January 2025 |
Thinking
Outside The Dispenser Since 2001
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Spring Loaded: A Message from the Editor | top Hello and Happy New Year from Pezhead Monthly! Its been quite busy lately, so please excuse the slight delay in the January issues release. Looking back on December, and on 2024 as a whole, it was quite the time to be a Pezhead. Yes, the year in Pez ended with a bang with the New Years 2025 Golden Groom release, but there were so many new Pez releases and experiences over the year. We Pezheads had all kinds of opportunities to connect with one another virtually and in-person to share our love of this awesome hobby. And in the process our Pez collections grew and grew. And looking forward to 2025, all signs point to the Pez party continuing. A few Pez conventions and gatherings are already open for registration (Ive registered for Michigan but still need to register for Pezamania), Valentines Day and even Easter Pez have been spotted in the wild, theres some early buzz over more online exclusives, and on the personal front, I believe that my first Pez score of 2025 is waiting in my mailbox. I really should check on that soon! Im also planning to go on a birthday trip in January that will very likely involve Batman, and may or may not involve Pez. Well just have to see! This issue of Pezhead Monthly goes all out to send off 2024 with a fond farewell and to welcome 2025 with open arms (or at least open sleeves). Kicking things off is a cover image Pezzifies a still shot from a Happy New Year episode of the TV show The Big Bang Theory. You may not see how it ties into Pez at first, but keep looking! For this image edit, I slightly modified the Batman Pez head that I gave away as swag for Pezamania 31. Beyond the cover image, this issue takes an extensive look back on my life as a Pezhead in 2024 and ahead to some of my Pez goals for 2025. Theres also a recap of my adventures at Decembers GalaxyCon in Columbus, OH, where I met a bunch of famous folks and got them to sign Pez dispensers. Rounding out this issue is a rundown of my December scores and the first Pez Poetry of 2025! Oh, and one more thing. After 9 years of being on Instagram and only one post of me dressed as Weird Al Yankovic to show for it, in December I decided to try to actually use the app on a regular basis. Ive added a few posts since then, although I have not posted since Christmas. You can check it out and follow me if youd like here. I intend for my Instagram feed to mainly be Pez photos, especially ones from Pezhead Monthly. There may be some stuff from the archive or maybe the occasional photo that will appear in a future issue. My feed may also include occasional photos of my cats, Batman, and other such shenanigans. I wish you happiness
and good fortune in the year ahead, and may all your Pezzy dreams come
true! Thanks as always for reading Pezhead Monthly. Take care and see you soon! Joe Durrant P.S. Did you miss last month's issue? You can still read it here. To search the full Pezhead Monthly archives, hop on over to the archive page, where you can browse by feature, Pez Poetry Slam, or issue. There's also a Google search bar to help you search the content across the site. And hey, maybe you would like to submit some words, photos, artwork, or videos to Pezhead Monthly to be featured in an upcoming issue? That would be great! Check out the submission details here.
