approached by an absolute stunner of
a woman. Who asked for a cigarette & invited me in the bar to buy
her a drink. If ever I was truly tempted that was the time. Quickly
though I heard Kathy's warnings in my head, how THINGS would shrivel
& die if I did. I quickly gave & lit her cigarette, then almost
ran to the restaurant. Besides I had strict rules about dealing with
people on the streets in Europe, that was not to at all. To the point
of if approached, actually telling one person to get away from me.
Never robbed even though quite often I had almost $10,000.00 cash, in
my trouser pockets. By keeping strictly to myself & protecting my personal space, I really never had any problems. About driving around in Hungary. I never learned any of the names of roads or addresses. Once I left the airport in Vienna I just knew where to go. To this day it would all be from memory, which highway east, where to get off. How to get to the middle man & the Raba. I have no idea what the names of any of the roads are, I just know how to get there. One very strong memory of Hungary is driving through Movar (a town with a really long name that people who live there just call Movar) at night on my way to Gyor. The air was filled with the smell of coal burning to heat homes. The two lane road lit up by street lights. Houses & businesses all right next to the sidewalk, so much so that it seemed everything was crowding the street. Listening to a tape of Enigma as I drove. That first night is my most vivid memory of Hungary, it all had a very 1950s feel to it. The weather in Gyor is very much like the weather here in Michigan. Chapter 6. Life at The Raba.
The Raba played such a huge role in my pez story that I felt it deserves its own chapter.
This is info Scott would have killed for. On
every trip to Hungary buying Pez dispensers, I used to stay at The Raba Hotel (great
espresso) in the town of Gyor. I loved that town, if you get off the
highway at the border it is about a 25 minute drive east. Nice hotel
nice people & only a short walk away in the middle of town, a pizza
Hut & a McDonald's. The hotel & the Pizza Hut got to know me
pretty good, even if they did think I was a bit eccentric. You see Gyor
is the town Pez Gyoroplaste the injection molding company is located in.
Along with the pez yellow house which is headquarters for all things east
concerning pez corp. I had to keep a low profile. Again those pesky
rules, because it seemed everybody from pez knew what I looked like.
The best & most relaxing time I had traveling were at the Raba,
that I miss. I also read a lot of good books at the Raba. If you added
up all the time I spent at the Raba it would come out to about 10
months.
In
the beginning I used to stay in hotels of the countries I was in, but
after the first 10 or so trips I always stayed at the Raba. I used the
Raba as my home base. Even if going to Slovenia for an overnight buying Pez dispensers, I
kept my room at the Raba & returned to Gyor. You could easily day trip anywhere
else Viena, Linz etc. Gyor was a nice quiet town where people pretty
much minded there own business, plus after a bit they got used to me
& what I was doing. It became normal to them, any questions they
had, they had long answered in there own mind. It worked so why break
in a new hotel. Most people in Hungary in the mid 90s were on the
hustle trying to earn, so actually I fit right in.
Gyor
always had a very positive effect on me. Just walking the streets,
having espresso, eating at Pizza Hut & reading Tom Clancy. Staying
at the Raba was my place to re energize from everything. In Gyor I was
like the invisible man. All my comings & goings were ignored, not
speaking the language helped isolate me from everybody else. Which
resulted in my favorite thing, people left me alone for the most part.
I only miss one thing from the Pez years, besides Pez money. That is
staying at the Raba, drinking espresso & walking to pizza hut,
where the waiters knew without asking. Large peperoni pan pizza &
Pepsi light.
The feel of both Hungary & Slovenia changed very fast from my first
trip buying pez to my last. When I first visited Gyor, there first Mcdonalds had
just opened & Coke had a Suite at the Raba. On my first trip to
Slovenia the first McDonalds in the whole country had just opened in
Ljubliana. I mention this because to the people in these cities this
was a very big deal. One I personally could relate to, because I can
still remember that same feeling from the late 1950s & early 1960s
when a McDonalds, Burger king or Dominos Pizza first opened. The feeling
that the good life had finally arrived. If I ever were to live in a
different country, Hungary or Slovenia would be my choice.
You know how you miss something & yet not really. That's me &
the whole Pez life. Some of it I miss, a lot of it I do not. I don't
miss flying, customs, airports or the greed of the people I bought
from. I miss the Raba Hotel, downtown Gyor & for about 3 to 5 days
every month unplugging from the world there. Gyor was like my other
life, a private life I led before diving back into reality.
Vienna to Gyor, airport toiletries, get car,
Location. Gyor. Highway centrum. centrum changes
Texture 1950s *** On my
room. For the first couple years I stayed in the same room always.
Always asked for & always got that room. The staff after a couple
years noticing that I spent almost all my time in that room & started
trying to pry me out of it into a bigger room. A few trips later I let
them relocate me from the tiny room to a corner suite with a balcony
that overlooked centrum. *** The first few years at the Raba because of the communist years the hotel was very overstaffed. Me I liked it. I got along very well with the staff. They thought I was a bit weird but never questioned it & always respected & protected my privacy. *** Each afternoon I would go down to the restaurant/bar for 3 or 4 of each, espresso, Fanta & cigarettes.
*** I noticed early on the composition of the afternoon crowd in the bar/restaurant & the pecking order. Each day in the afternoon pretty much the same crowd showed up. There was a very definite pattern to who sat with whom & where they sat. I almost always had the same table & sat alone, I tipped the waiters to keep it that way. As with my room the hotel & staff figured out pretty quick I liked the same table & the same room always. To which they were always more than happy to oblige. *** I figured out pretty quick where the head group sat. Every day year after year pretty much the same people sat at this table. The head table group were the older guard types, quieter & more subdued. Then there was the table where the people who wanted to sit at that table sat. They were younger & on the make. Sometimes when the head table was lite someone from the wannabe table would be allowed over.
*** My place in this structure was unique & respected. The people from the head table & wannabe table always acknowledged my arrival by nodding. I was accepted as part of the ritual but separate. I think it fascinated them that I felt no need or inclination to be a part of a group. The fact that I was very comfortable alone within this pecking order got me respect & acceptance. I have no idea what any of these people did, but they did seem to have a lot of time to drink espresso & talk every day.
*** Like I've said almost everybody in Hungary was on the make wanting to earn. One of the guys at the wannabe table was kinda loud, a drinker & ran the wannabe table. For years I watched this guy work his way to the head table until finally he was allowed to be a regular. It was this guy the head wannabe who was the one who approached me in about year 5.
*** In about year 4 because Scott was giving Austria & Hungary so much heat I was required to take about 10 months off. When I resumed my trips the head wannabe came to my table. He asked if he could sit, then explained everybody thought I had died in the plane crash the year before. Said they were all pleased this was not the case & left. Where upon things went on as before except one change. He was now a player at the head table, eventually he took over the head table.
*** The Clicker story. Sometimes for my evening meal I would go down to the hotel bar/restaurant for supper. As the hotel in the early days was overstaffed (a hold over from the cold war years), the bar was staffed by 3 waiters watching TV. While eating I noticed one of the waiters kept getting really annoyed then he would walk over to the TV do something then go back lean on the bar & continue watching the program. This scene played out over & over & over, for most of my meal.
*** Finally when the waiter behind the bar noticed me watching he held up the remote behind the other waiters back. What he was doing with the remote was changing the channel on the other waiter every time he relaxed. I have no idea why the waiter being messed with never figured it out but he didn't. Repeatedly he would get very annoyed walk over & change the channel back. This went on my entire meal including my 3 after dinner espressos & 3 cigarettes. He never figured it out, I think they could have & very well might have done this to him for weeks & he would not have figured it out.
1st night ritual asleep in the tub
Old room, new room.
Breakfast 5-10 slept late eggs & 4 espresso Supper
reading CNN Porters & Bagging Pez dispensers No visitors Departure Ritual
*** Before leaving my room I always made sure to leave $10.00 by the sink in the bathroom for the ladies who cleaned my room. Checked out & tipped the front desk people. Then tipped the porter even though I pulled my own bag because he always walked me out & helped me load. Besides he was the guy who kept an eye on my car, which in Hungary was important. I also would slip him a $5 when I left to drive anywhere because he would then chain off a spot for me to park in upon my return. A good relationship with the hotel staff was why my privacy was respected & protected.
*** 3 am. Pez Pickup. As I've said before over the years of buying Pez in Hungary Many things changed. One big change was in the last two years. My contacts were getting so paranoid, that they no longer wanted me to take the dispensers to the Raba. As the pez yellow house was pretty much across the street, they felt the duffel bags full of pez were drawing to much attention. Kinda nuts really as everybody at the Raba knew I was there buying Pez. It was decided I should leave my bags at the middle mans house in the garage until I was on my way to the airport in Vienna to leave. So there I was at the end of every trip in somebodies garage at 3 am until 4 am filling my duffel bags with Pez dispensers & loading them in the car. What ever, it was on the way to the airport anyway & it made them feel better. *** After loading bags it was off to the airport. Once at the airport in Vienna I always had to hunt for a porter as it was usually 5 to 5:30 am & they were just coming on there shifts. The porter would take the bags from the curb to my check in, while I turned the car in & walked back to the terminal. Porters are very useful when you are trying to move things along as they have relationships with the airline people. He would hand the bags to the airline, I'd give him $40.00 & the European end was mostly done.
RabaCon Chapter 7. Border Crossings Canada to US. Borders are tricky & always require
Tums. For Canada I always used Port Huron everywhere else was harder.
That said I got hung up there too more than once. Once they didn't want
to let me in at all, finally they said we will let the pez dispensers
go, but the flix no. Ok what do I do. We don't care if you put them on
the sidewalk back in Canada but that's where you are going back to.
Heck we shouldn't even let you bring in the pez dispensers. You see
borders quite often depended on who you got so when you found a method
that reduced the odds you stuck with it. So back to Canada I went,
where I promptly put about 50 cases of flix on the sidewalk & never
tried to bring flix in again.
Hungary to Austria. This border got better over the
years but early on it could be tricky. A car filled to the gills with
duffel bags, well I guess that is not just your luggage. Most of the
time my ticket for a flight out of Vienna in 2 hours was enough.
Sometimes a bill of sale was required. OTHERS NOTHING WAS ENOUGH. You
would have to take out the bags open them, then pay a fee/ bond on the
items. That bond was usually redeemable at the airport. After once
having people at the Budapest airport try to confiscate the duffel bags
& another time having to fight with customs people in Vienna over
the bond. I just preferred to slide through the border. The Budapest
thing, next day different people & I slid through. So never flew
out of Budapest again only Vienna, it worked. The fight with customs,
Delta calmed everybody down & I slid through, always flew Delta
from then on. So even though the border of Hungary to Austria was a
stomach churner it was still the best way.
Europe to US. This was the worst border of all &
had a very steep learning curve. It got better after a bit cause the
people there got to know me. I was, oh yeah he is that guy who brings
pez dispensers in. Still though all my ducks had to be in a row again
Delta helped. Pez dispensers had to have country of origin on them or
bagged MADE IN HUNGARY. There was a specific customs # that smoothed
the way, believe it or not it translated to plastic tube. I had to have
a bill of sale & if I could, maneuver myself into user friendly
lines.
All
in all it was always a crap shoot, because no matter what border if you
got the wrong official it could be a nightmare. You always wanted to
avoid officials over thinking it, that's always where the problems
started. Once I learned I always flew into Cincinnati on Delta, it
worked. Patterns could be the enemy concerning Scott, but for moving Pez dispensers around patterns were good because people got used to you,
they resolved all there questions & you were just that weird guy
who sold Pez dispensers. So the Raba, Delta & Cincinnati, don't
mess with what works. Oh yeah & one more thing I always avoided
sleep the night before arriving into Cincinnati, part necessity, part
ritual & if you looked tired & haggard things always seemed to
go smoother. People are kind by nature & tend not want to add to
the burden of someone who appears to be wore out. For freight Grand
Rapids never Detroit for anything or purpose, Detroit has a serious
problem with over thinking things. Two
more thing about duffel bags. I never permanently lost my luggage. It
got lost a lot & I mean really a lot, but it always found its way
home. Actually some of my best experiences with Cincinnati or New york
was when my luggage got lost, because the airline worked overtime to
clear it & get it to you. I loved it when my luggage got lost,
those were peaceful relaxing days. Second thing. The first two duffel
bags are or were free, the other 3 cost approx $150.00 each to fly
& $20.00 to $25.00 to get from the curb to check in at the airport
in Vienna. Somewhere in Eastern Europe. I swear to god
these three eastern European border guards were in the booth hitting
each other. Finally one stepped out & he was not happy with all the bags of pez dispensers. He made us dump them all out & show cash
receipts. By the way these guys were carrying machine guns. I noticed
when bagging it all up that some of the Pez dispensers had vanished, but you usually
don't argue with machine gun toting eastern European military. Austrian
gun toting military ok, but not eastern European, especially not in
1994 only a few years after the wall came down. Old military habits
& points of view die very hard. Anyway we were again on our way,
though not before they said don't do this again. We did of course, but not ever
again at that crossing.
On another trip Gunther sold me aprox 50 boxes of Silver glow Pez dispensers. If I
remember correct each box contained 24 carded Silver glow Pez dispensers. At this
point Josh & I were staying in Austria so back to our hotel we
went. At the Austria Hungary border the Austrian guards required a bond
on the 50 boxes of Pez dispensers to be refunded when items were checked in at the
airport. So we went back to the hotel & down packed the 50 boxes
of pez into 3 boxes of pez. When we got to the airport customs refused to refund my
bond, saying 3 boxes is not 50. Where are the other 47 boxes of pez? The scene
escalated till what the Delta airlines rep saw when he walked into the
room was. An American with a pony tail & long beard screaming at
officials. Two machine gun armed Austrian border guards looking on at
the ready & Josh petrified at the whole scene. Delta walked in
calmed everybody down, gave Josh a couple aspirin & mediated the
whole situation. I flew Delta Airlines from then on, they never failed
to stand up for me in any situation.
Kicked to the curb
in France. Quite often flying in & out of Europe, flights were
missed due to late arrivals. In many cases you would be booked next day
same flight which meant you stayed overnight in whatever city your
delay occurred in. Frankfurt, somewhere in Switzerland, New York (an
ice storm) & Paris were a few of the layovers.
France was the worst. Arriving from
Vienna on my way home the flight arrived late. Here's a tip, if you
don't have 2 hours for a connecting flight in Paris things get dicey
real fast. Degaul airport is a sprawling facility with very old &
very new sections thrown together in a very disorganized manner. Before
you can check in you need to pass back through a huge funnel like areas
to clear customs for international flights. At any given time 1/2 of
the customs people are on break & the rest are slow. Very often you
are at the back of a mass of people waiting forever, knowing your
flight is boarding.
On this occasion resulting in a missed
flight. We were all sent down to baggage claim to rebook. Every other
missed flight I was allowed to leave my checked bags, checked in.
Not this time. For normal people this is not a real problem, one or 2
large suitcases on rollers & they were all off to the hotel. In my
case though it was 5 huge duffel bags & by the time I gave up
arguing over the absurdity of try to take them to the hotel all the
shuttles had departed. To make matters worse I had to pay someone to
help me move the bags to where he said I could catch a shuttle. When I
got to that location, he quickly scurried off. Leaving me to realize I
was now at an isolated area outside the airport under an overpass, with
5 huge pieces of luggage full of Pez dispensers & no means of transportation. The only
people around were military with machine guns. I thought here we go
again.
A little background here. For the first
5 years of my travels Delta had been partnered with Lufthansa which
meant the European hub was Frankfurt. Let me tell you that is one
really nice airport, modern, easy to move through, nice people &
all the good food joints. So it was quite a comedown when they changed
& partnered with Airfrance which is the opposite in every way.
Slow, mostly old, very difficult getting from a to b (if you don't have 1 hour between flights, you are in trouble), mostly rude &
confusing food.
