Spring Loaded: A Message from the Editor
"Scores!" Says He: April 2026
My Star Wars Pez Collection Strikes Back
Pez Poetry
Pez Almost-Quote of the Month
Pezhead Monthly Says "May The Fourth Be With You"

Spring Loaded: A Message from the Editor | top

Hello and Happy May from Pezhead Monthly! Spring is in full bloom here at PHM Headquarters, and despite the occasional allergy attack, it feels good to be getting some nicer weather.

April featured the year’s first Pez gathering out in Kansas City, Missouri, which I hear was quite a good time. Although I was out that way last year, I missed this gathering because I was on another trip down to Texas to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It was very cool to see a store called Natalie’s Candy Jar in both the Indianapolis and Dallas airports. There were plenty of Pez at these stores and, although I did not find anything new, I did find a couple of neat factory errors that I go into more detail about elsewhere in this issue.

The Pez party continues in May at the Maryland Pez Gathering. I hope to attend this one year, but this will not be the year, unfortunately. I am sure it will be a fun time and I wish the best to all of my fellow Pezheads who will be there. And I’m of course looking forward to Pezamania, which is now less than 3 months away. It will be here before we know it!

As for this month’s issue of Pezhead Monthly, it really goes all in on Star Wars Day (May the Fourth). Kicking things off is a cover image that Pezzifies the Force Ghost scene from “Return of the Jedi.” I also share pictures and a few thoughts of my extensive Star Wars Pez collection, which ranges from standard to giant size and from official to custom. There’s also a Star Wars-flavored Pez poem and Pez Almost-Quote. (All of the above have also been added to the Pezhead Monthly May The Fourth page, which features many different Star Wars Pez tributes from this publication over the years.) In addition to all of the Star Wars Pez fun, there’s also a rundown and photo of my April Pez scores.

Lastly, I have not mentioned this in a few months, but 2026 marks 25 years of Pezhead Monthly. That’s a long time for sure! I have, as the kids say, a concept of a plan of how to commemorate this milestone occasion. If all works out, it may coincide with my Pezamania visit, which is fitting because it was Pezamania that was a big part of why I decided to start Pezhead Monthly. Nothing is set in stone yet, so all I can say for now is: stay tuned!

Thanks as always for reading Pezhead Monthly. Take care and see you soon!

Joe Durrant
Editor, Pezhead Monthly
joe@pezheadmonthly.com

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.

"Scores!" Says He: April 2026 | top

I got some pretty fun Pez scores in April, from Indiana, Texas, and the good ol’ Internet.

From Natalie’s Candy Jar in the Indianapolis Airport, I picked up 2 factory error Pez cards: an R2D2 that’s facing backwards and a Red Hulk that’s facing sideways.

From Grandpa Joe’s Candy Shop in Flower Mound, Texas, I picked up a fun tie-dye magnet that reads “Pez Love & Happiness.” There is also a t-shirt with this design that’s available here. I don’t have this shirt yet, but maybe one day I will!

From Five Below, I picked up the newest Minecraft dispenser, Skeleton. This series keeps on growing and I am glad to be adding it to my collection.

From Pez.com, I picked up the 2 new Hello Kitty dispensers, Hello Kitty Strawberry with printed stem and Cinnamaroll. The Hello Kitty Pez series is quite prolific and it shows no signs of stopping! I also picked up a new t-shirt that reads, “PEZ Says Happy Birthday America,” which was released to celebrate America’s upcoming 250th anniversary. The shirt is an homage to a classic Pez design featuring the Paul Revere dispenser. This design can be seen on this Pez tin.

Also from Pez.com, I picked up the new online exclusive Alien, which has a gray head instead of the green one that's on the regular Alien dispenser. The dispenser's stem features the clever wordplay “I Need My Space,” which I think we can all relate to every now and then. This joins the other online exclusive Alien, the Valentine’s one that reads “You’re Out of This World” on its stem. The Alien Pez mold just came out about half a year ago and it’s already making a name for itself. The more Aliens the merrier, I say! I for one welcome our new Pez Alien overlords.

Lastly, from Amazon, I picked up the 37th edition of the definitive Pez price guide, John LaSpina’s “The Original Collector’s Price Guide to PEZ And Other Candy Dispensers.” This is the first time John’s price guide has been available in Amazon, and also the first time that it has been released in a bound version. (There is also a spiral-bound version sold directly by John at his website, as in previous years, which has the advantage of being able to be opened flat so that you can keep it open while going through your collection.) This edition of the price guide may be my favorite one so far, simply because the cover image features a variety of Batman Pez dispensers! But more than that, there’s a great new addition to the price guide this year: QR codes for certain Pez dispensers and sets that link to videos about those very same dispensers! The videos are by Brian Trauman, Guinness record holder for largest Pez collection and also just a nice, cool guy. The videos are very informative, sharing info about the dispensers and showing the variations. This was a really nice addition to the price guide this year and I think it will come in very handy! Thanks to John and Brian for a job well done.

Here is a picture of my April Pez scores. You can click on the picture for a larger view.

My Star Wars Pez Collection Strikes Back | top

As Star Wars Day (May the Fourth) approaches, it occurs to me that I’ve never taken pictures of my entire Star Wars Pez collection. A big reason for this is that it’s not at all in a central location, but rather scattered throughout my Pez room.

So this past month, I spent some time taking pictures of all parts of my Star Wars collection. I’m showing them below, with a few notes about the Star Wars items in each picture. You can click on each picture for a larger view.