I rounded out 2024 with a bunch of greater Pez scores in December from all kinds of different people and places. Starting with my in-the-wild scores, I picked up my first Valentines Day 2025 score, the crystal Hugging Heart, at World Market. (I believe it was Bruce Springsteen who once said Evrybody has a Hugging Heart or something to that effect.) The other two Valentines Day dispensers, the new white and brown bears (who bear a striking resemblance to the recent panda bears!), took a bit more effort to find, but I eventually picked them up at Five Below. In a separate visit to Five Below, I also picked up the iPhone 15/iPhone 15 Pro Pez phone cases. I dont have the phones to fit inside these cases, but the cases will still look nice in my display. And lastly, out in the wild I found the SIXTH pair of Dollar tree socks. Its hard to believe weve had so many Pez socks this year! From my Pez Pal Jim, I picked up both an official Pez dispenser (the I Heart Austria Mascot) and a custom one (a Toys For Tots Hauler that even came on its own custom card!) From eBay, I scored a custom Breathless Mahoney Pez dispenser. Breathless Mahoney was a character in the Dick Tracy movie from 1990, and was played by Madonna. The dispensers likeness to The Queen of Pop is uncanny, so I am actually considering it a Madonna Pez dispenser. Dont go for second best, baby, put your love to the Pez! And hey, this also gives me an opportunity to re-post an animated version of the June 2022 Pezhead Monthly cover image, and a link to the Madonna Pez song parody I wrote shortly thereafter! I also added a couple of fun new Batman cards to my collection. From the one and only John LaSpina, and as an extra special touch from the collection of Pez legend MaryAnn Kennedy, I picked up a Batman older red card. I have a similar card in blue so this will look great next to it. Also, my lovely wife picked up the newest Batman on a short card during her visit to Kenya! From Sue and Steve Heraly, I scored their 2025 Pez calendar. Looking forward to another great calendar! This is the first thing I see when I enter my Pez room, and it always puts a smile on my face. From Mike Herz, I picked up the first in his new series of custom dispensers called Missing Links. This series focuses on Flintstones characters and the first one was Wilma Flintstone, which Pez officially somehow never made. Shes a perfect fit when displayed along with the official Flintstones set. (although I will likely display her on a separate shelf for customs). Other Flinststone missing links will be coming from Mike in 2025 and I cant wait! From my Pez Pal Topher, I picked up 3 new custom Batman Pez: two Bunnymen (white and chocolate), and a quite awesome Christmas Batman. These 3 customs also brought my 2024 count of Topher scores up to 29! Speaking of custom Batman, I picked up another well done custom painted Batman Pez dispenser from Rich Kizer on Facebook. I had previously picked up a Jokerized custom painted Batman from Rich. He does great work! From Ilona and Tom Schaeffer, I picked up a custom Domino Mascot. This mascot has special meaning for the Pez communitys beloved Larry Mason, who has recently been faced with some health challenges. All money raised from Domino Mascots across the community went to Larry. Honestly, this man does so much for our community and hats off to Ilona and Tom for recognizing him and doing something nice for him too! From GalaxyCon in Columbus, I got 5 new Pez autographs from celebrities Zach Galligan, Thomas Lennonl, Danny Trejo, Kiefer Sutherland, and Weird Al Yankovic. (Plus, my lovely wife got a Pez autograph from Utkarsh Ambudkar.) we You can read more about these autographs, and what Pez dispensers they are on, elsewhere in this issue. As for my last Pez.com scores of 2024, there were a few of them. The first was the Ugly Sweater, using the sweater mold previously used for the NHL jerseys and the Harry Potter Hogwarts dispensers. This was a fun re-use and I can see Pez making other ugly sweaters in future Christmases. I couldnt help but make a little something to celebrate this release (which also includes an appearance by the Summer Santa that came out earlier in 2024). You may recognize the words as lyrics to a certain song about someone who wants a certain type of sweet. I was lucky to get the Ugly Sweater, since it sold out and was retired pretty quickly but not nearly as quickly as the 2025 New Years dispenser, the Golden Groom, which sold out from the US Pez.com website in a mere 27 minutes! There were only 2025 of these dispensers made across the US and Europe, with a strictly enforced limit of 2 per person. To sweeten the pot, the very limited number of Golden Grooms included a very VERY limited number of chase Golden Grooms with a black tie, stem letters, and hat numbers. There were only 200 of the chase Golden Grooms worldwide, and these were sent out completely at random to customers. A number of my fellow Pezheads got the chase Golden Groom, and while I was very happy for them I was also not holding out hope that I would get one. So imagine my complete and utter surprise and delight when that package from Pez arrived and I scored both the regular and chase versions! That was the biggest thrill I got from a score in a very long time. On top of that, the regular Golden Groom has some extra paint on its cheek, so Ive dubbed it the Robert DeNiro variation since it reminds me of his famous mole! And lastly, every New Years Eve my lovely wife and I celebrate Christmas and exchange gifts. This year, with a little help from Santa, and with less than an hour to go in the month and the year, my wife gave me the 2024 European Transformers set (Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Bumblebee). Now thats how you wrap up a year! Here is a picture
of all of my December scores. You can click on it for a larger view.