The military though was a huge surprise
they too were opposite of every other military in Europe I had
encountered. These guys were nice, helpful & generous. The French
military whose job was to guard the airport, approached & asked me
what I was doing. Expecting the worst I explained. They grabbed my
bags, carried them to a better location, where they had a cab waiting
& loaded them in. They had even told the driver where I needed to
go & haggled the price he could charge me. So France not so much,
but the military in France a good friend if you ever need one.
Once in the cab I realized the guys had
screened him also. The cabby was Indian & a really nice person. He
offered to drive by the Eiffel tower if I wanted, so I could at least
see it. Though still being in a very sour mood I declined, I just
wanted to get to the hotel & go to bed, as it had been a very long
day already. At the hotel he gave me his card in case I change my mind.
Now I wish I had, it was a chance
of a lifetime to see something very special. I checked my luggage in
& headed to my room. Turns out this was a terrific hotel, great
food & a terrific feather bed. I slept like a baby caught my flight
the next day & made it home fine.
This trip is where I learned my airport
manners. Here's what I mean. From the moment you leave home till you
are again home, you are in a mechanism of travel. To fight with it or
get upset is a waste of time. You will depart then return & all
that really matters is how you behaved in between. When you reflect on
the adventure it is better not to have memories of going crazy on
people. After that trip, I quite often watched as people went nuts on airport staff at the different malfunctions that always occur. Then
when they got to me I was patient, polite & understanding. Which usually amazed them because by now they were wore to a nubb.
Lost bags in Austria, no problem. I'd
just tell the people trying to help, no problem they usually arrive at
my hotel in Gyor tomorrow morning. Same thing when arriving back home,
as it actually relieved me of the burden of shepparding around my
luggage. Delta always went to extraordinary measures to retrieve my
luggage & get it to me. Here's an example. On the flight from Cinci
to Vienna my luggage was lost more than 50% of the time. Delta/Austrian
Airlines would always send it by cab from Vienna Austria to the Raba in
Gyor Hungary the next day before noon. We are talking over 25 times
they never failed me.
My luggage was never permanently lost.
It came close only a couple times. The bags were full of santa
Pez dispenser playwords. I remember this because I have a vivid recollection of
speaking to a person in the lost luggage department in Frankfurt from
home. Telling him, they are the big black duffel bags with strap
handles & if you unzip them you will see hundreds of Santa Pez dispensers. My
luggage arrived a couple days later. The other time was the hundreds
& hundreds of carded silver glow Pez dispensers. On that one I got more than a
little nervous as they were the whole reason for that trip. Also it was
early days & I hadn't really figured things out yet. You want to know a sight that will really break your heart. Several
times while waiting to get off a plane, I was able to watch my luggage
being removed from the cargo hold. I sat looking out the window of the
plane to see my duffel bags tossed from the hatch down onto the tarmac.
At least an eight or ten foot drop. Now that will break your heart.
In short patience is rewarded when
traveling. Be the one person who is not going nuts when your whole
flight misses its connection. The people behind the counter really
appreciate it & its fun to see the look of amazement on there
faces. You will arrive at your destination, your luggage will be found
& your blood pressure will thank you. Plus its way more fun to step
outside the situation & watch the insanity, than to participate. In
aprox 90 trips my luggage was never permanently lost & I always
made it home.
Breaking it in cinci. black bags, green bags, springs. In my early travels I used standard military type green duffel bags for transporting Pez dispensers. Not the little ones you see slung over one shoulder with ease. No, I used the ones that hunch you over & when full weigh about 100 pounds. You see the goal was 1200 pez dispensers per bag. A few years in I switched to a very large black canvas cargo type bag that zipped across the top for transporting Pez dispensers. I always lined the exterior with 1 layer of cardboard & individually zip lock bagged each pez dispenser.
One of the biggest problems I ran into was country of origin on Pez dispensers. *In the early days people working for the company would switch out pez stems with no country for made in Hungary pez stems. This was done with 10,000 to 20,000 Pez dispensers. Honestly there was no other way, until I started using the made in Hungary zip lock bags. Old Smurf Pez dispensers were some of the items that required this procedure.* Also care had to be taken to put Pez dispensers without country of origin in the middle near the bottom. Once problem Pez dispensers were carefully placed, a box of 400 generic Pez dispensers with country were poured over them. Like 4 inches of frosting to make the cake look good. This problem was later solved by having my zip bags printed MADE IN HUNGARY. This method worked terrific, except for one trip to get Merlin Pez dispensers where I filled each bag to 1500 per bag. This was accomplished by tamping the bags & filling to brim. With 1200 Pez dispensers per bag it is a nice loose fill that allows floating & can absorb impacts. The Merlin Pez dispensers trip bags were tight & impacts had nowhere to go except into the Pez dispensers. So about 30% were damaged, that's where I got all the Merlin pez heads.
In Cinci sometimes I was transferred over to the Xray machine with my luggage. It was always interesting to get the questions from the person viewing the Xray. You see all they were seeing was 1200 springs, which presented a very odd picture & conversation. The luggage was so large that on one occasion it actually broke a large square of Plexiglas at the opening of the machine.
I had a very odd conversation with one of the customs guys once. This was the guy who helped me find the correct Pez dispenser customs number for what I was doing. Which as I said translates to plastic tubing. On one trip he was going through his list of what can not be brought into the US. When he finished I heard him say to himself, "If they are that stupid, I'm not going to do it for them". When I asked what he meant, he just said "it is Pez Corps responsibility to put there product on the list, if they don't want other people bringing Pez dispensers into the country". He never mentioned this again in the years that followed.
Chapter 8. Austria, Australia, Sweden, South Africa & Spain
Austria, Traun.
I left the US and arrived in Budapest on Malev Airlines on Sunday morning. Picked up my car ($900.00 for a Chevy Corsica) & left town, setting out to meet my contact. As usual, half of the Pez dispensers I was promised was there. Had to come back on Monday to for the rest. I now had the last of the Monkey Pez dispensers & Dog Melody Maker Pez dispensers. It appears that the last of existing inventory of Pez dispensers from Austria was gathered together in Hungary to be used in the old eastern block countries. Most of it having been produced in 1991 & 1992. The second infusion of older Pez dispensers for Russia came 2 or 3 years later when all production of pez was halted in Slovenia & existing Pez dispensers were shipped to Hungary.
When I had finished in Hungary I left for Austria. As I passed through Vienna I stopped by to visit The King of Austria. This visit covered in another area. After visiting The King, I drove to Linz. Arrived in Linz, well actually Traun. The main headquarters & worldwide headquarters for Pez corporation is located in Linz/Traun. On the few times I stayed in Traun it always made everyone very nervous, especially since I missed Scotts visit to the same area only by a day or two.
I stayed at the Hotel Traunerhof (phone 07229/3323) at $45.00 a night. While there as it was summer I visited a large flea market in downtown Linz hunting for Pez dispensers. Saturday & Sunday between 8:00 am. & 1:00 pm. For directions ask for the Flo Market in Zentrum Linz. I found a gray pez space gun for $2.50. You can also visit a shopping center near Traun called Uno. On sundays between 6:00 am. & 12:00 pm. there is a flea market there also.
Australia.
I had heard that the company distributing Pez dispensers in Australia had some older inventory. So I planned a trip. Kathy who had never shown much interest in my travels, decided she wanted to go. You see my trips consisted of long flights, lots of driving & hotels. If you could see it from the road, that was what sight seeing was. Except Gyor where I relaxed & got away from it all, but even there it was mostly the Raba & centrum. Downtown in Europe is referred to as centrum or zentrum in most countries I visited. Candy is zukor in Hungary, show a pez dispenser & say zukor in a store & you are directed to where Pez dispensers are. So Kathy decided she was going & I never saw anybody get a passport so fast. We flew to California, then took I believe it was Quantis airlines to Australia. The flight from California to Sydney was over 20 hours. Arriving in Sydney we picked up our car & drove to the hotel. This was the first country I had been in where they drove on the wrong side of the road. The drive to the hotel was insane. Once at the hotel we parked the car & did not drive it again until we drove back to the airport to leave. For the entire week we were there we took cabs. Kathy who had come to sight see used public transport quite a bit, she was off in one direction or another most every day. She had agreed not to rope me into her travels as she understood I had no interest. Though she did con me into some zoo or something & some hole in the ground called the Two Sisters. Point of interest, this trip took place the week Princess Diana died. I remember this because on the way home that is all that was on the airport TVs. The first company I visited JNH Toys had Pez dispenser inventory but had recently lost the distribution rights for Pez in Australia. I often wonder if they sold all those Pez dispensers. What I remember that they had were Melody Makers Pez dispensers & Duck Tales Pez dispensers. They told me Millers distributing now had the pez distribution rights. At Millers I found 4 cases of older pez dispensers, but the rest was fairly current for the time. The good new was the guy who ran the place would ship pallets anywhere for cash. We set up a purchase of just under $10,000.00 & my business was done. My business had taken about 3 days & I was hoping to just relax & walk around the city. Which I did but I also ended up on a couple of Kathy's adventures. Customs on the trip home in California was surprisingly no problem & the pallets arrived just fine. Though I did have to use my broker in Grand Rapids to clear customs. I really liked Australia & would visit again, Though next time I would lay over midway in Hawaii for 4 or 5 days. The name of the company where I bought the pez was Millers Distributing Co. from John E. This company also handled all the arrangements to ship the majority of what I bought via freight.
Sweden.
The trip to Sweden was one of the neetest trips I went on buying pez. Gary Doss informed me that the Pez Pal Mariner had been released & was available only in Sweden. Gary sent me a photo image of the back of the Pez Playworld card. From that information I planned the trip.
I arrived in Sweden, Booked my car & Found a hotel. My stay was in Stockholm, a very interesting & nice place. Next morning I went to Toysrus. Here's something you may not know, most of the bigger cities in Western Europe, Australia & Sweden have Toysrus. Even Linz/Traun had one. Toysrus is a good place to find Pez dispensers & ask about who the distributor is. In worst case scenarios it is printed on the back of the cards & you can hire a taxi, point at the address & follow him.
After gaining/confirming the distributor address, also realizing the Pez Pal Mariner was not available at Toysrus. I set off for the distributor, he informed me this Pez dispensers was only available on the Ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki. As this trip was only about the Pez Pal Mariner I didn't buy anything from the distributor. Besides they really didn't have much, it was a pretty small operation. I arrived at Silja Ferry lines & was allowed to board the ferry & go to the gift shop on board the ship. There I met this really wonderful lady who ran things named Tuula. She said we have about 60 or so Pez Pal Mariner available but you have to be on board as a passenger & at sea before I can sell you any. I told her I really needed a lot of them so she checked & said she had 2 pallets of pez pal mariner at the other port. Off I went to buy a ticket. I booked a round trip, in a Tax deductible high end room. It was a room with an exterior window, so a view of the whole trip. This room even had a shower & a TV. Until this trip the idea of being on a large boat out in the middle of a big body of water left me a little uneasy. After this trip I realized it was more like being in a small city that happened to be a boat. We left port & the first group of Pez dispensers was delivered to the room, where I began tearing them down to just pez dispensers & pez body parts. So they could be bagged for my luggage. I planned to carry half the pez in my luggage & airfreight the rest. Once we arrived in Helsinki, I met with Tuula & used my credit card to pay for the pallets of Pez Pal Mariners that were being loaded. She & I had to call the US credit card company to clear the purchase as it was about $10,000.00. Once all the paperwork was done she had ships personnel, dolly cart it all up to my room. I got a lot of puzzled looks because even though this was one of the good rooms/cabins, the 2 pallets of pez pretty much filled the room. I spent the entire night in the cabin tearing down half of the Pez dispensers into my luggage & down packing the other pez cases. If you down pack pez playworlds correctly 3 cases become 2 cases easy. After down packing, pez cases had to be taped together into 8 cases per for airfreight. When completed I had 3 duffel bags full of loose Pez dispensers & 6 or 8 large packs of pez for airfreight. In the morning we arrived back at Stockholm & I had not even left the boat. Aside from meals, a shower, looking out the window & packing Pez dispensers. I had no time left, including no time for sleep. I left a really good tip for the destroyed cabin & left with the small army of guys with dollies. Once we arrived at my car, I gave the guys there tip & off they went. I found a cab driver & we discussed the airport & what I needed to accomplish. He decided Cathe (I think it was) was the freight airline I needed. He also decided we needed a total of 2 cabs plus my car to carry all the pez to the airport. Once the 3 cars were loaded he led the way to the airport, where he helped arrange everything with the freight company. He had been very helpful & got a really good tip. After they left & the freight was completed I was left with my pez luggage & one night remaining before my flight.
I booked a room in a hotel near the airport & got a well deserved nights sleep. The trip home was easy peasy. The freight arrived no problem, thanks to my broker in Grand Rapids. The trip was a big success. Then a year later the Pez Pal Mariners showed up in Hungary for liquidation into Russia. Oh well it had been a pretty cool adventure. Bragging rights, great scenery & a boat ride.
South Africa.
This was one of 2 very disappointing Pez trips. I flew from the US to Switzerland & from there to Johannesburg/Joburg South Africa. The flight was on Swiss Air a terrific airline though if I remember correct from Switzerland to Joburg took 18 hours, a very long flight. The plan was to spend 3 days each in Jogurg searching for pez & then fly down to Cape Town for a 3 day pez search. Things went South immediately upon arrival in Joburg. The atmosphere at the airport was troubling, jittery is the only way I can describe it. Apartheid had ended but what I sensed at the airport, was made obvious to me later. After getting my bags I was approached by a driver, he said where are you staying? I told him I hadn't actually made a reservation but figured on staying in Joburg. He immediately began shaking his head & saying no no no, you don't want to stay in Joburg & recommended a Hilton on the outskirts of Joburg. So he drove me over to the brand new Hilton in Sandy. On that drive & a few others I got the picture. White communities with 5 foot brick walls topped by razor wire & broken glass. Trucks with workers in the back driven by white people.
Even at the hotel it was apparent. The cleaning lady applied for a job, with no idea who I was or what I did. She pressed for a job based only on the fact that I was American. In the mid 90s Apartheid had ended but things were still pretty bleak. My driver helped me accomplish everything I wanted to check on within a day & 1/2, he was amazing. The answer was nobody who had any involvement with pez would even take a meeting. No pez was bought. Even though that Hilton was the best hotel I ever stayed in & I was scheduled to fly to Capetown in a day. I got the h... out of South Africa. I had the concierge book me on the soonest flight to Hungary. Where I surprised my contact by just appearing at his home out of nowhere. He quickly put together a load of pez for me. That done, I spent the next 4 days at the Raba, just decompressing from the experience of South Africa.
Spain.
The trip to Spain held a lot of promise. Not since the Mariner did I have so much information ahead of time. A pez plastic molding facility had been operated outside Pamplona called Dulce Unzuay (this is from memory as I don't seem to have any written records on this trip.). I knew this from some mint in cello molded Pez planes & a package from a pez dispenser. Josh hadn't been traveling with me since the early days but he had some Spanish speaking ability so we planned this trip together.
After arriving in Barcelona we picked up our car & drove to Pamplona. We found a hotel & got a little more local info. The next day we drove over to the local Pez distributor. This info can usually be found on the back of carded pez at the bottom. As always if you are confused about directions in a foreign country, hire a cab & point to the address. When we got to the distributor we found that like most countries product was now imported complete. Used to be say like the case in Spain & Slovenia. They had there own injection molding facility & a confectionery facility that created the candy & package the final product. Now though the old confectionery facility just imported carded Pez dispensers ready for distribution. Realizing they only imported now & all the unpackaged old pez dispensers were gone we asked about Dulce Unzuay. We were told they no longer made pez dispensers at the plastic molding facility. Well can we call & go over anyway. The call was made. We were told no we could not visit & all old pez inventory was gone. Heartbroken we left & left Spain returning home the next day. Josh had to get back to school & I had other fish to fry.
