Pezhead Monthly
July 2020 |
Thinking
Outside The Dispenser
Since 2001 |
Spring
Loaded: A Message from the Editor Spring Loaded: A Message from the Editor top Hello and happy July from Pezhead Monthly! And really, what better way to celebrate this America-riffic month than with a cover image that is a Pezzification of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." album cover? (Pop quiz- how does Springsteen display his Pez? LOOOOOOOOSSE.) The cover image features the new orange Pez mascot, which was one of my June scores and also has a poem dedicated to it in this month's issue. This was actually my third idea for this month's cover image. The first 2 involved Pezzifications of the movie poster for "The King of Staten Island" and the Washington Monument. I am not sure if I will use these again, so I thought I would share them this month. The Washington Monument Pezzification is a sequel of sorts to the America and Pez Photo Essay featured way back in the July 2004 issue. And going back even further, to Pezhead Monthly's July 2002 issue, here is a limerick that really brings home what it's all about.
June, as it turns out, was a pretty epic month for my Pez collection. As shown in the picture below, I added a little bit of this and that and everything in between. I picked up the new mini Harry Potter collector boxes, some more POP Pez (Appa and Zuko from "The Last Airbender"- the third one in the set, Aang, was in my shopping cart but slipped away, sadly), and a whole bunch of new loose dispensers (thanks pretty much entirely to the fine folks at Pez.com) including, among others, the new crystal My Little Pony dispensers. Heck, I even found some Kosher cards at Kroger! On the Batman front, I created a few more fantasy pieces, my favorite of which is Batman on a translucent blue stem (that formerly belonged to Bailey from "Finding Nemo"- thank you for your service, sir). My last Pez score of the month was a Batman crafted to look like GRANITE. Very cool. (All of these Batmans are going to be part of my Batman display, which by the way is coming along quite nicely, thank you very much.) My favorite scores of the month have got to be the new orange Pez mascot and the awesome Miles Morales version of Spider-Man. Also in June, I got a new car! It is a 2020 VW Jetta SEL Premium and I love it. It has lots of useful and neat features and allows for a really high degree of customization and personalization. So of course, this happened... As for the July issue of Pezhead Monthly, to paraphrase Katy Perry, baby it's a firework. We've already "covered" this month's cover image (ha ha get it?), We kick it all off with some Pez Poetry, including no less than 3 poems that I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing. There's also another visit by artist Bret Christopher for Bret's World of Pez, including a "Twilight Zone" ode that is just out of this world. Lastly, I provide an update on my Pez room that details how it started to come together. There is also a picture of many of my loose dispensers that I hope you will like. I will have a big reveal of the entire Pez room at a later point when it is closer to final, but I might post some more updates along the way. It is not lost on me that the weekend of this writing would have been the 5th Michigan Pez Convention. It's really nice to see the Pez community support Jim and Jody's convention with so many pictures and memories of conventions in years past on the Facebook groups. If things had not corona'd out of control the way they did, I would be in Michigan tonight with my wife, looking forward to the Saturday show tomorrow morning. I am definitely on board for next year's Michigan show and it can't get here soon enough. It's also hard to believe that 3 weeks from today would have been Pezamania 30, which will have to wait until next year as well. 2020, man, am I right? But, far be it from me to end this message on a down note. In fact, I would like to point out that next month will mark 20 years since the first issue of Pezhead Monthly! That's 20 years of "thinking outside the dispenser" with Pez poetry, quotes, song parodies, interviews, cartoons, Photoshops, videos, and more. I am very excited about this milestone and plan to commemorate it in some way, although I am not quite sure how yet. The celebration may continue for the whole year because hey, why not! I also excited about the next installment of the Pez Virtual Convention, taking place on Zoom on Saturday, July 25. I have already registered and urge you to do so too! 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. Have a great month and stay safe out there. Thanks as alwasy for reading, and keep on Pezzin'. Joe
Pez Haiku #145 Burgers that are
grilled,
Goodbye Spring of
2020, But from the dirt,
a flower grows, "So long Spring,
you won't be missed!" Despite the scorn
that you have earned, Farewell Spring,
you were a bummer, You've made our
lives bizarre, surreal,
Artist Bret Christopher has graciously contributed some more of his great work for this month's issue. The first picture reimagines the iconic spaghetti western "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as having one more added to the mix: The Crazy! (represented here by a Pez Pal dispenser). Bret also gives us what I view as his one his best pieces yet: a Pez twist on the classic episode of "The Twilight Zone," "Time Enough At Last" starring Burgess Meredith as huge book fan Henry Bemis. If you have not seen this episode, you owe it to yourself to check it out! Thanks again to Bret for all of his contributions. This type of creativity, artistry, and merging of Pez with pop culture is what Pezhead Monthly is all about!