December 2023 marked my return to the (non-Pez) convention circuit, after a long absence thanks to COVID and other reasons. That month, my lovely wife Jessi and I drove a few hours to Columbus, Ohio for GalaxyCon. I met some great celebrities and was able to add 4 new autographed Pez to my collection. You can read all about my adventures at GalaxyCon 2023 here. This past December, we returned to GalaxyCon in Columbus and I think its fair to say we kicked it up a notch. This time I added 5 new autographed Pez to my collection, and Jessi also added an autographed Pez for her Pez shelf. Lets start with the Pez autograph we got for Jessi. The celebrity who signed her Pez was Utkarsh Ambudkar. Utkarsh stars in the US version of the TV show "Ghosts," which is a favorite TV show of Jessi's. Hes also appeared in movies like Free Guy and Pitch Perfect. The Pez dispenser we had Utkarsh sign was a Ghost dispenser. Thanks to the recent Halloween holiday, I was able to pick up an extra while shopping and did not need to pull one from my collection. It seemed pretty clear that Utkarsh had never signed a Pez dispenser before! He was glad to sign it. Here is a picture of us. By far the most lively and entertaining celebrity we met was Thomas Lennon. Thomas has starred in a wide variety of TV and movie projects, but is perhaps best known from his portrayal as Lt. Jim Dangle on the hit TV comedy Reno 911!. Thomas really committed to his appearance at this convention. In fact, he was in full Lt. Dangle costume every time we saw him. He also encouraged wacky poses with fans who came by his table for a picture. For some other people, he had them lift him up by his arms and feet. For us, the wacky pose was the one captured in the below photo. Naturally, I had Thomas sign a Policeman Pez dispenser, which he did both with his own name and that of Lt. Jim Dangle. This one came out of my own collection, so I will have to replace it down the road at a Pez convention or online. Its a pretty common dispenser so it shouldnt be too hard to replace. We also had a chance to meet Zach Galligan, who is most famous for his portrayal of Billy in the classic 1980s movie Gremlins. Zach was a cool guy and was glad to sign my Gizmo POP+Pez dispenser. This was the first time that I ever had a POP+Pez dispenser signed, and I am pretty sure it will be the priciest to replace. But it still shouldnt be too bad, and Ill be on the lookout on the Facebook Pez pages, or else may scoop one up at the next in-person convention I attend. The 3 big celebrities we met at GalaxyCon were Danny Trejo, Kiefer Sutherland, and Weird Al Yankovic. I had met Danny several years back, but Jessi had not met him yet. He is a really cool guy who has been in several iconic movies such as Con Air, Machete, and Heat, and has had guest parts on TV shows like Breaking Bad, Star Wars: Book of Boba Fett, The Flash and much more. There were several dispensers to choose from for Danny to sign (someone else once had him sign a turtle for his part in Breaking Bad), but to me the choice was obvious: the Taco, from the recently released Treats set. Danny was thrilled to sign the Taco Pez. It was also a nice callback to the Machete Fills Pezhead Monthly cover image from 2021, although I did not share that with him. Were planning to go to Los Angeles soon and will surely check out Trejos Tacos when we're there. Speaking of treats, what a treat it was to meet Mr. Kiefer Sutherland! Kiefer has had a great career in a number of movies like Young Guns, The Lost Boys, and of course the Pez-referencing Stand By Me. I was also a big fan of Kiefers portrayal of Jack Bauer in the TV show 24 (as this Pezhead Monthly imagining of a Pezzified "24" season finale from way back in 2007 shows). Although Ive never seen "The Lost Boys" in its entirety, I had Kiefer sign a Vampire Pez dispenser. (I made sure to choose a different version Vampire than the one I had Harvey Guillén of What We Do In The Shadows sign at last years GalaxyCon.) Here is a picture that shows us with the signed dispenser. And last but certainly not least, Jessi and I had the pleasure of meeting Weird Al Yankovic. In addition to seeing many of his concerts together, weve met him in person a few times before, including for a very blurry picture at his tour bus and at a VIP meet-and-greet after one of his concerts (where we gave him an invitation to our wedding). But this time was special because we got the chance to talk to him for a little bit and then, separately, get a professional photo with him. There were a few choices of Pez dispensers for Al to sign, but in my mind the obvious one was Yoda, due to Als classic Yoda parody of The Kinks Lola. Al often closes his concert with this song, and I also sang it at karaoke at Pezamania 33 earlier in 2024. Here we are with the man himself! (And my newly autographed Yoda Pez.) GalaxyCon was a lot of fun, and its always entertaining to see peoples reactions to signing a Pez dispenser. Depending on the guest list, I may very well return to GalaxyCon (and/or a similar nearby convention) for more Pez autographs. Here is a picture of all of the Pez dispensers I had signed at GalaxyCon 2024.