Mistakes were made on the pez trip to Spain. We never should have asked to visit the pez plastics plant, we should have just shown up. I learned early on with toys & Mickey Ds, never ask the question over the phone. Any company worth its salt is to busy to want to fool with some idiot on the phone. So being busy a fast no is always given so they can get back to what they were doing. Better to just show up & force companies to be people. On the phone a person can be a company. In person they can't. People always feel some need to be hospitable no matter who they are, if you have traveled several thousand miles to see them. Never ask an important question over the phone. Mistake #2, I did not follow up. Knowing that home assembly was used to assemble the Pez dispensers made at Dulce Unzuay. It always has bothered me that I never planned a second trip focused on canvasing the community surrounding the pez injection molding plant for components in garages. There is no doubt in my mind that the homes or garages of the people who did the home assembly have parts for Pez dispensers still. My guess judging from the time period this would have been done in, is that no feet dispensers is what was being assembled. The way to do this is. Locate yourself at a hotel in the immediate community surrounding Dulce Unzuay. Have the people at the hotel direct you to a local print shop that speaks English. Have that print shop create a flier in Spanish stating you are at that hotel & that you want to buy components of pez dispensers from when they did the home assembly. Walk around the neighborhood where the plastic plant was or is handing out your fliers. Put them in mail boxes & on car windshields. Let the hotel know what you are doing so people who respond can be directed to you. Plan on spending 7 to 10 days at the hotel. Have about $9,000.00 in Euros in the hotel safe to draw on as opportunities arise. Pay as little as possible for Pez dispensers that shows up.
Chapter 9. Helicopter Bob, The Two Andre's, Dead Al & Bambi
Helicopter Bob.
Helicopter Bob was connected to Pez corp USA. He
& one of his buds found a bunch of Pez dispensers in one of the buildings at Pez Corp. Pez pal cops & golden glow pez dispensers were two of the more notable
pieces. Well they got the Pez dispensers out of there & began selling to
john & other dealers. So I'm at a show in Atlantic city & up
walks Helicopter Bob, he says hey I have 200 pez pal cops do you want to buy
them? I said sure & we settled on a price, so off he goes to get
the Pez dispensers. Well all the way back he is busy selling Pez dispensers one by one for
$5.00 each more than he agreed to sell them to me for. You would think
this kinda thing was uncommon, when actually it was more the norm. From
Helicopter Bob to the 2 Andre's to Dead AL to the Austrian gun brokers,
there was always more & in addition backhanded dealing going on.
Ole Bob was just the first in a long line, I remember him saying to me
" if you don't quit yelling & cussing at me I'm not gonna sell to
you anymore Pez dispensers." Finally I think he was hearing me. Total amount spent
with this guy only a couple thousand.
German Andre.
German Andre is the kind of guy who greets you while hiding
behind a pole or something until he is sure you aren't mad at him. I
think the guy lived in constant fear that people he was doing business
with would find out everything he was doing generally speaking or
everything he was doing to you behind your back. You would contract say
for 3,000 Pez dispensers each & he would make 6,000 Pez dispensers. He would then
deliver the Pez dispensers you contracted for & you would start selling
& set your price. At this point he would quietly contact other
dealers & undercut your price to sell the extra Pez dispensers he had also made.
Then when he had gotten what he could out of the overproduction he
would offer you the rest at super cheap saying he had no idea pez corp
did an overrun & that he felt it was only right that I should have
them. This guy was a real piece of work. So from the beginning the
pez colors were not my exclusive as promised. Total amount spent with this guy $471,950.00 on Pez dispensers.
German
Andre is also the guy that facilitated the production of Joe &
Chicago Daves pez trucks (the black or silver cab, glow in the dark
trailer, red or orange wheels) , which Scott also later copied. Andre
followed the same format here. He produced the Pez dispensers they ordered, plus the
same amount for himself to undercut there sales. Later I ended up
buying a 2 ton truck load of Pez dispensers Joe & Dave had left & the
remainder of Andre's (a couple thousand loose pez dispensers)
"overproduction". How did Andre do it? Well he would get the quote
from Van Melles of say X per carded pez dispenser, then he would double the
order & charge you 5X per pez dispenser. There by getting his Pez dispensers for free,
plus 3X immediate profit. Then in the end when he was done undercutting
your sales, he could sell you the leftover Pez dispensers as "overproduction" at cost
& still make 100% profit. I just finished going over everything from 1998. To my surprise I found a fax dated November of 1998 where I proposed a pez truck project. Pez Trucks with black cab & trailer, also pez trucks with glow in dark cab & trailer. By January of 1999 Andre & I were close to quits. My guess is he shopped a combo of this idea to Joe & Dave.
Here's a little background on German Andre. In order to even get
the opportunity to do the deal on the pez colors there were 3 other pez deals I
had to do. As in if you buy these Pez dispensers I think I can get them to do it, over
& over. Like the container full of pez body parts (aprox 130,000) from
Asia or somewhere. Remember how I used to give away pez body parts when you
spent various amounts on other pez dispensers, well this is why. The gold,
silver, white & gray hair pez pals w/body parts playsets. A mess of
smashed aral pez & pez mariner playsets. Also a load of pez dispensers &
body parts carded on one card. This is what I had to do to get the
privileged of buying the pez colors. German Andre & the pez cars. Why
would a multiple million dollar injection molding company use a stencil
or a stamp? Wouldn't you think the word pez would be molded into the plastic? It
was molded on the original small cars & planes. Is it just me or
does this not make any sense at all? And why year after year do they
keep coming, different types, different sizes. A seemingly never ending
supply & assortment.
You
have to be careful as there are people in Europe who by location feel a
sense of immunity to create pez items & pass them off as old items.
German Andre & all those little pez plastic cars with black pez
stenciled on them is for me one example. I bought a ton of them from
him once, they all arrived soaking wet. I believe this was a method to
make the pristine new yellow pez header cards on the bags look aged by 20
or so years. I do not believe for a minute that all those little
plastic toys with black pez stenciled on them are real. Other items
created in the time period that these are supposed to be from DO NOT
HAVE BLACK STENCIL FOR PEZ. On the real cars & planes the pez is
molded in the plastic. When
you understand who German Andre is, it makes more sense. Also what he
actually does for a living & what his network of distribution is.
His real business is buying & selling closeout type items in
Europe. All sorts of collectibles & toy. Which is why he knew who
to contact & bribe to get my pez projects done. In short he knew
how to game the system so large shipping containers of product that
technically should not, did. He is very hands on. By this I mean
through the hiring of people he knew how to make 2 containers of Pez dispensers into one.
Who is better situated to buy large quantities of small plastic cars
& trucks. Create packaging. Have each item stenciled & because
it comes from Europe it has the air of authenticity. Also because it
comes from Europe nobody in the US has or can get any frame of
reference on the items. Further being situated in Europe Andre feels
immune from any repercussions on his dealings. Knowing Andre as I do
(at best questionable morals) there is no doubt in my mind he is making
these items. The
Pez coin plates. The coin plates are the ones with
peter pez holding speedy g. I just found records that show in one deal alone in 1998 I bought 1,050 of these plates at $5.00 each. After German Andre informed me that he could place the order & have them made. Which at best means this is an item with open ended ability to be produced. The plastic light up signs with the word PEZ on
them also came from German Andre. The lights were approx 2 foot long,
Triangle shape if viewed from the end, with yellow caps on each end
& a cover made of white plastic with the word PEZ on them. Would
Andre have the connections, ability & desire to make this item.
Yes. You have to remember he feels he has immunity from retribution,
because of his location & the fact that he really only sells to
dealers. So the dealers are the ones whose reputations are on the line
while he remains anonymous. Well till now anyway. I bought a lot of
these items: pez coin plates, cars with pez stenciled on them & the
light up pez signs.
I
was always assured they were real, so I sold them as real. In the mid
90s I had no reason to believe otherwise, but after years of doing
business with German Andre he lost my trust. It's one of those
situations where piece by piece as you learn more & see more you
understand more. One deal alone may look a little funny but you have no
reason to doubt so you let it go. Realization only comes when the
accumulation of things is to big to ignore any longer and it finally
dawns on you that this guys word can not be trusted. The final straw
was when other dealers informed me that he had produced a large
quantity of the pez colors for himself & was undercutting my wholesale
on these items to them. So
after all of this WHY did I buy a very large wooden crate of loose
pez colors from German Andre & let him lie to me saying they were production
over run? It's simple, he only wanted $2.00 each. There was & is
only one thing you can take to the bank with this guy, he always
delivered the product. I bought the loose pez colors & another crate of
joes pez trucks because at $2.00 each I actually had a good chance for 100%
profit even after Scott made his. I also was in vendetta mode, trying
to flood as much product into the hobby before Scott released his reproductions.
Hoping that Scotts sales would suck. I figured every collector I sold
to was one less Pez dispenser sale for Scott. This
was in the end one small victory I achieved in the pez color wars. Scotts
sales on the Misfit Pez dispensers did suck & that inventory of Pez dispensers
sitting there meant he had some explaining to do. I also believe poor
sales of the Misfit Pez dispensers was part of what was used to ease Scott into
retirement. Again a small victory considering the down side for Scott
was being nudged to retirement. For me the down side was I eventually
lost what had taken 20 years of work to build. So even though I claim I won a battle in the pez color
wars, Scott won the pez war. After being the #1 pain in his rear for over 6
years, he slowly & methodically removed me. Spanish Andre.
Spanish Andre the short version. pez yo yos yeah
that's all of them. oops I found more, oops I found more, oops I found
more. After about 3 times you give up. Guess what I think yeah oops he
is still finding more. "Finding" Total amount spent with this guy around two thousand dollars. Dead AL.
Dead AL was one of the worst & biggest liars
I ever bought pez dispensers from & that is saying a lot when you
factor in german Andre. Though in the end he was harmless & kind of
a tragic figure. What will surprise you is I really liked this guy, he died of what I
believe was a drug overdose of all things. I say of all things because
he was the most accident prone guy I have ever known. Power tools on
walls while remodeling with no regard for what might be in the wall or where it might be located. Catastrophic & predictable results always insued to
his arm or some other part of his body in some other ill concieved endevor. I bought thousands of no foot Pez dispensers from him before he
died & he always promised that that was everything. Promising this
is all, this is everything & if it isn't may god strike me dead. He
really said those words. It was not & God did. Again all things
said, I liked Dead AL. Total amount spent on Pez dispensers with this guy $32,667.00. Total spent with Dead Al $32,667.00 Total Pez dispensers bought 9,936.
Breakdown;
Maharajah 2,128 Pez dispensers @ average price of $3.83 each.
Captain Hook 1,130 Pez dispensers @ average price of $9.22 each.
Sheik 1,373 Pez dispensers @ average price of $5.13 each. Practical Pig A. 1,805 Pez dispensers @ average price of $2.53 each. Mickey Mouse with removable nose 2,150 Pez dispensers @ average price of $.68 cents each. Donald Duck Rubber removable hat 1,350 Pez dispensers @ average price of $.78 cents each. I gave you average cost per no foot Pez dispenser because the price
kept going down with each buy. There were 4 buys total & with each
buy he said this is all or may I be struck dead. Never was & he
was, by a drug overdose. I tell you though I loved this guy. Every
phone call was a new adventure in the life of the most accident prone
guy I never met.
The
final deal with Dead Al buying Pez dispensers was after he
died. Mike Mitros drove out to Bambi's house & picked up $10,000.00
worth
of Pez dispensers. It was the only way to complete the deal. Then Mike
shipped the Pez dispensers to me. All I remember from this deal was when it was
completed I had a large round trash can full of Mickey nf Pez dispensers & another
full of Donald nf Pez dispensers. Bambi still has a bunch more no feet Pez dispensers.
Bambi.
This lady has or had around 10,000 to 20,000 no
feet Pez dispensers. She is the hardest person in the world to buy Pez dispensers from.
Every time you get close to finishing a deal she spooks like a deer in
headlights. Finally I just gave up, as it was just a massive waist of
effort. Besides I learned a ways in that, again there was more every
time you thought you got it all. Also her relatives have been taking
small amounts of Pez dispensers out at a time (she has no idea) & been selling them
for years to big name dealers (the guys in Florida). She called again
about a big pile of Pez dispensers she said she had just last May. I never even
considered returning the call. *** I remember a pez story from a bit before my time. There was this store John L. used to go to. In this store there were these barrels of no feet Pez dispensers being sold kinda cheap. John & some of his friends went a bit wild buying. Enough so that proprietor pulled the product figuring that they had under valued what they had. I believe this was Bambi & her pez dispensers. Location, personality & pez dispensers on sale lead me to this conclusion. Bambi was always the kind of person who worried endlessly that she might not be getting the last penny possible. Which is why Dead Al her nephew or grandson was a Godsend. You could at least reason with Dead Al. Ironic thing is what bambi held so tight is now being stold from her & in the end she will get nothing.
Dead Al & Bambi revisit. Today while thinking about pez stems, I
thought I might bring up something that has always nagged at me. The no
feet Mickey Pez dispensers with removable nose on the wire spring stems. Those stems
always bothered me, I don't know who might have switched them or why
but those pez stems never looked right to me. I believe Bambi bought all
her no feet Pez dispensers in barrels from Pez USA. I also believe it was
through a closeout mechanism that sold excess Pez dispensers for use by
carnival type setups. It is possible Pez just slapped a bunch of excess
heads on whatever stems they had just to get rid of them. My problem is this. All of the Dead Al & Bambi pez dispensers were
rough. At the least filthy & a fair percentage were incomplete
broken or flawed. So I had to mess with them a lot. The majority of Pez dispensers just
needed to be washed, cleaned with a toothbrush or have marks removed.
Though about 10% had real problems, broken pieces or heads off.
In the process of fixing these Pez dispensers; gluing noses, turbans, sheik head dress
repair etc. I had a lot of opportunity to take a really good look at
Mickeys head & stem. In my opinion they were never meant to be
together. They fit together, though just barely & not very well.
Reminded me of a bad idea to move something out the door. If it were me
I never would have tried to pass that stem off with that head. The wire
spring & kicker on head, had a heck of a time being compatible. I
just never thought that pez dispenser was right or correct. The time period
of pez stem production verses time period for that pez heads production, didn't
match up either. It was like the pez stems sat in the warehouse till a
bunch of Mickey heads with no stems showed up & two left overs were
combined, regardless of exact compatibility.
Two notes here. #1. The washing is why most Dead Al pez dispensers have
rust marks on inner sleeves. #2. Combination Ink & pencil erasers
are terrific for removing marks on heads or stems. Use the ink half of
eraser to remove mark or lite scar (for deeper scars use a razor blade
to shave area & prep for the ink eraser), then use pencil half of
eraser to smooth it all out. Finally use grease from your forehead to
bring back the shine. I know, I know. Pez Collectors will find a lot of today's entries
upsetting. Stems switched for stems with made in Hungary. Washing
pez dispensers like dishes in the sink to clean them up. Razor blades &
erasers used to fix pez dispensers. Using parts from a few pez dispensers to
make one correct Pez dispenser. Oh yeah & gluing beaks, noses, hats, whiskers
etc on pez dispensers. All sacrilege to pez collectors. Nobody wants to see the
cow butchered, they just want that really great steak. In truth though
somebody has to kill the cow, I have always loved that metaphor.
"Somebody has to kill the cow". Peaz Dealers will never admit to these &
many others that are necessary to be able to offer the beautiful
pez dispensers you see at shows. Truth be told most do it.
Chapter 10. Gunther & Scott
Gunther First contact, He Opens the pez doors.
Gunther personally & in writing opened the doors to the pez warehouse
to me. I used the avenues established by him to purchase most of the
pez dispensers I bought in Hungary.
Gunther
was very helpful, I never would have found all the pez dispensers I bought
without his help. I paid aprox $.85 to $1.25 per pez dispenser, so someone
was definitely making money. Considering that I bought over a 1/2 million
pez dispensers & brought them home in duffel bags. Further considering
that, I'm really not sure that any of that money actually made it to
Pez corp. Even if it did pez dispenser cost at the time was $.25 to $.35
somebody made $300,000.00 to over 1/2 million. This is why I was so
offended when Gunther betrayed me by making all the colors for Scott.
