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Pez engineering

Jumpinbare

Jumpinbare

Aspie Naturist and Absent-minded Professor dude
V.I.P Member
My 41 year old son gave me a package yesterday with a doggy Pez dispenser and 3 candy packs. I opened it, then sat looking at the dispenser with I was hit by an epufainey (I know most people spell that epiphany, but then the weird pronunciation gets lost). While I have been familiar with Pez all my life, and had kids share their Pez with me, during none of my 65 orbits around the sun have I ever owned or loaded a Pez dispenser!

pez.jpg


The dispenser has a spring loaded piston at the bottom to push up the candy as the top one is removed. This is very similar to my grease gun. So I figured I would remove the top end foil and put the refill pack into the dispenser. On trying, I found that the piston didn't have enough oomph to push through the bottom foil. So I removed the foil from the bottom of the refill pack as well, and reloaded it into the dispenser. Apparently the foil and paper on the sides of the refill pack presented too much friction to allow the mechanism to push the candy up.

Kids are supposed to be able to do this. Looking everything over, it seemed the package needed to be fully removed from the candy. This meant that each piece of candy had to be loaded one by one into the dispenser. This just doesn't seem right. That's an awful lot of handling of something you're going to eat. How many kids are going to do this with clean hands? (As mentioned above, other kids shared their Pez with me when I was a kid. If I had known how much physical handling of the candy it took to load the dispenser, I doubt I would have accepted the candy from other kids.)

Have I missed something here?
 
"Pez may just be the world's greatest candy. The Pez dispenser, however, while a delight to receive candy from, is a bit of a hassle to load, as it requires the Pez eater to remove the wrapper and place each individual candy into the device. In July 2021, a candy eating life-hack went viral on TikTok that supposedly showed an ingenious workaround to this decades-old problem: Simply load the wrapped Pez into the bottom of the device and let the Pez dispenser do the rest."

www.snopes.com

Do Pez Dispensers Automatically Remove Wrappers?

Many children have attempted this method. Many children have failed.
www.snopes.com www.snopes.com
 
I liked picking up Pez dispensers for my kids and also like the tart flavor of the candy. I remembered having them very rarely as a kid myself. I have saved all the dispensers, hunter-collector that I am, for them. The most notable thing was when we were stationed in Iceland and in old temporary housing, mice got into the Pez one night around Christmas. I always liked the idea of mice eating and hopefully enjoying the Pez.
 
It's been a very long time since I loaded a Pez dispenser, I'm fairly sure the way I did it was to remove the outer paper, unfold the foil paper slightly so it mostly retained it's shape, then I would unfold the ends and push the lined up candies into the dispenser in one go. I can't remember how successful I was at doing this though :)
 
I only ever saw one once, nearly 50 years ago now. I didn't think much of the dispenser and the lollies were really terrible, inedible in my view. I obviously wasn't the only one that thought that, they never became popular here and I didn't even know that they still existed.
 
Jumpinbare said:
And yet you have to handle the candies to put them in the dispenser:confused:
Click to expand...
Yep. "The cure being worse than the disease."

Though in the world of food processing and in particular confectioners, there are much worse things that can and do happen relative to poor packaging, food processing and foreign objects making their way into candy.

And this is before the product even makes it to retailers, let alone customers.
 
I remember those, but l really enjoyed Sweet Tarts. That was a fav. I remember in high school, l went to the Chinese place and asked to order one wonton. My friend really skewered me on that one. You need to order like soup with quite a few. There was a shop who just made flan, yes, you could buy one, which was affordable on my small allowance. The Pez dispenser was fun, and were quite popular.
 
Maybe it’s a generational thing. Why, back when I was a kid, you learned how to spin a top, do the yo-yo tricks, and load your Pez dispenser bulk. Don’t know what’s happening to this world.

I was a big fan of Sweet Tarts… until I ate so much I got sick. Never started eating them again. Some wounds never heal.
 
Last edited:
@The Pandector , that's right, l had a skateboard, roller blades, tennis racket, and a bike, and no phone , no computer, and neighbor kids - we all just kicked the ball around, didn't even know their names, l was just accepted. Now dads & mom's have to worry about kids getting shot in school, or getting kidnapped by human trafficking rings.
 
Jumpinbare said:
My 41 year old son gave me a package yesterday with a doggy Pez dispenser and 3 candy packs. I opened it, then sat looking at the dispenser with I was hit by an epufainey (I know most people spell that epiphany, but then the weird pronunciation gets lost). While I have been familiar with Pez all my life, and had kids share their Pez with me, during none of my 65 orbits around the sun have I ever owned or loaded a Pez dispenser!

View attachment 123738

The dispenser has a spring loaded piston at the bottom to push up the candy as the top one is removed. This is very similar to my grease gun. So I figured I would remove the top end foil and put the refill pack into the dispenser. On trying, I found that the piston didn't have enough oomph to push through the bottom foil. So I removed the foil from the bottom of the refill pack as well, and reloaded it into the dispenser. Apparently the foil and paper on the sides of the refill pack presented too much friction to allow the mechanism to push the candy up.

Kids are supposed to be able to do this. Looking everything over, it seemed the package needed to be fully removed from the candy. This meant that each piece of candy had to be loaded one by one into the dispenser. This just doesn't seem right. That's an awful lot of handling of something you're going to eat. How many kids are going to do this with clean hands? (As mentioned above, other kids shared their Pez with me when I was a kid. If I had known how much physical handling of the candy it took to load the dispenser, I doubt I would have accepted the candy from other kids.)