And, here they are integrated into my overall Pez autograph collection, followed by a legend that explains who signed which dispenser. Missing from this picture are the Ghost dispenser signed by Utkarsh Ambudkar (which resides on Jessis Pez shelf in her reading room, a lovely little area that may perhaps be spotlighted in a future issue of Pezhead Monthly), the 2 Batman dispensers signed by Adam West and Kevin Conroy (which reside in my Batcave), and the plethora of Pez Outlaw dispensers signed by Steve Glew. Top row: Darth Vader, signed by Jake Lloyd; Boba Fett, signed by Daniel Logan; Pez Visitor Center Boy, signed by Joe Vittoria (president of PEZ Candy USA at the time); Chewbacca, signed by Peter Mayhew; Darth Vader, signed by Garfunkel and Oates Next row: Spider-Man, signed by Bruce Campbell; Norville "Shaggy" Rogers, signed by Matthew Lillard; Hamm, signed by John Ratzenberger; Joe Cool, signed by Henry Winkler; Belle, signed by Paige O'Hara; Jasmine, signed by Linda Larkin Next row: Elvis Presley, signed by Elvis Presley (just kidding, it was signed by Donny Edwards, an Elvis tribute artist); Thor, signed by Vincent D'Onofrio; Kermit the Frog, signed by Steve Whitmire; Santa Claus, signed by Mara Wilson; Vampire Boy, signed by Harvey Guillén; another Vampire Boy signed by Kiefer Sutherland; Policeman, signed by Thomas Lennon/Lt. Jim Dangle Bottom row: Gizmo, signed by Zach Galligan; Yoda, signed by "Weird Al" Yankovic; Taco, signed by Danny Trejo; Samwise Gangee, signed by Sean Astin; TMNT Donatello, signed by Corey Feldman; Hulk, signed by Lou Ferrigno; Halloween Cat, signed by Julie Newmar.
I had a lot of Pez fun in 2024. There were all kinds of Pez experiences and scores, and a lot happened here on the pages of Pezhead Monthly too. I recap all of this below, and then look ahead to another sure-to-be Pez-filled 2025. Are You (Pez) Experienced? When you talk about Pez experiences, the big thing that comes to mind are Pez conventions and gatherings. In 2024, I attended 1 in-person Pez convention, Pezamania 33 and 1 in-person Pez gathering, IN Crowd 2024. I hoped to attend either (or both) the Michigan Pez convention or PIGHi5, which were scheduled to take place the same weekend, but other plans prevented that. (Plus, PIGHi5 ended up being cancelled, unfortunately.) Pezamania 33 was, as always, a very large and well attended event. In their second time hosting, Morgan Rhinehart, Landon Proctor, their spouses, and the entire Pezamania team did a great job. The theme of Pezamania 33 was the Olympics and every detail, from the attendee goodie box to the games and more, was on point. I had a great time seeing so many of my Pez pals again, and some for the first time, and I added a lot of great new Pez to my collection. I was honored to have one of my Pez poems featured in the conventions program. I also enjoyed creating Pez swag for the event, and had a fun time singing my Pez song parody "Friends on Bookcases" at karaoke on Saturday. You can read all about my adventures at Pezamania 33 here. IN Crowd 2024 involved a lot of firsts. It was the first year that this gathering of Indiana (and Indiana-adjacent) Pezheads took place in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was also the first time that it took place in a hotel instead of someones house. And it also was led by first-time hosts Matt and Holly Rider, who were fantastic. The event featured a bag and other goodies with Pez art made by their talented daughter Molly, some fun games, and quite the assist from Larry Mason with an awesome attendee dispenser as well as a charity dispenser. Although there were not a lot of attendees at IN Crowd 2024, I still had a great time hanging out with fellow Pezheads, handing out my Eggyjuice swag to everyone, and adding a few more pieces to my collection. Check out my IN Crowd 2024 recap here. I also attended both 2024 installments of the Virtual Pez Convention (VPC) in April and October. The VPC is hosted by Morgan Rhinehart and Landon Proctor. Both VPCs featured some fun and informative room tours. The April VPC wrapped up with a bunch of Bingo games and the October VPC wrapped up with a Pez art auction for the VPC Scholarship fund. I scored some great wins at the auction that I consider some of my favorite Pez scores of the year. I was also very honored to have the opportunity