After contributing to a massive retirement fund for 10 years, no
respect at all. Not to mention the actual pez colors deal where I paid 10
times actual cost & was guaranteed exclusivity. The
Austrian Queen recently emailed, which was nice of her, but she was
under the impression that this was all about pez bubble boy. So for those
who may be unaware, the line of product that was copied was the entire
"misfit" line. Yellow snowman Pez dispensers, Orange snowman Pez dispensers, black witch Pez dispensers, yellow
witch Pez dispensers, tan santa Pez dispensers, black skull Pez dispensers, pink elephant Pez dispensers, brown lion Pez dispensers, 3 different
neon pez pals with hats, 4 different hair color Pez Pal Shell gas guys, also the
neon psych hand Pez dispensers were mine first. Believe it or not I really had to
scratch my head a bit to remember everything. So if I missed something,
chalk it up to age. The
reason I put so much money into this Pez dispenser project was the inventory of older
pez product in the warehouses had dried up. So if I was to continue I
needed a whole new line of Pez dispensers. That being the case I poured all
cash on hand & all I could borrow into the pez colors project. If I had a do
over, I would have put that money into string lights & just moved
on. I gambled everything on this group of Pez dispensers, figuring everybody had
been properly paid off over the years & in this deal by itself.
Also believing a promise, by these same people.
Nothing
was ever written down, pez deals had always been done on handshakes, so to
speak. For 10 years this had never been the kind of business that
involved contracts. Remember my entire business was built in a gray
area of Pez dispensers. So it was not weird at all to send payments of
$150,000.00 at a time on someones word, believing why would someone
kill the goose that laid the golden egg. It never even occurred to me
that office politics on a global scale would trump over 1/2 million
dollars divvied up by less than 4 people. So when one of those people
(Gunther) put his rivalry with Scott, above personal profit I was blind
sided to say the least. I had just never seen the bigger picture. By
the way I don't think Scott saw it coming either. Our personal egos
were dwarfed by Gunthers ruthless ambition and in his view it was a
twofer. The misfits/holiday color Pez dispensers rid him of two obstacles in his
corporate trajectory. Besides he had other sources of side income, at
least 3 that I know of and possibly Scott & I were obstacles there
also.
Gunther Covert at Mickey Ds. I personally handed Gunther $2,000.00 for
2 trays of pez dispensers & some paper pez items he took out of the home
office in Linz to sell me. The only known origins Mr. Majestic Pez dispenser was in
one tray.
I found a picture. Some of the PEZ Items in This Purchase from Gunther
approx 20 old no feet pez dispensers. Mr. Majestic pez dispenser, Muselix nf pez dispenser, Asterix
nf pez dispenser, Obelix nf pez dispenser, Sparefrow pez dispenser, Orange pez dispenser, Psyc Flower pez dispenser, Psyc Hand pez dispenser, Ring Master pez dispenser,
Gorilla pez dispenser , Ball & Glove pez dispenser, Santa small head pez dispenser, Casper pez dispenser, Bullwinkle pez dispenser, Duck with
Flower pez dispenser & some old Regular pez dispensers. A bundle of aprox 24 gray new pez regulars,
the new design, never seen to that point. Pez paper items, mostly protoype
pez boxes not used for peppermint pez. Maryann bought most of these pez paper
items.
We
were in the car, he passed me the pez dispensers being very careful to keep
the pez below the dashboard & then I passed him the money. The
whole time he is looking around to make sure nobody he knows is seeing
him. THEN HE SAYS, "I DON'T KNOW YOU". I thought well that was an odd
thing to say. He counted the money & said you can send me more
later. I said, No that's it no more it is all I have on me, take it or
leave it. He took it, then scurried off looking over his shoulder as he
went. As he did it made me wonder, is this the guy who has been sending
the packages of Pez dispensers to Dave all these years. It is just that, ("you can send
me more later") made me think he was used to this.
Gunther Business as usual. Gunther is the guy who opened pez sales &
was in charge of Pez distribution in Hungary to Russia. He then was in charge of
facilitating & overseeing production of pez dispensers in China for the
US market. The success of these things helped facilitate his further
rise at Haas. A few bodies left in his wake was not going to
slow this guy down. The first time I met him he said " DON'T YOU KNOW
WHO I AM" . Then he proceeded with a flourish to show me. He wrote one
little post-it note (the one I sold on ebay about a year ago) told me
to go to the pez warehouse & hand it to people. To a man they snapped
to & helped me in any way I wanted. Impressive. Seriously color me
impressed. Though don't be fooled, with pez dispensers it has always
been & is POWER & MONEY. Preferably CASH.
Scott
Scott's biggest fear I think & what I
think motivated him against his better interests & eased his
retirement. I think Scott was obsessed with the idea that I was making
more money than him selling Pez. At one point he was on the warpath in Europe at
the pez factories, I mean really in my opinion getting crazy on the
management over there. What he did not know is at the same time he was
obsessing about me at the pez factories, I was over there buying pez dispenser
from the very same people & they in effect were hiding me from him
& telling me what he was saying & doing. This situation
occurred on 2 trips. You see they did not like him & they
did like me. These actions & his general manner I believe is why he
"retired". You see Pez USA was owned at the time (probably still is) by Haas. Sometimes people forget who works for who & just
because you sell a larger amount of Pez dispensers that does not change. Also
sometimes when you outsell your bosses, it make them jealous &
envious. Which means if say you start trying to read them the riot act
about something that has you, say a little crazy (me) they find a way
to stop the noise. After all your not the one contributing to there
retirement. Your not the one who say paid for there new house or car. Spy vs Spy. What you may not know is that during most of
the time I sold pez dispensers, there were 2 or 3 people who reported
back to Scott directly & indirectly everything they could find out
about what I was doing. Bless there hearts, I believe they felt it was
there way to get on his good side for purposes that benefited them. The
reason I know this is because the Europeans told me what he was up to
& why. They also gave me a heads up on what to avoid. Believe it or
not for a period of time there were actual rules to this game. LET ME BE VERY CLEAR ON THIS. WHEN SCOTT COPIED THE
PEZ COLORS HE DESTROYED ME. He destroyed my reputation & wiped me out
financially. I had so much money tied up in the pez colors of all types
that it was impossible to recover. My finances & business are still
feeling the effects to this day. I willingly stuck my neck out way to
far on this group of Pez dispensers by investing everything I had earned to
date, plus borrowing $150,000.00. All these years later & I am
still trying to recover from that one decision. At the time the only
avenue that was left was to sell the remainder of the Pez dispensers at any
price to recoup any portion of the money I spent. HERE WAS THE MAIN
PROBLEM. With his production he was now going to sell his pez misfits to
collectors at less than I paid for mine. It was perfectly executed by
Scott to rid himself of his nemesis.
The funny thing though is I believe it was his downfall
as well. After producing the inventory for the pez misfits & the
pez dispensers they led to. Scott had now stretched his neck out pretty far
also & when sale declined enough I believe Gunther whacked him. You
see the real puppet master in the whole thing I believe was Gunther.
Andre negotiated the deal with Van Melles of Germany, who then
submitted the Pez dispenser orders to Austria for approval. By guess who? Yes that's
right Gunther. Scott then proceeded to go a bit nuts on Austria about
the pez colors. After he calmed down he decided if he created a competing
inventory of Pez dispensers, he could destroy me once & for all. Well guess who had to
sign off on the pez misfits? That is correct Gunther.
So in the end I
believe Gunther played both Scott & me like a Fiddle by expertly
facilitating both of our retirements from selling Pez dispensers. Both
Scott & I were casualties of his assent to power at Haas. In
all honesty I believe Scott was the real target & that I was just a
useful tool to that end. Here is why I never really held this whole
episode against Scott. What he did he had every right to do, but
Gunther did not. Gunther was the one who approved the pez colors & he
knew full well I had been promised these Pez dispensers would be exclusive to me. So
when he approved the pez misfits he knew that promise was being broken
& that is why I no longer play by the rules. You may
wonder why in this story when referring to the pez color wars between Scott
& myself, I use phases like: He destroyed me, I eventually lost
everything, etc. This is not an effort on my part to solicit sympathy.
Rather it is more like when I was a little boy & we used to play
Cowboys, good guys & bad guys. Inevitably while playing Cowboys
somebody would start yelling " Mom he won't take his dead's", meaning
you shot him & he refused to lay down & play dead. Well in the
pez color wars between Scott & myself it was like playing Cowboys. To
state it less accurately or smooth over how losing affected my life
would be the same as not taking my dead's. He won so I am taking my
dead's.
I
have no ill will toward Scott, actually I kinda admire him. In all my
dealings with Pez he was the one honest man. The other day I was
thinking what a remarkable Forum it would be if one day he and I sat
down at a Pez convention to swap stories in front of you all. One catch
though for me, I would only consider doing it once I had released this
as a book. With a published book in hand I would consider it fun,
without this as a book I would not.Chapter 11. The Austrian King of Pez
When I first met the King, the thing I remember most is he found it
very difficult to hide his contempt for me. It was very clear he felt I
was trespassing on his domain by buying pez dispensers in Europe. On one
trip I just showed up at his flat. I waited outside till he drove
up on his motorcycle, then just walked up to him & introduced
myself. Where upon he said I know who you are. What are you doing here.
I said, Well I wanna buy some of your pez dispensers. The King then
replied, What if I hadn't showed up. My rely, Well I would have missed
you then wouldn't I. Reluctantly he took me upstairs & showed me
his very impressive pez collection of rare pez dispensers, sculpted pez prototypes,
pez prototypes & pez molds. We then had to go over to his other house to
fill my Pez dispenser order. I drove, to which he commented, they let you drive at
home. At the other house I was told to wait on the other side of the
hedges that surrounded the place. While he went in to get the
pez dispensers. Upon completion of the deal it was pretty clear to me that
I should not show up here again. The deal this time was to get rid of
me & that I should buy his Pez dispensers from john here after. You know
as nice as john is to everybody, I never got a warm fuzzy feeling from
him either. Though a couple years later the King did offer me 100, I
think it was green hornet Pez dispensers saying he would stop selling the rest for 1
year if I bought them.
A problem in the kingdom.
I think it was those long disposable pez regulars. It was handled Quietly
by the big 3. By handled I mean conversations were had & the Pez dispensers were withdrawn. Why didn't they tell you? Also why hasn't The
Austrian King of Pez ever run out of anything. Year after year after
year after year the same no feet pez dispensers & they never seem to
run out. I'm just saying, he never runs out. He started about 4 years
before me, yet I sold out of over 1,000,000 pez dispensers some of which I
had over 5,000 each. I'm just saying. REALLY!
While writing this story people contact me & comment on
the story or ask questions. I just received the following
statement/question. I decided to put it here. "I
sold my collection for top dollars when I found out about the inventory
of rare pez that is sitting in Austria and offered to be sold to me by
a dealer everyone knows in Austria. I also found out that the other
main author of the pez books knows all about it and has never mentioned
it while he advertises to buy and sells knowing the prices are inflated
due to the inventory in Austria and the collectors pay high prices for
items that there are thousands sitting in warehouses but they are in
cahoots and cannot release them without prices tanking."
I am withholding the user ID
of this person due to the explosive nature of the statement. Though I
am using it, because I know certain aspects of it to be true. Large
quantities of older "RARE" no feet Pez dispensers were offered to me
also by the King of Austria. Yes there is a very well informed person
who in the past anyway, was very closely allied to the King of Austria
& knew a lot about the King and yes this person is an author.
The very large quantity of pez guns
that flooded the market should have been a tell about what this
questioner is saying. Dealers sometimes own an inventory of Pez dispensers by
being the only client the seller sells that product to. I believe that
is the story on the pez guns. The inventory for whatever reason was
liquidated out from under there only client to that point. The King. Either that or German Andre had a hand in it somewhere.
The fact that the Pez gun molds
were offered to me for production should have been a tell. That older
pez molds for some no feet dispensers still exist & could be used. Are some older pez molds owned by people other than Pez. If a
plastic item is to be considered rare, the mold should be destroyed
& that should be documented. Here's the real problem though, just
like the Pez Batman with Cape fraud exposed. Any plastic item can be used
to make a mold for production of that item. For Pete's Sake it is
plastic & if what you can get for a duplicate makes it worth doing,
it will be done, sooner or later.
The fact that the King of Austria
never seems to run out of "RARE" pez dispensers, is possible verification
of this questioners statements. You tell me, "Are the pez dispensers on
offer today by the King of Austria the same ones on offer in 1995?" If so there truely must be a lot of these Pez dispensers.
Here is where the questioner & I part ways. A Very Large inventory
of older Pez dispensers does not necessarily destroy the value of a
collectible. As long as the production is not ongoing production of
that pez dispenser. At one point I could sell as much as 6,000 to 10,000
pieces of any Pez dispenser. The qualifier being I sold $75.00 Pez dispensers
prior to my obtaining that Pez dispensers for $25.00. The King has always
controlled the flow of his "RARE" pez dispensers into the market place.
Much like the flow of diamonds are controlled by one or two diamond
houses. Now provided he does not lose faith in the value of the
inventory he controls or (in my opinion) the control of that Pez dispenser inventory,
like the pez guns. Everything will be fine, but if the King loses faith in
or control of that Pez dispenser inventory, that is another question.
The king said to me "You like to sell fast, I like to sell slow. We
will see who was right." Some would say he was right as I no longer
sell Pez, yet he is still standing. I say the King is a very smart guy
& what if he sees a decline in the interest in what he holds &
does not think values will bounce back. Will he then liquidate his inventory of Pez dispensers, to heck
with the impact on values. You can only run a "long game" as long as
the game is still on. Has he also stayed at the dance to long? It's
like the guy who lives forever, at a certain point he must change his
name & location. Otherwise people start to notice that he never
changes.
This is also one
of the reasons that the King uses other people to sell his Pez dispensers.
The Author mentioned by the questioner was a beard for the King for more than 10 years. Providing a
way to sell twice as many Pez dispensers at a time without it looking like that much.
The King has also discretely wholesaled to other dealers, again
allowing an increase in flow into the market without the appearance of
flooding the market. He controls values through what he wholesales his Pez dispensers at.
A dealer always adds on a profit to purchase price, thereby maintaining
the Pez dispenser's value. So what if it takes the dealer 2 or 3 years to sell. Unless
he quietly sells at cost to friends as a favor, he will hold out &
value is maintained.
Look no further than the pez guns. I did not buy them all, I bought a lot
but not all. Approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of what was liquidated were
bought by other people. They were still selling what they bought a
couple years later, because they were trying to maintain a margin of
profit. Me, I lost my temper. I sold at cost & less than cost.
Unlike everybody else I had had enough, it had happened like this one
to many times. Most of the other buyers waited it out to sell, for
values to bounce back a bit. Though they should thank me because by
losing my temper & selling everything fast & cheap. The Euro
seller was forced to sell the remaining pez gun inventory cheaper than they
wanted to. I do not regret my actions in the pez gun matter, a symbolic
lesson needed to finally be taught to Euro Pez sellers.
Next possibility. What if the king does not physically control the
Pez dispenser inventory. As was the case with the pez guns, in my opinion. How long does
the real owner hold out for pez sales to pick back up before they lose
faith as with the pez guns & just liquidate the pez inventory.
The recession has been rough for everybody rich & poor alike. At
what point is some money now better to whoever controls the pez inventory
than possibly hardly any money later. (Personal note here; in my
opinion this is going to be a double dip recession & we are in the
first dip. One word for you Dubai. ) There is a term among dealers in
collectibles called "Dead Peoples Toys". This term means that the
market or collectors of these toys are dead. With the economic decline
everybody is re evaluating what to spend money on. This re evaluation
goes on even or rather especially with collectors. Also reflect on the
question, do you at 45 do or value what you did at 25. What we value or
collect when we are single or do not have children changes once we have
children & more responsibilities. This change in circumstance is
intensified by economic realities.
So to does the potential group of collectors & what they collect.
