On the outskirts of San Francisco, home of all inexplicable weirdness, is the suburb of Burlingame, and there is located a museum of Pezabilia—all things Pezish, Pezistic or Pezible. The exhibits include many spin-off products (T-shirts, etc.) but mainly a near-infinity of the quirky containers for the useless candy-cum-breath-mint confection.  They migrated from Austria after 1927 (as an anti-smoking aid) and became utterly ubiquitous after the 1950s, coming first in dispensers that looked like disposable lighters (presumably to exercise addictive cigarette-lighting reflexes in a harmless manner) but then were identified with “celebrity-head” dispensers, and the madness set in.  Collectors transferred their obsession from nicotine to Pez (“Make sweet, not smoke!”) and to Pez-acquisition on an intergalactic scale.  Say, does anybody have any idea what “pez” means, anyway? For visiting details see: www.burlingamepezmuseum.com

Artist’s conception of typical Pez dispensers: