Greetings family, friends and neighbors. This week I'm writing about a small private East Bay museum that has one of the world's largest collections of plastic candy dispensers (yes, there are people whose passion is collecting candy dispensers) along with displays of many rare and "banned" toys. Here's more to the story........Bill
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Historical Ramblings
PFEFFERMINZ
You would never guess that on a quiet street in the industrial section of Hayward, California in an unassuming factory building is one of the worlds largest collections of candy dispensers and an assortment of rare and banned toys. The only clue that something unusual is going on inside inside are the twenty foot tall fiberglass Muffler Man and Western Cowpoke standing guard. Originally sold as peppermint lozenge drops in 1927 by Austrian Edward Haas as PEZ (short for the German name pfefferminz for peppermint), the sweet product evolved into a compressed brick shape breath mint containing sugar, corn syrup, plant based fat, flavoring and coloring, and re-marketed as an alternative to tobacco and packaged in a cigarette shaped dispensers.
PEZ candy mints were first introduced to the United States in1955 in packages of twelve and marketed to children in manual plastic dispensers with the heads of Santa Claus, Popeye, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck. The booming PEZ company built a factory in Orange, Connecticut in 1973 to handle the increasing demand for their mint products while having the highly desirable collectable dispensers produced in Hungary and China. Billion’s of PEZ candies are consumed annually in nineteen flavors and through the years have been packaged in several thousand different highly sought after dispenser designs.
One of the worlds largest private PEZ dispenser collections, outside of the companies Visitor Center in Orange, Connecticut, is located in East Bay’s Hayward Toy Museum. More than than 2400 rare and unique dispensers dating from the 1950’s are on display along with an original Mr. Potato Head, the first Barbie Doll and first Comic Book, as well as an assortment of “banned” toys.
Remember Easy Bake Ovens and Lawn Darts? The Hayward Toy Museum is the passion of the owner of Bell Plastics and takes up a small portion of his National Avenue factory location. His private PEZ and toy collections along with a display of giant fiberglass figures are open to the public by reservation. Check the Hayward Toy Museum website for more information. -Bill 7/24
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