Every ten years what is collected also advances ten years. Right now if
I am not mistaken toys from the 1980s are what is most in demand.
People in there 20s & 30s collect there youth, fond memories, toys
that let them relive that youth. So the number of potential customers
for the 1970s has declined, as have the 1960s & 1950s. At about the
1950s & older you are getting into Dead Peoples Toys. Yes they are
still collected but the amount of inventory you can sell into it
declines along with the number of potential clients. Tougher economic
times act as a multiplier on this decline, as less money forces people
to get there priorities in order sooner than good times do.
The short of it being. As a dealer you should not let the size of your
inventory exceed the group of potential buyers for that product. You
have to sell into a market before the window closes. Every ten years,
the size of the potential market for a fixed age collectible shrinks,
& hard economic times speeds the process up. In the peak of my pez
selling days I figured there were about 10,000 collectors of pez
dispensers. Today I would say that number is no more than 5,000.
Just ask yourself these questions honestly. How many fellow pez collectors
have said to you they are selling there pez collections? At a minimum the
number of pez collectors coming in must match the number going out just to stay
stagnant. What is current attendance at pez conventions? Is it the same as
the peak about 1998? Is the number of successful pez listings on ebay
rising or declining? Are older Pez dispensers bringing highs on ebay or
is it closer to half of the previous highs? Not for me to say only you
know these answers.
What
I can say is, if Pez dispensers are like other toy type collectibles.
The clock is ticking on the King of Austria & if he or who he buys
from has a very large inventory of old pez dispensers time is running
out. Another saying I like is "You're Going To Be Buried With That
One". Meaning the inventory of product you have will outlast the time
you have left to sell it. At one point I thought for sure ole Josh was
going to have to bury me with some portion of those 36,000 Pez body
parts I bought. Lucky for him I got rid of them all. Now it is Star
Wars figures By Applause. Hey Mike I'm thinking about grinding them up
with a wood chipper for landscaping or driveway material. What do you
think. Kathy hates the idea.
I know right now as a Pez collector you are very put out with me. I
have no doubt in my mind, some Pez collectors will indeed collect until
the day they die. The question is how many people will there be who
collect Pez dispensers when you die, to buy it. Lunch boxes were very
hot as a collectible in the early 1990s and yes there are still people
who collect lunch boxes. I am sure if I had an original Lost in Space
Dome top lunch box in mint condition I could get $350.00 to $500.00 for
it. That accepted do you think I could get $300.00 each for 2,000 of
them. No, and the reason is there are not enough collectors out there
willing to pay $300.00 each. The pool of collectors for that item at
that price has decreased in the last 15 years.
"I'm buying these & I am going to save them to sell later for my
kids college education. This is something I heard more than once when I
used to sell McDonalds premiums. When I would hear this it would make
me nuts. Yes I politely tried to reason with the person.
Last
I knew pez price guides reflected what a Pez dispenser currently sells for. Not
somewhere between what it used to sell for (nor ten dollars over what
the King of Austria currently wholesales the Pez dispenser for) & what it currently
sells for. No a current pez price guide should reflect what a person could
get if they sold that pez dispenser today. I hope & can't imagine
this is not still the case.
Chapter 12. The Pez Space Gun Project
The Holy Grail for me of the entire colors project was Pez Guns. From
the very first conversation in1998 to my last fax that year, the Pez
Guns were the common thread. Early on though the conversation narrowed
to the Pez Space Guns. Within this chapter I will detail out the year
long conversation as it happened using the Faxes back & forth.
Fax 1-22-1998. this fax generally was a response to my inquiry about
guns. "Re space guns & regular shooters. Final I can say the molds
for this pcs are gone. (they found the space gun molds later) No
documentation are left about this pcs. Also no samples. So is also not
an calculation for this pcs possible. Before we go in production. I
want to know the price. I think you too. So if you agree and if you
want to pls send me one pc from each gun as sample for check up the
cost for a reproduction. Can you do this? Pls understand - I can't
promise nothing. But I can try all.
I responded in the affirmative & sent the samples. After this the
gun project was used over & over again as a tease to get me to buy
many things. This went on for about 6 months.
5-22-98. "Space gun is possible. Minimum order 7,000 pieces. If you
want 7 different colors so is this possible. (7 different colors 1,000
pieces each). $10.00 ea. If you're interest pls. let me know." He
also generally complained about Toy shop ads & how I was not
allowed to advertise projects he & I were doing. I responded that
for what I payed for dispensers his contact could bite it.
It always amazed me. People I bought Pez dispensers from always &
continuously tried to tie my hands when selling the dispensers. These
people had no problem charging high prices for what they sold me, but
wanted me to sell somehow by not talking about the Pez. I was never
able to make them understand that the flow of cash they wanted was
directly tied to me openly selling these Pez dispensers. This topic was
a constant source of conflict for 10 years.
I swear if Scott McWhinnie had only been able to put our differences
aside. I gladly & easily would have been willing to spend the 1
million dollars with him directly. I believe in the end if we had,
things would have turned out better for both of us. Unfortunately Scott
was obsessed like a dog with a bone. That bone was his hatred of me
& there was no talking him out of it.
I faxed back saying. I would like To do this as a December of 1998
project. I would like 10 different color, 1,000 of each color. for a
total of 10,000 guns at $10.00 each. Tell your contact the colors can
be run continuously. No need to purge molds between colors. As these
weird color guns would sell also. Colors requested are; brown, black,
gold clear, glow in dark, & 5 different neon colors. On 6-22-98 I received a fax back. "Gun deal looks good. I think I know more after complete current deal."
Then on 8-25-98. "Regarding guns & others. All this is for the time
being put in cold storage." This fax was a reaction to the ongoing
trouble caused by the need for me to sell what I bought. Also as usual
I was asked to buy other things to reopen the gun negotiations.
Something else I only realized later was that this phase of
negotiations was stopped out of greed. Evidence of this greed showed
its head when negotiations resumed. The price per gun jumped to $14.00
per gun. *** On 12-7-98 . I received a new fax from German Andre. Steve, I can offer Space Guns. 12 different colors 1,000 pcs each @ $14.00 each. Pls let me know if you're interest. *** My reply. Andre. With the proposal that you made of 12,000 space guns at $14.00 each = $168,000.00 . Here is what we think. In mu business I always expect to triple on retail & double on wholesale, with the expenses of operation this is what is required. Since the target price for the retail of these is $30.00 each, your proposal fails at the first review. To lay some ground work back to your chef scenario, I don't mind all the risk when product fits in my basic business requirements. Your offer of $14.00 does not fit, so therefore we have to look at this as aq different kind of situation. Again at $7.50 to $10.00 per gun we have a situation that fits my requirements. You say this is impossible fine. What this is telling me is that you & your contact are now interested in working on a partnership. Because when you ask me to work on 100% for wholesale I am no longer working independently and am no longer the chef. You are by asking this price making me the retail outlet for a 3 way split on product. For your $14.00 price to work, here is how: when you have the guns in your possession I pay $18,000.00 immediately as my part of the risk. Every 30 days from that point on you will receive $15,000.00. This period would last for the next 10 month's. (rumors were starting about Pez USA copying the colors) Provided as you promised Pez USA does not come out with these guns. (this would have provided a safety net, as if Pez USA copied the guns, Andre & Pez Europe would get no more money from that point. duplication would nullify the arrangement) Provided as you promised Pez USA does not come out with these guns. You say this is so, so this should not concern be of concern to you. Please remember I am very aware that the initial $18,000.00 would cover cost of product for your contact. So if he b*****s remind him that for the next 10 months that you & he would be dividing up $15,000.00 per month pure profit. I have no problem with this arrangement. You asked to be partners by wanting me to pay $14.00 each, so partner this is how it works. I would also like one gimme in this arrangement, as an added inducement for me to take on all of the risks & only 1/2 of the profit. I want something that is wholly mine and the profit is mine. I want 3,000 clear regulars (clear cap & clear outer sleeve). Following is a list of how we want the guns done: *** 2,000 black guns; 400 black grip, 400 neon green grip, 400 neon yellow grip, 400 neon pink grip, & 400 neon orange grip. *** 2,000 clear guns; 400 black grip, 400 neon green grip, 400 neon yellow grip, 400 neon pink grip, & 400 neon orange grip. *** 4,000 glow in the dark guns; 800 black grip, 800 neon green grip, 800 neon yellow grip, 800 neon pink grip, & 800 neon orange grip. *** 1,000 neon pink guns; black grip only. *** 1,000 neon green guns; black grip only. *** 1,000 neon yellow guns; black grip only. *** 1,000 neon orange guns; black grip only. *** Andre. The grip variations will ensure faster sales and as always if I can beat the payment schedule by selling faster you know that I will. These color variations I feel would hasten this process. For production purposes your man would be making 5,600 black grips, 1,600 neon pink grips, 1,600 neon yellow grips, 1,600 neon orange grips & 1,600 neon green grips. So the assembly as you can see is the only real area of work to accomplish variations required for faster sales. Thank you. steve. *** The hobby came very close to this deal. Very close.
*** Long & reasoned arguments like this were always an absolute waste of time. Over time I have learned that most Europeans just ignore anything that they don't want to hear & move on like you never even said it. Very frustrating to reason out a position, only to have it ignored as not relevant. Today for the kind of money I was spending if someone wants to do business it is on my terms. I will adjust up like $2.00 can become $2.50, But that's about it. It's amazing how poverty sharpens your negotiating skills. My problem back then was Pez Money, there was lots of it & I did not respect it like I should have.
*** After that fax though a new problem started to affect these
negotiations. Richie was reporting Scotts plans to duplicate the
colors. So my immediate reply was.
*** Andre. 12,000 x $14.00 = $168,000.00 "NO WAY!" Yeah sure I
pay this, then 6 months to one year later Scott will bring to the US
& he will pay $1.00 to $2.00 ea gun. Thank you NO. I've had enough
of this B******t. What was exclusive to me, should have stayed that
way. *** On 12-17-98 I received this fax from Andre. Hello Steve. regarding guns. I can't offer under $14.00 ea. (sorry) I'll clear you up that Haas must produce two molds - just for 12,000 pieces. (it appeared that two of the component molds were missing for the guns) Haas must produce two special feathers for each gun which are special - manufactured. No company which made usually 100,000 pcs or 1,000,000 pcs is interested in made specials in less quantities for less money. The complete assemble of the guns is hard work which takes a lot of time. Terms of delivery 6 months. Add to this that it's positive clear plastic is maybe not fit for the load of the feathers and the lasting load which comes from the feathers. The result can be that the clear plastic can't stand the lasting load and the plastic pin inside the gun can break and you're a damaged gun. Besides I can't offer this 12,000 pcs guns for $14.00 ea. include 3,000 pieces regulars and I can't accept your terms of payment because I've to pay directly to Haas. I can't finance $168,000.00 because I'm not a millionaire.
*** By this point it really did not matter much any more as I was beginning to believe what Richie was reporting. Scott was going to duplicate the color project. Man was I hung up on this gun project, I just could not let it go. It was over. Even still I made this last offer. *** Andre 7,000 space guns. 1,000 black, 1,000 glow in the dark & 5 x 1,000 each neon color guns. Plus 3,000 black snowmen; red hat & red nose. $70,000.00 delivered air freight. *** We actually came close on this one also. Andre was now realizing that the jig was up. That I was now aware of what had been going on & that I now realized that the Color Wars were about to begin. Amid all this chaos Andre still wanted to salvage one last deal. Problem was my world was crashing all around me & within weeks this deal was no longer possible. The decline in revenue stream was escalating by the day. Things I had not thought twice about just 6 months prior were now distant memories. *** I had flown to close to the sun & was now plummeting to earth. Unlike Gonzo I did not think plummeting was fun. Twenty years of work were now evaporating before my very eyes. I accept this Plummeting Award & wish to thank Pez Corp, I couldn't have done it without your help & support. *** I want
to precede the next part by saying. This is said with love, all due
respect & no offense intended. If I offend anyone, you have my
profound apology as that is not my intent. *** So there you go that is the gun story. It was a few years later that the huge pez space gun & shooter "find" was made. Coincidence, you be the judge. Me I'm skeptical but then again I'm kind of a cynic. Molds exist, almost used them, 5,000 to 10,000 guns appear as if by magic & there is oil inside the cartridge that looks & smells fresh. Sorta like they were only a year or two old. *** This is the very reason this chapter is important. It shows in detail the following. Haas had the molds. Haas was willing to use the molds, for a price. Cash is King. The quantity needed for a production approx 10,000. The fact that 6,000 or so is what appeared in the "find" is logical. Say somebody in Europe contracted for about 10,000 pieces of each about 2 years prior to the "find". That person would have sold some of the production over the two year period. As with the trucks Joe & Dave had made, this person starts getting antsy after a year of selling. Deciding to sell the remainder of the production faster in bulk. This is exactly how it would happen. Or do you prefer to believe a massive quantity of guns was found out of nowhere looking brite as daisies 20 years after production ended. *** After dealing with the European sellers of Pez Dispensers for 10 years, I believe the "find" was actually produced sometime after 1999 as this is exactly when Haas was ready to go on the guns. It further would not surprise me if German Andre was the one who made them or at the very least had a hand in it. *** Recently I was contacted by a reporter who was thinking about championing the latest Pez corp vs a collector. Not Gary. He wanted to know if I knew of any other cases besides Gary & this fellow where pez had come down on collectors. I'm afraid my email responses were disappointing. Maybe I have seen to much, because I told him there are no innocent little lambs.
*** Collectors happily buy liberated black market dispensers (any dispenser not intended to be sold by pez corp is a liberated dispenser), actually they prize them. Color variations liberated from Pez Corp, or dispensers brought into the country in direct violation of copyright laws. I sold a lot of them. I'm using the word liberated because Stolen seems to judgemental.
*** Collectors & dealers make & sell fantasy dispensers. The reporter said well yea but he only traded to other collectors. Yeah right maybe in the beginning, but eventually most do sell them. Also if fantasy pieces are created to trade to a dealer for real pez, won't the dealer sell them. I often traded old no feet dispensers for groups of fantasy items & we all knew I was going to sell them. A fantasy pez creator can't maintain innocence if they know the trade will result in the sale of the item. *** In the early days it was the resin head Spock's, Pillsbery Dough Boy, Pee Wee etc by that artist. The Kaleidoscope stem guy. The cookie Jars. Dwayne's Hitler pez. The guy who put corporate logos on the ball pez. The guy who molded heads at conventions in your image then baked them in a toaster oven. These are just a few & it does not even take into account other fantasy pieces where portions of toys are put on dispensers. Collectors & dealers violate copyrights all the time, explaining it away in various ways that make it sound justifiable. Take a minute & think about it before just automatically hating me for saying it. It does not make anybody a bad person, but it is the truth. *** besides fantasy dispensers, "artist creations", black market dispensers, imported dispensers that violate copyrights. There is the out & out fake stuff; pins (not just the ones I made), yo yos, money clips, rings, stenciled cars, etc, etc, etc. Composite dispensers where the sum of the dispensers used is less valuable than the components needed to create a more valuable dispenser. Like Mr Majestic creations, some regulars, Batman with Cape & footed heads that can upgrade to a no foot stem. As a lot of heads stayed the same when stems went from no feet to feet & it is an easy upgrade for a lowly no feet dispenser to a good piece with the right head.
*** Stem switching when done right & if you have the knowledge (which I don't) is impossible to tell the difference. Except maybe the stress marks at the top of the inner sleeve. There is also stem shaving & melt mark repair. *** Reproduction using existing molds of Pez cosidered out of production. Some I know to be true others I suspect. *** And then there is Pez corp Europe/Haas. Items knowingly sold out of copyright. One example blue Dumbo, plus massive amounts of others liquidated after copyright into Russia. Again don't tell me what I saw with my own eyes was not true. Also the over a million dollars different people within the company made & still do "helping the hobby" with rare color variations or product to be sold out of copyright. Rare color variations are now a cottage industry within the company.