to perform Pez poems at both 2024 VPCs, where I also wore silly costumes (specifically a goat hat and Abraham Lincoln). You can click here for my April VPC recap and here for my October VPC recap. And, here is a picture of me and the custom goat dispensers I made for mt April VPC performance! Lastly, sometimes Pez experiences are where you make them. This was definitely the case in November, when I stayed at the Pezamania Holiday Inn hotel in Independence, Ohio on the way to see family for Thanksgiving. Just for fun, I created an entirely new Pez convention called Pezamania 33 1/3, with a fitting theme of vinyl records. This included a customized convention dispenser and name badge. It also just so happened to take place about 1/3 of the way in between last years Pezamania 33 and this years upcoming Pezamania 34. Check out some pictures and commentary about this convention I made up in my mind. In December, I attended the pop culture convention GalaxyCon in Columbus, Ohio. While this was not a Pez convention, I brought multiple Pez dispensers for celebrity autographs. You can read more about my GalaxyCon experience elsewhere in this issue. And, a final note
about Pez experiences. If you think about it, anytime you order some
Pez from Pez.com or eBay, anytime you see a Pez package in your mailbox
or at your doorstep, or anytime you see new Pez out in the wild, that
can be a pretty cool Pez experience that youll remember forever.
I had a plethora of these experiences in 2024, some of which I talk
about in the next part of my 2024 recap below. More like Twenty-Twenty Score, Amirite? I picked up a lot of Pez scores in 2024. In total, I added 252 new Pez dispensers to my collection, including 143 official ones and 109 custom ones (some customs only look like official dispensers, but are not functional). I also added some new collector tins and boxes, some non-dispenser stuff like bobbleheads, socks, and LEGO-like sets, and lots of convention goodies and swag. While my overall Pez count was lower than the past couple of years, I added a higher number of official dispensers in 2024 than usual. I think one reason for this was my fill-in-the gaps approach to Pezamania 33, but the main reason was that Pez.com really stepped up their online exclusive game in 2024. As in years past, there were exclusive mascots and licensed characters (Hello Kitty, Care Bears, Donald Duck). There were also lots of exclusive new holiday dispensers, including the first ever Thanksgiving dispenser, a slice of pumpkin pie (technically the Pilgrim was part of the bicentennial set in the 1970s). And this year, Pez.com also added presenter girls to the mix (six total). I was fortunate enough to score all of these, with the highlights being the very exclusive Sweets and Snacks presenter girl and both the rare and ultra-rare 2025 New Years Grooms. For custom Pez scores, I had another great year. I scored almost 30 new custom painted dispensers from my Pez pal Topher, the majority of which were mascots, spacemen/rockets, and of course Batman. There were many more customs from the Pez Outlaw himself, Steve Glew. There was the aforementioned IN Crowd 2024 attendee and charity dispensers by Larry Mason. There were a lot more customs from various Pez pals like Ilona, Tim, multiple Jims, and more. And lets not forget Mike Herzs continuing series of Classic Monsters. In 2024, I scored custom pieces like The Werewolf of London, Nosferatu, and Christopher Lees Dracula. Mike also made replicas of the vintage Political Elephant and Donkey Pez that were incredible. And lastly, in 2024 I picked up from Mike what may be the star pieces of my custom Batman Pez collection: Adam West Batman and Burt Ward Robin! I am also pleased at how my homemade customs turned out in 2024. It should come as no surprise to astute readers of Pezhead Monthly that most of these were all Batman customs (the exceptions being the 4 custom goats I made as shown in the picture above). My homemade Batman customs included a Batman: The Animated Series custom, a Batman/full-body Easter Bunny mashup, a Yummy Bubbles custom, and my favorite, a Giant Batman made with the help of a magic 8-Ball, a General Grievous giant stem, and the guidance of fellow Batman Pez enthusiast Pamella Ruffhead. Later in 2024, I also started making custom Batman Pez that are then placed