Starting off with my main shelf, this is where all of my official, standard Star Wars loose Pez can be found. This is part of what I consider my “main display” that contains almost all of my official loose dispensers. These Star Wars dispensers date from 1997 to 2023 (and it’s hard to believe there’s been no new Star Wars Pez since then). These include some dispensers that were only sold as part of a collector set. Also on this shelf are the 3 limited edition dispensers with stands (Darth Vader, Yoda, and C-3PO), as well as 2 dispensers still in the original wrapping from Japan.

Next up is my collection of Star Wars Pez collector tins and boxes. They are mainly contained on 2 shelves, dating back to the first set (and its Walmart variation with glow-in-the-dark Palpatine). There’s also another picture with the 2 most recent collector sets: the Mandalorian tin and the Disney 100 tin. My favorite Star Wars collector set is the one shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet, which includes 4 crystal dispensers. You may also notice 2 versions of the Mandalorian 2-packs on the top shelf (well, 3 versions counting the POP+Pez version). This is because the set first came out before Grogu’s name was announced, so he was first referred to as “The Child.”

Next up is my POP+Pez Star Wars collection. POP+Pez can be somewhat of a divisive topic in the Pez community, I think mainly due to the fact that tons of them came out in a short period of time and it was a bit overwhelming, especially with the introduction of the “chase” pieces that really wasn’t a part of the Pez world to that point. But I like them, especially because they feature characters that may never be on “official” Pez dispensers. The Star Wars series is a great example of this. It includes characters that most fans of the original trilogy would recognize, like Jabba the Hutt and a Jawa, but there are also some deeper cuts here like Snaggletooth, Bossk, and even a prototype Boba Fett.

Moving on, here are a couple of pictures of my Giant Star Wars dispensers. This is one of the only sets of Pez Giants that I collect completely (the other being Marvel). I dig them all. My favorites are the limited edition Darth Vader (silver), C3PO (gold), and Yoda (crystal). There’s also an updated version of the limited edition Vader that I have not brought myself to take out of the box yet, but maybe I will one day. As a bonus, most of these dispensers play songs and sound effects from the movie when you tilt their heads back (provided there is a working battery in them). How cool is that!

One of the more unique pieces of my Star Wars Pez collection is the Jar Jar Binks candy hander. Jar Jar is not exactly the most widely admired character in Star Wars lore, to put it mildly, but this is a fun little toy. It’s battery operated and features Jar Jar’s tongue snagging a Pez candy from a Mos Espa street vendor. It joins the ranks of the two other Pez candy handers, Road Runner with Wile E. Coyote and Marvin the Martian.

I also have a fairly extensive collection of Pez factory errors, and among those, there are a few Star Wars errors. These include a couple of backwards-facing dispensers (Darth Vader and R2D2), a Vader with its head stuck open, an R2D2 that’s missing a leg, and my personal favorite, a Stormtrooper with a disembodied head.

Moving on to my Star Wars customs, I have a nice assortment here. This first picture includes all of my custom chrome Star Wars dispensers. I picked up most of these from the first few years I went to Pezamania. The red chrome Princess Leia and the green chrome Boba Fett are my 2 favorites. Also in this picture is a custom Pez made by Mike Herz in honor of Star Wars Day 2021, as a thank you to his supporters. Its stem reads “Star Wars Day 2021/May The Fourth Be With You/Thank you for your support!” You’ll also notice another Darth Vader in this picture. While the dispenser itself is not custom, the cape that it’s wearing is custom. This was made by Robert Samolewski and it really kicks the regular Vader dispenser up a notch or two. Here is another look at this cool cape.

One of the coolest subsets of my Star Wars Pez collection are the customs painted by my Pez pal Topher Yarrison. If my records are correct, I started acquiring Topher’s customs in August 2021, and some of the earliest ones I got were Star Wars ones. I’ve got color variations of many characters in my collection, including Luke, R2D2, Chewbacca, and Han Solo. The colors on the Palpatines and Vaders really pop. But my favorites here would have to be the metallic Yodas in the front row. The picture does not do justice to how awesome these look in person. Topher always does great work but these Yodas are just on another level.

Lastly, I’ve had the fortune to get some of my Star Wars Pez autographed over the years, as shown in the below picture. I first met Daniel Logan and Jake Lloyd, who signed Boba Fett and Darth Vader, respectively. I also had the extreme honor of meeting Peter Mayhew, who signed Chewbacca. As for the other Darth Vader, this was signed by Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, who make up the comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates. And the biggest autograph of them all was Mr. “Weird Al” Yankovic, who signed my Yoda Pez dispenser. Y-O-D-A Yoda! Yo, yo, yo, yo Yoda! Here is a photo of me with the legend himself (and, as a bonus, my lovely wife!), right after Al autographed Yoda.

Pez Poetry | top

Leia

There once was a Pezhead named Leia,
With quite an impressive display, yeah.
And you bet your buns
That she had rare ones,
Including a boxed Football Player.

Pez Almost-Quote of the Month | top

"Once you start down the Pez collecting path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will."

For more Pez Almost-Quotes, click here.

Pezhead Monthly Says "May The Fourth Be With You" | top

If it seems like there was a lot of Star Wars content in this month's issue, there's a good reason for that. One of the newer holidays in May is Star Wars Day, aka May 4th, aka "May The Fourth Be With You," which is a play on the most iconic line from all of Star Wars.

Over the years, Pezhead Monthly has featured all kinds of Star Wars-flavored odes to Pez, ranging from poetry to interviews to photo parodies and more. This is mainly due to the fact that I am both a big Star Wars fan and a big Pez fan. Funny how that works out!

All of Pezhead Monthly's Star Wars features, including those from this month's issue, can be found on the Pezhead Monthly May The Fourth page. Check it out!