*** As the reporter said he just traded to other collectors. Even if that were so & the website says different. But say it were so, eventually the fantasy piece or creation is sold down the line. There are no innocent lambs. Collectors are not let in on the whole story out of fear of how these things if reveled would impact the hobby yet everybody knows some or a few of the pieces. An illusion is maintained & for good reason, money. *** The
fantasy in the end has always been about the money. As collectors you
do realize that at least in the mid to late 1990s, the combined take
for dealers at a single convention was around $100,000.00.
Sometimes depending on the year & the particular convention,
combined dealer take was about $200,000.00. This would be one
with 6 plus big dealers Dave, John, The king, The Queen, Slovenia, me
& 10 to 20 smaller dealers. Add to that a collection or 2 up for
sale & there is your number. This is a lot of money.
*** Per year in the mid to late 1990s overall it would not surprise me if collectors spent roughly two million dollars per year on dispensers. Easily true as one year alone I made $750,000.00 selling pez & I truly doubt everyone else was idle that year. In that year collectors easily spent two million on pez. To me that is a lot of money & any time a lot of money is at stake people want in. The German Andre crowd though was the most notorious. Always coming up with ways & items to get some of that money.
*** The point of all this is, with the amounts of money being spent per year by collectors you need to be more careful. If you consider what I've said is not good for the hobby, then don't support it by buying it. The act of buying say rare color variations or fantasy pieces only guarantees there will be more. Feed the beast & it only gets hungrier. Soon the beasts friends want to eat also. *** Police your hobby by not buying items that are not good for it. After all if you don't buy it, it will of its own accord go away. When in doubt, don't buy it. Be careful of Europeans, except The Queen & The Slovenian. It has always bothered me that Europeans feel a freedom & immunity to create because there is an ocean between them & there victims. When in doubt ask Richie B, John the Cool Pez Man or Marry Anne Kennedy. These are good people whose only motivation is there love of Pez collecting.
*** One more thing. No dispenser should ever be valued at more than the value of the components required to make it. As collectors you really need to presure anyone who writes price guides to enforce this guideline. If a person can't make more money by reconfiguring dispensers, than they can just leaving them as they are. They will leave them as they are, as why bother when you could break them in the process. Collectors need to be more aware of the outside influences now hunting for there piece of the pie.
*** The reporter just set my mind to working. It seems like every year or two a new innocent lamb is being persecuted unjustly by the big bad company, but when everything is put in context it just seems different to me. At this point I have no idea how I fit in all this, not completely anyway. I'm just a guy trying to sell a story. *** Again. This was said with love, in all due
respect & no offense was intended. If you were offend, you have my
profound apology as that was not my intent.
Chapter 13 . Pez Money.
The whole PEZ story is really about operating below the radar &
exploiting a very large corporate loophole. * Seeing something clearly
that it appears nobody else can see or if they did see it for whatever
reason did not act on it. Yes there were people doing what I did, but
only on a very small scale. Until I came along, nobody had exploited
the flaw in the system to its breaking point. * Which required trying
to stay one step ahead of the game. Acquiring as many pez dispensers as
possible, as fast as possible, before my personal profile as a dealer
closed the window. Doing a very delicate dance with maintaining a cash
flow to continue buying & not becoming the biggest bulls eye out
there to Scott.
In the end a rather impossible task & I stayed to long at the
party. It proved impossible to keep a low profile while selling the
amount of pez dispensers required to raise the cash to complete the
project. If I had had the luxury of buying everything at once, then
start selling. That would have been a different story. Unfortunately I
had less than $3,000.00 to start the project with & I had to earn,
to keep going. So the aspect of
what I had to do was always in direct conflict with what I wanted to
do. Maintaining a low profile became impossible & becoming #1 on
Scotts hit parade, inevitable.
Maryann Kennedy once said I could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. I have
to tell you it really was not due to any skill on my part. I went from
being in the shop for over 20 years where I was always worried about my
job, to the adventure of a lifetime & Pez money. So selling was
easy & fun, becoming more like show & tell about this
adventure.
Also you may think I bought pez so I could sell it & make tons of
money. Incorrect, I did not buy to sell, I sold so I could buy. The
money was only a means to the end, which was having lots of something.
At this point I wish it had been all about the money. Unfortunately I
have an estranged relationship with money, in plain talk I do not value
it as I should. Though a warehouse full of product, that I value. Being
somewhat compulsive obsessive (a double & triple, lock or light
switch checker) lots or better yet all of something is what gives me a
rush of excitement. I actually have no use for one of something, but
1,000 of something now you have my attention.
Selling
product is more of a validation that I was right about it all & not
just nuts. When you spot something no one else can see, there are two
possibilities. You are hallucinating again ( and none of us likes that), or you are a handsome & pretty smart fellow.
The only real way of scoring is to complete the idea, sell it. If it fails you're an
idiot, but if it works you are a genius.
Selling is also a game all of it's own, one that the creative side of
me enjoys very much. In order to achieve that one individual sale, a
mechanism must be created. Individual mechanisms & an overall
mechanism. The size or footprint of the overall mechanism is very
important, as a large footprint is necessary to gain the visibility
essential to success. The individual sale.
Money is just a way to make things happen & push away problems. Pez
money removed all feelings of vulnerability & gave me the sense
that I was finally in control. Not true, but it did feel good anyway.
We are currently in a recession & a pretty bad one at that. For me
though, this is I believe the fourth one in my working life. The shop I
worked in was Metal Stamping press repair. For the approximately 22
years I worked in press repair starting in 1970 to about 1993 it seemed
like one long recession. One in the 70s, one in the 80s & then as I
exited one in the 90s. Always being worried about job security in a non
union shop, even though I was in a skilled trade as a machinist &
welder. Even today as bad as things are here in Michigan, I still do not regret
leaving the shop & going off on my own. When I worked for someone
else my livelihood depended on them & there abilities. Working for
myself my livelihood depends on me & my ability to generate ideas.
Knowing that one idea stands between me & the success I desire.
Though it never really comes down to just one idea, in reality it is
tinkering with the mechanism every day. Never giving up & never
giving in. Every day 365 days a year coming into my office &
working from 10:00 am till 7:30 pm. Finding something positive to work
on every day that moves things forward. Where the pez project failed & eventually collapsed was the decline
of forward momentum. In other words cash flow roll over. One dollar
becomes two, two becomes four & so on. Cash flow & rollover
rate stalled then started going in the other direction during the color
wars creating negative momentum. Also the last 20 trips to Europe
should not have happened as product cost was higher & retail for
Euro pez was lower. To many people were selling Euro pez on ebay &
at shows causing a price war. In short I had become to comfortable
doing the same thing. I loved staying at the Raba & the routine I
had there. The compulsive obsessive side of me demanded more pez. It
was a form of self gratification carrying approx 9,000 Pez dispensers
per trip home & adding them to the inventory. So I blinded myself
to the reality that profit margin from the trips was no longer
productive.
In
my defense, had the color wars not happened the pez dispensers from the
last 20 trips would have actually been required to maintain the depth
of dispenser on offer. Though with the collapse of the colors those
trips were only a futile attempt to shore up something that was broken.
I think in some ways I was also afraid to move on. The fear of leaving
something you know for the unknown, wanting things to not change.
There was also the problem of leaving Pez Money. Crazy good money that just made life so much easier. Pez Money #1. I started my Pez Business with less than $3,000.00 & over the next 10 years earned well 4.5 Million dollars.
Pez Money #2. Pez money is crazy good
money. Got a problem throw money at it till it goes away. Going from
the shop to Pez Money was a wild & crazy ride which created in me a
kind of natural high. For my entire life until Pez Money I had not been
a happy person, always fighting demons in my head. Then for almost 10
years my head was clear & I was happy. I loved buying & selling
Pez, it came natural to me. My new found happiness & excitement for
life spilled over into everything I did with Pez. So you see Maryann
what you were seeing as a really good salesman. Was actually someone
who had found happiness for the first time in his 43 years of life.
Until those 10 years I had no idea what it even felt like to be happy.
I never understood happy people before that, they always seemed like
some odd foreign entity. Though like any high, even a natural high that
lasted 10 years you always come down. I spent the next five years very
depressed all the old demons returned. Now though, I have found a
middle, a kind of neutral place that I am very comfortable in.
Pez Money #3. Biggest single purchase anyone ever made
from me, Michelle at about $30,000.00. Largest single transaction /
payment I made for 1 group of dispensers $150,000.00. Biggest overall
sales from 1 convention $30,000.00. Also there was one week where I made about $50,000.00
Pez
Money #4. I originally paid cash
out of pocket for my 2 level warehouse. A 40 foot by 70 foot 16 foot
tall pole building, with cement floor & wrap around upper level.
After the color wars though this also was refinanced. I kept changing
the design on Larry & Larry just said " we can do that, let me
dream on it over night". One thing I did though really made him a bit
crazy. The building was up, waiting to do the cement floor. Well I had
the brilliant idea to use my brand new power washer to cut the hill at
an angle I liked better. I did this taper to the hill by the side of
the building, an area 5 feet by 70 feet long. The end result was a
muddy mess & a flooded warehouse. Larry was nice about it but made
it clear to me I should run things by him in the future.
Pez
Money #5. Paid cash on a new jeep. Thank you Michell Lorenz as one
purchase from her paid for it. I bought this jeep after my son bought
one. I had him call his salesman & ask him if he had a rag top with
a stick. He said he did, so I had Josh tell him I would take it. The
salesman drove it out to my house with the papers for me to sign. He
left & I had a new Jeep. Pez Money.
Pez Money #6. Gave each one of my 3
children $10,000.00 for a car. Even gave a lady who worked for me a bit
under $2,000.00 to repair her car.
Pez
Money #7. Bought a 2 ton white
cube Truck, named Dumbo. By just walking over to a salesman &
saying. I like that truck call my bank if they like it, I'll take it. I
noticed the truck while buying a sandwich at a Subway next door. Called
a salesman over, gave him a business card, pointed at the truck &
left.
Pez Money #8. Built a new house, while not having a job.
Pez Money #9. Supported my wife's horse
enthusiast life style, including during the 10 years 3 new horse
trailers & new trucks every 2 or 3 years.
Pez Money #10. Flew business class & 1st class approx 30% of the time to Europe.
Pez Money #11. Paid $700.00 to $800.00 per trip for car rentals approx 70 plus times.
Pez
Money #12. Hand carried over
$550,000.00 cash between the USA & Europe to buy Pez. This over 1/2
million does not include the product bought during the color wars from
German Andre which was an additional 1/2 million dollars. This also
does not include money spent in Canada & the US buying pez which
was easily $200,000.00 dollars. Nor money spent on the Pez guns, pins
easily $25,000.00, handbooks, full page advertisements monthly &
twice a month in Toy
Shop magazine & many other things.
Pez Money #13. Actually referred to a $10,000.00 buy/purchase from Mike Mitros for toys as not much money.
Pez Money #14. Spent approx $30,000.00 on hotels around the world.
Pez
Money #15. Bought a brand new
Scotts ( yes I bought a Scotts with what Scott considered his money. Oh
the irony of it all) tractor lawn mower @ approx $5,500.00. Thank you
Gary Doss, as
one purchase from him was the money I used to buy it.
Pez Money #16. At one point had 5 employees each making $10.00 or more an hour.
Pez Money #17. Actually took 2 one
week vacations. One to Martha's Vineyard & one to Seattle Washington.
This is worth saying because they are the only non work related trips
or vacations I have ever taken.
Pez
Money #18. Put on the first
California Pez convention out of my pocket. As the only way there was
money to give Beekman center was because I payed for everything no
reimbursement. I drove out to California but flew 5 more people out to
help, paying for flights, rooms & food. Bought & paid for all
prizes & miscellaneous that came up.
Pez Money #19. Donated approx $500.00 in prizes for every convention I attended.
Pez
Money #20. All of this brings me to the big, WHY? Why do people who
pay $200 to $2,000.00 for a single dispenser not require certificates
of authenticity or letters of Providence when spending this kind of
money. It really is wonderful that there is so much trust in the pez
collecting community, but come on now it really does invite larceny.
With the huge amounts of money that changes hands at conventions or
private transactions, it is really amazing that the amount of bogus
items has been kept as low as it has. I'm just saying if you spend one
or two thousand dollars on a single dispenser, there ought to be at
least a letter accompanying it from the dealer swearing it is authentic. Pez
Money #21. The reality that in 1998 I was able to generate & borrow
$471,950.00 to buy pez through German Andre from Pez Austria. Plus the
trips to Hungary that ran $80,000.00 cash that year.
You
know the people who say money won't make you happy. Well that is a load
of crap. Money pushes all the crap in life that distracts you away
& Pez money was the best.
Chapter 14. Fun Factoids
Fun
Factoid #1. I traveled to Europe buying Pez dispensers more than 70
times. To Hungary alone 60 times, Slovenia approx 10 times, &
Austria approx 10 times. On more than 2 occasions at the same time
& in the same country as Scott. Was sure at some point we would
cross paths for one of those awkward moments, but we just missed each
other. Countries visited buying dispensers also included, Hungary,
Spain, Germany, Austria, France, Slovenia, Switzerland, Czech Republic,
Slovak Republic, South Africa, Australia & Sweden.
Fun
Factoid #2. I believe I set the worlds record for Pez dispensers hand
carried in duffel bags from country to country, at roughly 500,000
dispensers carried.
Fun Factoid #3. Bought & sold over 1,000,000 pez dispensers. Again that is a conservative number. Fun
Factoid #4. Did you know that those metal cloisonne pins you get at the
conventions & gatherings all started with the pins I created as
promotional items. The first pins were Peter Pez, The Stewardess &
Coko. These were created by me as sales promotion items, buy X amount
of product get a free pin. Back then the people running the conventions
thought these were pretty cool so I told them who could make the
convention pins for them.
Confessions
time. I also created the Pez money clips & rings or rather designed
& hired them made. The coolest Peter pez ring was a marriage of the
pin & ring. I had the pin guy make a small 1/2 inch cloisonne of
Peter pez, then I had the ring guy put it in as the setting for the
ring. Pins
created were CACDC pin, 2 dif peter pins, 2 dif stewardess/candy lady
& Coko. As I've said Coko was the real character used on the box
for chocolate pez in Hungary in the early 90s. The pin was an exact
reproduction of that character.
Fun
Factoid #5. It was Late in the day at one of the conventions. I had
this big ole box of dispensers (approx 800) & was beginning to
think about all the stuff we had to pack up. So I dragged the box to
the middle of the convention floor & dumped it. Well I never did
that again, cause the chaos that followed was like a real life cartoon.
People literally went flying on there bellies face first into that
pile, then came up with as much as 2 arms could carry. It was a
dangerous thing to have done on reflection but then again it was one of
wildest things I ever saw at a convention.
Fun
Factoid #6. Best day of my life in pez dispensers. The first time I
walked into a warehouse in Slovenia & saw all the wonderful
dispensers that still existed & I could buy all I could afford
& carry.
Fun Factoid #7. The worst day. The day I received word Scott was going to copy & release at least 16 of the colors. Fun
Factoid #8. I have transported pez dispensers
by boat, car, taxi, plane, by hand in duffel bags, I have received
boxes, pallets & even several semi trailers full from Europe. There
was this one delivery where the house was so full of dispensers that
only a body width hallway was left from room to room & the barn
& basement were also full. This was before I had my very own
warehouse. Fun
Factoid #9. I always rented cars for travel;
Drove on the wrong side of road in Australia, after which we parked the
rental & took taxis. Hired taxis to lead the way or as dispenser
haulers. Driven on sidewalks in one of the Slavic countries, can't
remember which one. Also drove on the sidewalk in front of the factory
in Linz. Driven through the center of Vienna, where no cars are
allowed. And gotten about a dozen traffic tickets on the highway, all
of which I had to pay on the spot with cash. The most beautiful drive
though is the drive though the Alps down to Slovenia in the winter.