inside Pez blister cards. Ive made just a couple of these so far, but I already have plans for several others in 2025. I'll share my progress on these in a future issue of Pezhead Monthly. In the meantime, here is a pic of my homemade Batman Pez from 2024. One big surprise in the Pez world in 2024 was the many pairs of Pez socks that were found at Dollar Tree. There were no less than SIX different pairs of socks that were found at Dollar Tree (with one orange pair being identical to the 2023 socks, except for the different year printed on the sock itself). I dont think any of these were officially announced. They just kind of showed up in stores and, thanks to word of mouth especially in the Facebook Pez groups, they soon got on everyones radar. I was lucky enough to score all of the Dollar Tree Pez socks (that we know of), mostly in stores after some pretty intense hunting. The exception to my store scores was the blue pair, which I picked up at IN Crowd 2024. (Thanks again to The Dang!) Here is a picture of all of my Dollar Tree Pez socks from 2024. As for my favorite scores of 2024? Thats a tough one because there were so many, and so many different kinds. So lets break these down by category, shall we?
Speaking of Larry, Id also like to give him a special shout out for the custom stand he made for me after I won an auction at the VPC. The stand reads Team Clevor Forever, a phrase that holds special meaning for me and my lovely wife, and it holds the custom Pez from our wedding in 2018. Here is a picture of the stand with the dispensers on it; you can read the details in the score recap from last months issue. Thank you so much Larry! You are an amazing person and such a treasured member of the Pez community! A Look Back at Pezhead Monthlys 2024 Twenty-three years in and still rollin along, Pezhead Monthly had lots going on in 2024, including photo parodies and poems, spotlights on other creative folks in the Pez community, and some feature stories too. The photo parodies were mostly in the form of cover images that Pezzified stuff like the movies Titanic and March of the Penguins, Beyonce and Taylor Swift album covers, and my two favorites, the Beetlejuice photo parody (and the latest in Pezhead Monthlys long-running Egg Baby series), Eggyjuice, and a take-off of Wicked called Flicked. In total, there were 27 Pez poems in Pezhead Monthly in 2024. These included Pez haikus, limericks, and other poems. My favorites included The GOAT (which I performed at the April VPC), A Force of Their Own (which was all about Star Wars Pez), At Pezamania (which hung outside my room door... at Pezamania!), the limericks Sam (for which I borrowed a line from a Weird Al song) and Lorne (which I included on my IN Crowd 2024 swag), and Let The Games Begin (which was featured in the Pezamania 33 program).
In 2024, Pezhead Monthly also shone the spotlight on Patty Thomas and her very well done, creative, and funny stop-motion animation YouTube videos, as well as Dennis Gilkey, who not only set up a nice photo shoot with many different vintage dispensers inside a bar, but also wrote a song parody called A Pezzy Party to the tune of Ricky Nelsons Garden Party. Now that's what I'm talking about! If you are interested in your Pez creativity being featured in Pezhead Monthly, please check out Pezhead Monthly's submission guidelines. Other notable features in Pezhead Monthly in 2024 included :
(I hope to provide updated pictures, and maybe a video, of my whole Pez room sometime in the next few months.) And lastly, in 2024 I made a video to go along with a Pez song parody that I wrote over 15 years ago. The song is I Love Pez, a parody of the theme song from the classic TV show The Love Boat. Here it is again for your viewing pleasure!
Looking ahead to 2025 Last year was filled with all kinds of Pez fun and I fully intend to carry it over into 2025. Here are a few of my Pez goals for the new year. Pez collection goals
Pez convention goals
Pezhead Monthly goals
Thank you, 2024, for all of the Pez fun. And bring it on, 2025, because theres always room for more!
Pez Haiku #185 The calendar page,
A brand new year,
awake, alive, Will it be there
at Five Below? Will it be days,
or maybe weeks I take a breath,
and then another, Within a week, there
in my mail-
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