Have I missed something here?
Click to expand...
The correct method is to open the dispenser. Then carefully open the pack and hold the pez either end, in a stack, between finger and thumb. Then carefully manoeuvre the stack of pez towards the dispenser, and as you get close, have the stack buckle in the middle, launching pez everywhere. You should also have a dog that vacuums the pez from the floor in a microsecond.
 
MNAus said:
The correct method is to open the dispenser. Then carefully open the pack and hold the pez either end, in a stack, between finger and thumb. Then carefully manoeuvre the stack of pez towards the dispenser, and as you get close, have the stack buckle in the middle, launching pez everywhere. You should also have a dog that vacuums the pez from the floor in a microsecond.
Click to expand...
Exactly, even down to the finger pressure and center buckle! I hope you're joking about the rest, because that is how I loaded my Pez. If you are joking, then your solution is to get next to the dispenser and trigger the buckle into the dispenser, loading it center-first, then wedging in the end candies. Though, I admit that I routinely removed two to munch while loading the rest; makes it easier.
 
The Pandector said:
Exactly, even down to the finger pressure and center buckle! I hope you're joking about the rest, because that is how I loaded my Pez. If you are joking, then your solution is to get next to the dispenser and trigger the buckle into the dispenser, loading it center-first, then wedging in the end candies. Though, I admit that I routinely removed two to munch while loading the rest; makes it easier.
Click to expand...
I could never time the buckle, it always happened a fraction of a second too early.
 
Jumpinbare said:
My 41 year old son gave me a package yesterday with a doggy Pez dispenser and 3 candy packs. I opened it, then sat looking at the dispenser with I was hit by an epufainey (I know most people spell that epiphany, but then the weird pronunciation gets lost). While I have been familiar with Pez all my life, and had kids share their Pez with me, during none of my 65 orbits around the sun have I ever owned or loaded a Pez dispenser!

View attachment 123738

The dispenser has a spring loaded piston at the bottom to push up the candy as the top one is removed. This is very similar to my grease gun. So I figured I would remove the top end foil and put the refill pack into the dispenser. On trying, I found that the piston didn't have enough oomph to push through the bottom foil. So I removed the foil from the bottom of the refill pack as well, and reloaded it into the dispenser. Apparently the foil and paper on the sides of the refill pack presented too much friction to allow the mechanism to push the candy up.

Kids are supposed to be able to do this. Looking everything over, it seemed the package needed to be fully removed from the candy. This meant that each piece of candy had to be loaded one by one into the dispenser. This just doesn't seem right. That's an awful lot of handling of something you're going to eat. How many kids are going to do this with clean hands? (As mentioned above, other kids shared their Pez with me when I was a kid. If I had known how much physical handling of the candy it took to load the dispenser, I doubt I would have accepted the candy from other kids.)

Have I missed something here?
Click to expand...
The hardest thing ever as a kid:

Trying to get pez in the dispenser without them all falling out or it accidentally slamming shut and them all falling out in the process or hurting your finger when you get it caught while trying to do it
You are supposed to clean your hands, open the whole pack, hold them all exactly like they were in the pack with one hand somehow without any packaging but in a row and open the pez dispenser with the other hand and your wrist or pinky or arm if you cannot hold it open with one hand and slide them in exactly how they were in the pack without any packaging and without dropping them, doing it improperly or the thing slamming shut without succeeding and some or all falling out.
 
The cherry ones are the best and the strawberry second.
No other flavours came close.
The cola ones are ok.
However..
I tasted the chocolate ones, my mum got them from Canada they tasted not like chocolate but had a liquorice taste. I think my niece even agreed.
 
Jumpinbare said:
My 41 year old son gave me a package yesterday with a doggy Pez dispenser and 3 candy packs. I opened it, then sat looking at the dispenser with I was hit by an epufainey (I know most people spell that epiphany, but then the weird pronunciation gets lost). While I have been familiar with Pez all my life, and had kids share their Pez with me, during none of my 65 orbits around the sun have I ever owned or loaded a Pez dispenser!

View attachment 123738

The dispenser has a spring loaded piston at the bottom to push up the candy as the top one is removed. This is very similar to my grease gun. So I figured I would remove the top end foil and put the refill pack into the dispenser. On trying, I found that the piston didn't have enough oomph to push through the bottom foil. So I removed the foil from the bottom of the refill pack as well, and reloaded it into the dispenser. Apparently the foil and paper on the sides of the refill pack presented too much friction to allow the mechanism to push the candy up.

Kids are supposed to be able to do this. Looking everything over, it seemed the package needed to be fully removed from the candy. This meant that each piece of candy had to be loaded one by one into the dispenser. This just doesn't seem right. That's an awful lot of handling of something you're going to eat. How many kids are going to do this with clean hands? (As mentioned above, other kids shared their Pez with me when I was a kid. If I had known how much physical handling of the candy it took to load the dispenser, I doubt I would have accepted the candy from other kids.)

Have I missed something here?
Click to expand...

I'm sure all of those kids washed their hands immediately after any sessions of frog-handling, nose-picking, and mud pie molding. It's only common sense, and the alternative would be pure madness.
 
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