Fun
Factoid #10. Zukor. Can't remember if I mentioned this or not. Walk
into any store that has food in Hungary, say the word Zukor & show
a Pez dispenser & you will be shown where the pez are located in
the store. Also I was given an Honorary membership in the Hungarian
version of Sams Club by just showing my Sams club card. I think in
another country Zukor was Cukor.
Fun
Factoid #11. Fruits of there labors. Here are a few of the things Pez
corp people bought with there cut of the money I paid for dispensers. A
new house, 2 new cars & a year abroad at college. These are only
the big ticket things I know for sure.
Fun
Factoid #12. Guns of Austria. This is
war. Ok the guns. I believe I bought approx 2,000 of them (sorry memory
little foggy on these numbers). I believe
there were over 3,500 in all. I spent over $15,000.00. Here is how it
happened. Late in my involvement with selling pez dispensers I was
approached about the "find" consisting of shooters & space guns. A
sizable portion was offered & I was led to believe that was it.
Then another portion & I was
led to believe that was it. Then another portion & if I didn't buy
them then they would be sold openly.
By now this had happened so many
times over the years, from day one this mantra had been repeated over
& over & over. There was always more & if you did not buy
it, they would sell it elsewhere. After being lied to so many times & losing $250,000.00 to pez corp
& maxing out my last good credit card to buy what I had. Well I
just snapped mentally. I decided to ruin there market by pushing all I
had out immediately, setting the value of these guns at cost. You see
at this point I had finally had enough, I had let way to many people
behave this way & let it slide. So Guns once valued at $75.00 to
$125.00 each now value roughly $25.00.
Also
want to mention here that in my opinion these guns are really only
worth $20.00 each. Here's why aprox 5,000 of each already in the hobby.
The king has more. The molds for the space guns still exist last I
knew. For the right amount of money to the right person more could be
made. Color charts on dispensers have always been kept. Why do guides
rate value at more than $20.00 each. Example, in my handbook do you
think I would have rated items I was selling at the time lower than my
price for that item? No. So if the king of Austria wants $20.00 each,
how could they possibly be worth less than $25.00 each in current price
guides. This is just the obvious mechanics of how things work. Its like
if I had a newsletter & was dependent on my good relationship with
Pez Corp for the info to fill my newsletter. How could I
possibly print anything that would jeopardize that flow of information
or fail to defend the corp & have them think me not a team player.
So values & information are incomplete. Where this becomes a
problem is other books & publications repeat these values &
information making it what is thought. When in reality it is incorrect
or incomplete.
Two final points on the guns. At
the time I sent a couple of them off for testing. Seems to me things
got awful quiet all of a sudden about the time those test results were
supposed to be finished. Also at one
point I was in negotiations to remake the spacegun. The molds still
existed & that was, prior to the big "find". This was during the
time of the colors, we got as far as how much per gun & an eyes on
confirmation that the molds were available.Fun
Factoid #13. Planes. I usually flew delta & I flew a lot. Delta
worked for the process so I didn't mess with it. You see whenever I
found something that worked (like the Raba & Cincinnati) &
reduced how tricky the whole thing was, I just stuck with it. What you
may not appreciate is that I am a bit of a nervous flier & towards
the end a downright nervous flier. As it seemed over the years to get
worse not better. I always avoided window seats because you are not
allowed to keep the shade down at all times & looking out the
window played into my uncomfortableness with heights. So I always tried
for an isle seat, so using the facilities was when I wanted. Plus it
guaranteed on at least one side nobody would be seated next to me &
it made it more like a room than a plane. With a window seat you can't
avoid the idea that you are in a plane way up high.
Fun
Factoid #14. Blue hat Santa. One of the items offered to me in Hungary was
a Santa with a blue hat. When I inspected a sample of this item, I
noticed that the hat had a rough feel to it. I asked if the hat had
been cold molded. Eventually the truth came out, an employee had taken
a hat mold home & was using it as a cold mold to pour the
plastic/resin in, to make the hats. I passed on this item, I had enough
trouble already without this blue hat Santa.
Fun
Factoid #15. Woodstock with feathers. Another item offered to me in Hungary was a Woodstock with black line feathers on his head. When
I inspected a sample of this item, I noticed that the Black lines for
the feathering had a dull look instead of shiny. Nobody would admit it
but it appears that after I asked if they had any Woodstock with
feathers that people had actually taken the time to hand draw the
feather lines with a black marker. I turned this item away also. Later
when I let Josh do a trip with a new girlfriend he wanted to impress,
they tried to pass Woodstock off again. Josh called all excited after
picking up the pez dispensers saying how lucky he was to get them. Boy
was he mad when I told him about them. The Woodstock's were turned back
once again.
The
final story was written on these fake Woodstock's when the yellow stems
which had country of origin (Hungary) were needed for some Smurfettes
which had no country of origin. As mentioned earlier, country of origin
on dispensers or packaging was required by US customs. Until I had the
Made in Hungary bags specially made these switches were sometimes
required. If one of the duffel bags held 4 boxes of Pez dispensers at
least 2 boxes per bag had to have country of origin on stems to cover
the 2 boxes that did not in each duffel bag. This was always one of the
tense moment for me when clearing customs, before I had the Made in
Hungary bags.
The
other major problem was licensed characters like Disney. Again it
required each duffel bag to be topped off with 2 boxes of generic
unlicensed (Pez corp original heads) characters with country of origin.
US customs always required 2 Tylenol & 2 Tums as this was always
the most gut wrenching part of any trip, getting the product by customs.
Fun
Factoid #16. Importing Problem #1. Technically no pez from Europe should have ever
been admitted at all, as Pez USA had the sole right to import. Pez USA
blew it by not listing pez dispensers on the customs list for non
import. I'm not sure how this factors in but Pez USA being wholly
owned by Pez Austria through I believe a post office box is the other problem. How
does a Us company owned by the Euro parent company stop import of Pez
dispensers sold to you by its parent company. In effect they sold it to
you so how can they stop you.
Fun
Factoid #16. Importing Problem #2. Licensed characters are licensed for distribution
by region or country. So a license for distribution in Europe is not a
license to sell that item in the US. So technically Duck tales for
example were licensed by Disney for distribution say in Europe &
Canada, but no current license was granted for the US. So bottom of the
duffel bag was always required with a 2 box top off of generic
dispensers with country of origin stems.
Fun
Factoid #16. Importing Problem #3. Country of origin is require on all product
imported into the US. Technically on the item itself, but customs was
ok with the Made in Hungary bags. I assured them that all dispensers
would be sold in that bag to the collector. These 3 reasons were why customs was always such a freaking nightmare to me. The wrong customs
official at just the wrong moment & $10,000.00 down the drain. I
also found it useful to stay awake for 30 hours or so before arriving
at
US customs. Appearing tired & wore out solicited a small degree of
sympathy, which helped set the mood for the encounter. So yes
everything from how the bags appeared, how the bags were packed,
paperwork receipts, customs number & how I appeared (tired &
keeping my nervousness in check) all figured in. Everything had to be
orchestrated exactly.
All
these reasons were exactly why when my luggage was lost I was always
the happiest little clam in the room. I'd just shoot through customs
handing over my customs form & be on my way. Now it was Delta
Airlines problem & Delta never had any problems & never lost my
bags. Delta holds a lot of sway at customs. Example, sometimes having 5
huge duffel bags on a huge cart a Delta person would help me at
customs, on every occasion that they helped no secondary inspection.
Without delta always a secondary inspection. Flying Delta was not by
mistake & doing customs in Cincinnati was also not an accident.
Also everything always goes smoother when people know you. Oh yeah
you're that lunatic who hand carries thousands of pez dispensers,
crazy but harmless.
Fun
Factoid #17. part 1. Guess why I still have over 20,000 small ziplock bags with made in Hungary printed on them. Answer. Dispensers in Europe are not require to have country of origin printed on them. So for US customs purposes all loose dispensers had to be in these bags. The people at the Raba thought I was nuts when 15 or so cases of loose dispensers had to be taken by them up to my room. Then I would disappear for a couple days only coming out for food. At which point they would help me load 4 to 6 duffel bags into my car. Until later when the rules changed & I had to pay for the bagging & pick up the duffel bags on the way to the airport. They felt I was drawing to much attention at the Raba with all the moving of cases of dispensers up & down at the hotel. Fun
Factoid #17. part 2. The other reason I still have 20,000 bags with MADE IN HUNGARY printed on them. At the very end of my involvement with Pez I was sort of into the mini pez dispensers. My guy in Hungary informed me that the stems for the mini dispensers were made in Hungary & that they could put any head I wanted on them. At that point this sounded like a good idea as the old controversy of what is real & what is not had been made foolish by now. So we began negotiating a deal for 20,000 pieces as that was the minimum offered. At that point running low on bags I ordered 30,000 more. The deal fell through, though not before the bags arrived.
Fun
Factoid #18. The rings & money clips are fake. They were & may still be made by a guy on the east coast who works in that type of product. Fun
Factoid #19. Back when I had the no feet Donalds on the blue stem. The guy who contracted to design & produce the shoes for me bought hundreds of them from me along with 3.9 batmans. Then bragged he was gonna make blue capes & voila no foot batman with cape.
Fun
Factoid #20. Bubble Boy. Bubble boy was an abandoned project. I was told by Ljuba in Ormoz that it had been designed for a dispenser to dispense bubble gum For Hubba Bubba or somebody. The deal fell through so he was abandoned. Ljuba & Marcos gave Josh & I/me each one. Once home while selling some of the pink & lavender Bunnies The Black Santas & Bubble boy came up. At the time there was this collector who was kinda obnoxious with his money. This guy would beat you with crazy amounts of money till you submitted. I had already decided to let the Black Santa go for around $500.00 but was very reluctant to let Bubble boy go. So this collector says, "Oh & I guess if I offer you $2,000.00 for him you are gonna say no". Well Josh was in collage at the time & paying for it Himself (he graduated with no debt, on a 4 year degree). Josh not being stupid said "if this guy is crazy enough to offer $2,000.00 for 1 dispenser, I am not so stupid that I won't take it". After Josh said yes, the guy chilled the offer to $1,000.00. Well that is still a lot of money to a poor collage student & he took it. After Josh sold his Sue Sternfeld contacted me & offered $800 to $1,000.00 for mine. I think we settled on closer to $800 & my Bubble boy was also gone. Hearing of all this David W. & the King of Austria who both had a dozen or so started selling there's. If I remember right the King was getting about $750 each for his. This is where Pez Corp comes in. Hearing that Bubble boy was bringing in this kind of money & causing such a stir. They decided he was not such a crap dispenser after all, so into mass production he went. Causing very hefty investments by approx 50 collectors to be wiped out. This should have been my warning to later not do the colors but I was smitten & trusted that if a promise was given it would be kept. The old scorpion & the river fable comes to mind. As with the scorpion, Pez Corp will bite you if it is in there interest to do so. Bubble Boy went on from his humble beginnings of a lost boy nobody except Marcos loved, as only a father can. To being released in figuratively/or metaphorically every color imaginable & Crystals. My apologies but you have me to thank for all of this: his resurrection from the dead, That he was done in so many colors, as this occurred after the Color Wars and the Crystals. Fun
Factoid #21. The Crystallization of Pez Dispensers. The Crystals including the name all started with a conversation between German Andre & me. While discussing the proposed color project I asked Andre if it would be possible to use clear plastic for the heads of Pez dispensers. After checking with Pez Corp he said it was not possible as the technique would be problematic. Nothing more was said till later in the color project, when Andre said " Hey remember that idea you had for Crystals, Well I have about 5,000 for you" in the Ghosts & I think it was the animals. As was talked about these early Crystals sometimes had small bubbles in the clear plastic, which had been one of the reasons my idea was originally rejected.
On reflection I now realize That I was used as a testing ground for my own ideas to be later mass produced. A proving ground for perfecting the process & viability of these dispensers. As with Bubble boy I brought the product to the market place & proved it was viable. Then Pez Corp after no concept or development costs (as I paid for both many times over with cost per dispenser & advertising) took the ball & ran with it. So sorry but yes you have me to blame for the proliferation of colors in Crystals & solids in Pez dispensers. So to the Queen of Austria, I never really answered your question. I hope these stories about Bubble boy, The colors & the Crystals (they even took the name) helps & gives you some guidance. Fun
Factoid #22. CACDC.
Did you know that the first Pez dispenser convention in California was
called the CACDC ? Josh & I called it the California Candy
Dispenser Convention to avoid any issues With Pez Corporation. We did
not want to have to get Pez permission or approval for any aspect of
it. It was run as a nonprofit by Josh with all profits going to Beekman
Center for there handicap riding program. A sizable donation was made
which bought ground up tire turf for the indoor riding arena.
I flew
6 or 8 people to California at my expense, While Josh & I drove
out. All prizes were donated by me & they were really good ones
like; Full size Pez Raft, Pez skateboards, Pez inflatable clown, Pez
frisbees, Pez backpacks, Pez company hats & t shirts & a lot of
dispensers.
The reason I put it on was. There were a couple of guys
out there who for a couple of years had been saying they were going to
do it & never did. So Josh & I just went ahead & did it.
With help from "the Cool Pez Man" Skeet & Linda Rose, plus those 2
guys. When we finished that first pez convention we handed it over to
those 2 guys free of charge & walked away. They then ran it for a
couple years & sold it to somebody else. That first Pez convention
was held at the Santa Clara Marriot on Jan. 6 &7 in 1995.
While
we are talking about conventions. You may not know but at Pez
conventions very little dressing up or role playing goes on. Problem is
Josh & I had bought some really terrific Gorilla costumes we were
dying to wear. So we made a pact, at this convention we were gonna do
it. We waited for Bingo night & strolled in, in costume. My Gorilla
was pretty mild he climbed on the chair behind Kathy (my wife who was
calling numbers) & helped her. Josh's Gorilla was the good one, all
those years in high school plays kicked in. He ran around the room
& helped everybody else. Never asked what everybody thought about
it, but we had accomplished our goal of wearing Gorilla costumes at a
Pez convention. So I can check that one off on my bucket list. Chapter 15. To Sum Up
Was it all legal. My own brother said it was not. You know
I don't really know. It has been 10 years so it really does not matter.
It was tricky, as most the time I was operating in very gray areas. Did
people I bought from give all the money to Pez corp, sometimes but it
was rare. Did they give part of the money to the company, sometimes but
not always. Did some steal the product, yes I believe they did. Most
odd color variation in collections today did not have corporate
approval to be sold. Even the black Santas were technically stolen as
corporate did not & never would have allowed there release. So
technically every color variation not mass produced for sale by corp is
a stolen dispenser. As are many rare dispensers still sold today. When
a guy makes a special piece & sells it into the hobby it is a
stolen item. When someone finds or found a group or boxes of no feet
dispensers & sells them to dealers. Do you think corporate
sanctioned it, not very likely. One individual high up maybe, but it
was not a corporate decision so it was stolen.
But
here's the deal. Pez corp has always been a funny company. US was owned
by Austria through a drop box for years & may still be. The company
itself & to many high up people have been doing a lot of dicey
things for about 20 years. So many people who operate injection molding
machines, manage injection facilities, run warehouses, head division or
at corp have done hinky things that nobody says anything. Top to bottom
enough people have sold dispensers without full corporate approval that
nobody wants to legally open that can of worms. Yes some small fish are
fired or pursued, but not anyone who knows where the bodies are buried.
So as long as they get there cut or can't say anything cause you are
aware of there adventures they look the other way or handle it a
different way. As Scott was handle for becoming to powerful &
hacking them off & being one of the very few honest guys. As they
handled the problem that was me. The
company itself has done some pretty dicey things. The heck you say.
Well for example the original King Louie, Balloo, Mowgli, Dalmation,
Pooh, Thumper, Chip, Wyle, Road Runner, Merlin & Dumbo. The company
quit production for America so they stopped paying royalties for the
characters. What you may not know is when copyrights are not renewed a
brief limited window exists for the remaining production to be sold.