One of the big draws of the house that my wife I and I bought last year was the large amounts of space it offered. This included, among other things, a bonus room in the basement that was destined to become my new Pez room. The last time I had my full Pez display (or as close to it as possible) was 4 years prior to moving into this house, and even then there was a good amount of stuff in the closet that would not fit. Then I moved in with my girlfriend (who became my fiancée and then my wife) and, due to the limited space there, there was only really room for a curio cabinet. So there was no doubt, this new Pez room was going to be a big deal. July 22 will mark a year since we moved in, and while I was hoping that the Pez room would be complete by then, there are still several things that need to be done and I highly doubt it will be ready. But I've made some good progress, so I thought I would at least share an update here. One of the reasons why the Pez room is taking so long to complete was because I made a deliberate choice to build it from the ground up. This meant that I wanted all new, better quality, and matching display cases, better display shelves for the loose Pez, and a more spread out layout. One of the first things I did was replace the carpet with floating vinyl flooring.
Once the new floor was finished, the next step was to get the display cases. For this, I hit IKEA for one of what was to become several trips. Let's just say I should probably invest in stock at this point. I started out with a few Billys and a couple of Detolfs. The Billys were for the loose Pez and the Detolfs were for other things such as bobbleheads, puzzles, and other non-dispenser stuff. I eventually got 5 more Billys (3 tall and 2 small) and 2 more Detolfs. Oh, and a Milsbo for what was to become my Batman display (more on that later). There are still a few of these that I have yet to assemble, and hopefully that will be done in the next month or two.
When I had the first few Billys put together, I was almost ready to start adding my loose Pez. But, as my man "Mean" Gene Okerlund was fond of saying, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Alas, now I needed new display shelves. In my previous Pez displays, I used the handy Expand-A-Shelves that can be found at places like The Container Store. These are a great way to place Pez in a tiered display, but they are not a great way to keep Pez secured, from either minor twists and turns or the dreaded domino effect. Plus, the white color of the Expand-A-Shelves stands out a bit more when the display case is dark blue. So I picked up some custom shelves from one of my favorite places to shop for Pez, the Pez Collector Store. This site has a clear acrylic shelf that is 5 tiered (that's one more tier than the Expand-A-Shelves!), is specially designed to fit on the IKEA Billy, AND has a built-in "lip" that allows you to tuck the feet of your dispenser under it to keep them secured. Oh and by the way, PCS also sells special "shoes" for non-footed dispensers that are designed to fit in these shelves. I definitely recommend stocking up on these! In the months that followed building these 3 display cases and the shelves, as life allowed, I assembled other display cases around the room and began to unpack my Pez collection and put it on display, tossing out many boxes in the process. I am still not quite sure where some display cases will end up in the final configuration, but as long as they are assembled, moving them should not be that difficult, especially with the non-carpeted floor. My current mini-project in the Pez room is the Batman display. This will definitely be the main attraction of my Pez room! It involves lots of pieces and I look forward to showing it with pictures and videos in a later issue. I am very much looking forward to finishing it up and am trying very hard to resist the urge to share in-process photos. Just from the progress made in the past week as of the time of this writing, I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that it's going to blow your mind. Besides the Batman display, I also still need to assemble a couple more pieces of IKEA furniture, put the rest of my loose Pez on display (about 300 more of about 2000 total), display my carded Pez, hang up some artwork and other paper products, and make some final decisions about where things will go. Plus a few other odds and ends. Even though I want to save most pictures of the Pez room for the big reveal at the end, I would like to share one picture here. This is a display of most of my loose, official Pez, a good portion of my Pop Pez collection, and a few fantasy pieces thrown into the mix. They are housed in 3 Billy display cases and are secured in the PCS display shelves. The Pez are separated by category and in some cases there is room to grow built in to the shelves (namely for Disney and holiday Pez, which can be counted on to grow by at least a few pieces every year). I also have one more Billy display case to assemble that will go alongside these three, and some more Pez to fit on at least 2 those shelves, probably more. On the top of the display case is my Pez Giant display. The Giants stand upon a super-sized version of the Expand-A-Shelves, known as Mega Expand-A-Shelves.
There is definitely a lot of work left to do to get the Pez room across the finish line. But when I look back at where things started and think of how much that has been done, I am very pleased with where things are right now. I look forward to sharing more pictures of my Pez room in upcoming issues of Pezhead Monthly! |
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