Well these characters were sold for years areas east of Austria, and
years later I was sold some very fresh inventory of Dumbo & Road
Runner. That's why I say gray area, because technically items are
stolen, but if the company does not legally pursue it. Legally it is
not. That omission of action on there part is a passive approval or
acknowledgment of the activity. So things are handled different ways.
For
those of us who buy or bought dispensers in this gray complicated
world. It is figured we will keep the secrets because if we don't we
will be cut off, no more soup for you.
Cash is king part 1. Roughly 10 trips x $5,000.00 small
trips in the beginning. For the other 60 trips $8,000.00 to
$9,900.00 ( at the time under $10,000.00 cash was the amount you could
carry & not have it be a problem & it always had to be cash )
per trip & this was only to Europe. The only reason I know this to
be true is one guy actually kept records & stated at a certain
point that this was my 50th trip & this only represented trips to
do business with him. I also had about as many trips to Canada buying. Cash is king part 2. I know by now, you might be saying
this seems a bit negative. Here's the deal & I only realize this
now. By the very nature of what I was doing, it would have been more of
a surprise if everybody I dealt with had been upright & honest.
Some were & are good & honest people; everybody in Slovenia,
when I bought there payment was often enough that I got the picture
made at a bank & deposited in the corporate account. I also paid
cost in Slovenia per dispense .23 to .41 cents per, nobody was
skimming. Only the first few trips to Hungary were cost. The Dealer
from Slovenia is a good guy, he bought most of his product from workers
& owners after the production of pez dispensers was halted in
Ormoz. The Austrian Queen seems to be ok also, but I fear for her
because she has out of necessity to close a relationship with Gunther (say hi when you report this). You
see several factors work against honesty & good behavior. Always
cash only cash, so it is a cash business with very few records kept.
The huge amounts of cash we are talking about, over the aprox 20 years
this has been going on it has to be millions & millions &
millions. My contribution in the worldwide black market of pez
dispensers alone was in excess of 1/2 Million dollars & depending
how you look at it over 1 million dollars. Example Canadian
distributors were not supposed to sell to Americans, so a premium was
paid & border crossings were tricky. Europeans were not supposed to
sell to Americans, so a premium
was paid & border crossings were tricky. People who worked at
factories were not supposed to remove or create special items from
factories or warehouses, so a premium was paid. That so much money is
involved does not draw the best of human nature out of people. Some
people in Europe feel a degree of freedom from repercussions when
creating or selling items to Americans. Large amounts of money tend to
motivate people & skew facts. I
have to admit it. For approx 10 years I worked in a very gray area, so
of course a lot of , if not the majority of people I did business with
had a loose relationship with honesty & truth. So of coarse a lot
of the things or people I talk about are not going to sound the most
positive or big surprise in the end it bit me in the butt. In my
defense I wanted out of that factory/shop very bad. I worked with rolls
of asbestos, while welding for over 20 years. I would have done almost
anything to get out of there. So asbestos or working in a very gray
area trying to take care of my family, not a really hard choice. So we
come to why would I make what appears to be a nutty attempt at selling
a book, whatever it takes to take care of my family. You
know Dave used to make comment occasionally when he thought I was
behaving a little country or sappy. Well Dave that really is me.
Yes
most of what I did traveling & buying Pez dispensers was
technically illegal in those countries. I am also well aware of the
fact that a couple individuals I did business with in Europe were
caught doing similar things & prosecuted. The nitty gritty of it
all is that only each individual person I dealt with & myself know
these things and only I know the overall picture. Besides it has been
ten years & I no longer travel or buy pez dispensers. Also any
possible evidence is long gone. Funny thing is, it was when I tried
going legit, buying legally from Pez Austria in 1998 that things went
south. The irony does not escape me.
Massive amounts of Copyrighted Pez dispensers without a license for US
importation & sale have been imported from Canada, Europe &
elsewhere over the last 16 years.
An awful lot of no feet Pez dispensers found by workers in warehouses
in the 1990s were smuggled out (stolen) of the warehouses by those
people. Then sold sometimes in portions, other times in whole to
dealers. Other things concerning no feet dispensers I have my
suspicions but not first hand knowledge.
This I do know though, old molds in many cases have happily been
reused. Blue Dumbo's to name one. Okay I will name a few others; C
class trucks pink, yellow & orange cab black stem, Merlin, Old King
Loui, Baloo & Mowgli, an off color Goofy with teeth, Pez Pal Boy
& Pez Pal Girl.
Two interesting points about the above paragraph. The reuse of these
molds was sanctioned. Blue Dumbo opened an interesting door. Remove the
copyright on the back of the head & make him blue, skirt the need
for the Disney license. Today in a few collections exists a few odd
color King Loui, Baloo & Mowgli. These dispensers were an attempt
at the Dumbo plan regarding Disney. In the end the JB character change
was discarded & dispensers were just run as is for Russia. I know
these things to be true as I sold a lot of these items. I also smelled
the plastic, trust me I know the smell of new plastic. When you open a
box & plastic bag that unpackaged dispensers are shipped in. That
new plastic smell is overwhelming, similar new car smell but plastic.
Other molds have been offered.
None of this is legal, yet in most collections all of the above are the more treasured dispensers.
If you
had it to do over, what would you do different? The obvious answer is
that I would not have created the colors & skipped the color wars.
Here's the not so obvious answer. I would have confined what I bought
& sold to just pez dispensers.
No
rings, pins, paper items, lights, plates, banks, cars, yo yos,
inflatables, skateboards etc. None of it. Only actual pez dispensers.
Everything else was just a money drain with little if any profit. Every
time I diverted capital from dispensers to other items, it slowed roll
over & momentum. It was like making a wrong turn & losing 20
minutes to a half hour on a trip. Time just wasted or in this case,
money waisted. Two things kept diverting me from my goal. ONE. I have a
creative side. I love the creative process. TWO. I felt I needed all
that other stuff to flesh things out, have a better presentation. With
time, looking back I now realize all that stuff was just a big waste of
time & money. I should have just stuck to the core project Pez
dispensers. In the end it would have been a leaner but more profitable
project. Yes the colors were a big mistake all at once. Though of equal
importance & probably proportion were the non pez dispenser items.
My guess is I probably diverted a total of $250,000.00 over the years
on pez items that were not dispensers. The smarter thing would have
been to leave that money in the core project & keep rolling it
over. All that stuff just acted like a money drain. Here
is what I learned from the whole Pez thing. Don't let the event in your
life or project change you. Be who you are no matter who you are with
or in front of. Be a miser, take the money home, all of the money. Live
as modestly as you can, as no project or event lasts forever. Win a
million it makes you crazy. You have to earn a million & lose it so
you know how to handle it the second time.
Has
Pez Corporation lost it's way. The collector point of view is that this
big international candy company is this really cool place that makes
adorable odd candy dispensers, and you love them. My question is, Do
they love you back? Or Is this a case of unrequited love? Are you as a
collector in a relationship with someone who takes & takes, but
never gives anything in return? Collectors,
Conventions, Newsletters, Blogs, Chat areas, Books, Price Guides &
Dealers. As this company really does not advertise, as long as you are
promoting PEZ for free, Pez Corp loves you. Cross them with words or
heaven forbid try to earn some money & you quickly become persona
non grata. It is my opinion that collectors are in a very one sided
relationship with Pez corp & even further are projecting onto it a
false vision of what it really is. Don't
take just my experience of losing $250,000.00 on an agreement that Both
US & Europe went back on by copying What was sold as exclusive. Ask
Keith who lost $25,000.00 dealing with Pez Corp. Ask Joe & Dave who
lost there investment on the trucks when there exclusive product was
copied. Ask Gary who is being sued By Pez Corp after approx 15 years of
promoting Pez for free. Ask the Queen of Austria who says she has some
really terrific ideas for dispensers, but won't mention them to Pez
Corp out of fear the ideas would be stolen or if she did them, copied.
Ask the cookie jar guys what they went through? What about the mail
away items you paid $5.00 & $10.00 each for that were soon
mysteriously being sold at Dollar stores. These are just the few cases
that come to me off the top of my head. Some comments.
Every so often I check out completed auctions on ebay for Pez
Dispensers. I realize ebay may not be the best gauge for how the hobby
is doing, but it is a gauge of where ebay was & where ebay is now
concerning prices being paid. What I noticed is good no feet pieces are
bringing about 1/2 what they used to. Yes hardcore collectors are
paying better money for that piece they need, but other than that about
1/2 seems to be the case. I also see large groups of say 96 dispensers
selling for approx $20.00 that same group used to sell for at least
double that.
Generally though
1/2 price, collectors selling there collections & a lot of Pez dispensers not
selling at all. I would also guess convention attendance is at about
1/2 what it was. During my time with Pez for every collector that left
the hobby, 5 collectors were coming in. Today my guess is for every
collector that leaves the number coming in is less than one.
My
conclusion is that the hobby is shrinking after living off peak
momentum for the last 10 years. Here I want to shock you. I can hear it
as I speak somebody is saying. What, I suppose you think that the
decline is due to the fact that you are no longer involved in the
hobby? Actually yes I do, but I would also blame pez corp for
mismanaging the momentum I created. Pez corp has been sucking the hobby
dry & diluting the value of everything with overproduction of
crystals, colors & new releases. It has taken 10 years to drain the
enthusiasm & overwhelm the collector with to much. To much of what?
To much of everything.
The lifeblood of any hobby is the new
collector. New collectors bring that steady shot of adrenaline to a
hobby with there enthusiasm. New collectors are crucial to a hobby or
it stagnates then contracts. Hardcore collectors a fine & great,
but they know what they know, have what they have & what they need
is smaller. You can not maintain a vibrant hobby with a group of people
whose collections are closer to completion. You need excited people who
need & want almost everything.
Here's the problem a new
collector who approaches the hobby today is overwhelmed before they get
started. If you have nothing as a new collector you are overwhelmed
with the amount there is now before you even get started, and it keeps
growing monthly. New collectors can't even wrap there head around what
a completed collection even looks like today.
The hobby of
collecting is like a scavenger hunt with a ringmaster with defined
achievable goals. How many people do you think would participate in a
scavenger hunt if before they started the task appeared overwhelming
& endless. There have to be definable goals, within a definable
universe. Also without an enthusiastic ringmaster people lose interest,
collector need to be cheered on. A character who adds mystery & has
an endless supply of stories.
Collectors like a good story
that comes with a pez dispenser. A story they can retell when showing
people there collection. Ideally each dispenser has a story, something
interesting about it that makes owning it interesting. If what a
collector collects is interesting it makes them interesting to there
friends. When each dispenser has a story it brings a collection to life
& gives it meaning. We had that in the 1990s, people who bought
from me didn't just buy a dispenser, they also bought the why & the
how.
Collectors who bought from me also got the overall. By
this I mean each dispenser had a story & as a group the overall
story of who they bought it from & my story. A story overall of
this crazy guy & his adventures. The crazy guy, what he looks like,
How he acts, the paper towel always in his hand, the beard, the pony
tail, the Hawaiian shirts & the pink bunny slipper. That's who
these came from. As a bonus while pointing at the group they could
relate the adventures of that crazy guy also.
So yes every
dispenser I sold had a story. What Pez corp neglected over the last 10
years as they continued with my ideas, the colors & crystals were
the stories & the ringmaster. You can take an idea, exploit it to
it's limits for 10 years, but eventually it loses its soul, its reason
to exist. It becomes just more stuff, no charm & no story. The
collector can only point at racks of stuff with boring nuances &
differences. Collectors need good stories or they become bored &
what they collect becomes boring.
The second thing missing today
is money. Somebody within any good hobby has to be spreading money
around. When a hobby becomes stagnant money gets tighter. Yes this is
about me. The amount of money I spread around, supporting conventions
& creating a convention. The amount I spent advertising Pez through
free video tapes, free handbooks, free pins, free pez bags & free
body parts. The amount I spent on full page ads 2 pages per, twice a
month for over 6 years. For a period of time Full page ads in 3
different magazines every month. So yes I spread a lot of money around
promoting Pez on a very large scale. Who has been doing that for the
last ten years.
What's
the answer? What I can tell you that won't happen is any relationship
between Pez Corp & myself. First generally speaking they have a
very strong dislike of me. I also believe I scare the heck out of them.
I believe they think, this guy is a whole can of worms we DO NOT want
to open. Probably wise on there part, after all why would they want a
really public airing of all this. There really is no upside.
So
where does that leave it? Pez Corp needs to make a substantial
change to all future dispenser stems. Capping off an era of dispensers
& creating a definable group of product. If you can't define the
universe to be collected, how on earth do you ever collect it. You also
need a new ringmaster somebody with stories & somebody with the
ability to promote the hobby by spreading some money around.
I'm not saying you don't have really terrific people, each doing one
thing well. Toiling away doing one thing well is not going to get it
done. Where's the spark, where's the excitement? Also in my opinion
nobody is giving back. Sellers sell, but rarely give back. Even back in
the 90s I would watch at conventions, it was like pulling teeth for
promoters to get items to support a convention.
You need a new
Ringmaster. Somebody larger than life who can kick start things again
like I did in the 1990s. When I first came along Dave, John & John
along with a lot of other people had a nice little hobby. Like a really
great pile of wood that needs a match to be a bonfire. Over the first 5
years I provided that match, then kept it going for the next 5 years.
Some ego this guy has got, huh! Ok, how many of you started collecting
Pez because of the ads in Toy Shop? Raise your hand if you enjoyed the
video tapes & the Pez Handbooks. Which Dealer table setup at a
Convention in the 1990s always caught your eye? Which dealer room
during room hopping at conventions in the 90s were collectors talking
about, while walking down the halls? When media showed up at
convention, who did the host or Dave always make sure they interviewed.
So ego no, but I was and am aware of what my function & role was.
Don't get me wrong I loved it. I loved my role & was happy to be
allowed to play it. I loved telling the stories & being a
character. It all came very natural. My point though is, who is that
guy now? Individuals functioning individually is not going to work.
Also the hobby is in desperate need of a media of the day promotional
arm.
Pez corp is not going to do it. If you didn't learn
anything else in the last 10 years, you should have learned that. All
the things they have created over the last 10 years have only happened
to make money. What Pez corp does not do & probably never will is
give back in a significant way. Give back to the hobby or promote the
hobby. Yes small gestures here & there, but isn't it really more
like pulling teeth to get it.
Hey Richie what is Pez Corps
annual advertising budget? My guess is pretty much nothing, which is
exactly why people doing stories on pez thought I was Pez Corp. I was
the only Advertising of any significant amount being spent promoting
Pez. I spent $10,000.00 to $25,000.00 a year promoting Pez.
The
last two good ideas Pez Corp had weren't even there own. They were mine
& pez corp has done them to death. For this I do apologize, I truly
do feel bad for how you the collector have been abused by the
colors & the Crystals. The only way you can have a complete
collection is to buy every incarnation of the same item over & over
& over & over, adnossium. The never ending exploitation of the
hobby is shameless. Hey Pez corp it's time, get a new idea. For Pete's
Sake, cut these people some slack. Surely knowing your lack of
originality, something I've written should help spark your gray cells.
This time I even give you permission. Steal away.
Hey Steve stop acting out..
Yes reader I still have issues, though I am working through them. This
listing has been a really great help. Just doing the research of what
happened & the amounts has helped with perspective. I don't know
about you but I was shocked by the real amount I earned & by the real
amount spent. Up until I started this listing I had blocked most all of
it out of my mind for the last 10 years. Only recalling selectively. It
feels good to put the whole thing back together & take a new look
at it from a distance of time. Like you, I drool over having just the
one really good years money. Just saying all this out loud has been
very freeing. All this stuff is meant as the tease. If I ever hope to sell this as a book or a movie, I'm gonna have to show some leg. Who slept with who metaphorically speaking. And there was a lot of canoodling that went on. So from time to time, I will be adding to this.
Thanks for viewing.
Please e-mail us with any questions BORSMENTA@MSN.COM
SJ GLEW
5611 LEHMAN RD
DEWITT MI 48820-9151
| 
