Spring Loaded: A Message From the Editor
"Scores!" Says He: August/September 2022
Pez Poetry
Pez Halloween Memes

Spring Loaded: A Message from the Editor | top

Hello and welcome to Pezhead Monthly! I hope you enjoyed this month's cover image, which is an ode to the classic horror movie "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and yet another in the ongoing series of horror movie poster parodies featuring one of the creepiest Pez dispensers ever, Egg Baby Pez. This is actually the ninth Egg Baby Pez poster parody! To see all of them, click here.

I'm glad to be back here to celebrate Pez after some restful time off. After recapping my Pezamania 31 experience in the previous issue, I took a great road trip with my wife. I also picked up a bunch of new Pez, which I run through in more detail below, along with some new tech that may play a part in Pezhead Monthly and/or other future Pez adventures.

Sadly, my wife and I also lost our precious cat Tigger in August. He was very sweet and affectionate, and lived a nice long life of 19 years. He held quite a special place in our home and hearts. We are heartbroken and miss him terribly. Here is a picture of me and Tigger from last October, with me dressed as my homeboy "Weird Al" Yankovic getting ready to read a Pez poem at the Virtual Pez Convention (VPC). This is just one of thousands of times that Tigger demanded to be picked up and loved! And from little while back, here is a photo of Tigger checking out one of my custom Pez dispensers. As the caption indicates, he did not knock it over so he got an extra treat (or three) later.

Turning to Pez, and more specifically Pezamania, new convention co-hosts Landon Proctor and Morgan Rhinehart have rolled out an updated and quite spiffy Pezamania website. It's got a lot of helpful info about both Pezamania and Pez conventions in general. And, imagine my surprise when I scrolled through the photo gallery on the front page and saw this!

The picture in the middle is of none other than yours truly. It's from Pezamania 28 and you can read more of my adventures at that convention here. Landon and Morgan have also already announced a theme for Pezamania 32, which will be "Wild, Wild West," and they have even rolled out an agenda that is a mix of previous events and new ones. It looks very exciting! And on top of all of this, for the first time ever the hotel is taking online reservations. I've already booked my room for next July and I am really looking forward to Pezamania 32 in July 2023!

Looking a bit sooner to Pez happenings in October 2022, I'll be attending 2 Pez events this month. The first event will be the 2022 IN Crowd Indiana Pez gathering on October 1 and the next one will be the VPC Fall Event and Charity Art Auction on October 8. I've been planning for both events over the last few weeks and I'm looking forward to sharing some more about them in next month's issue, including something that, frankly, I should have done a long time ago. Also, for the VPC, I'll be reading one of my Pez poems and I hope that you'll be able to tune in for it. If you haven't already, be sure to register. As of this writing, registration is open (and free!), though I am not sure if or when it closes.

There are also at least 3 other Pez events in October: the 2022 Swedish Pez Gathering is on October 1, the Pezylvania XII Pez gathering is on October 15, and the 3rd UK Pez gathering on October 29. October will be a very busy month for Pezheads in lots of places!

Turning to this month's Pezhead Monthly features, I first run down my August and September Pez scores in words and pictures. There is also some Pez Poetry, including two poems that are fitting for the Halloween season and another one that was just a lot of fun to put together. Rounding out the issue are some Pez Halloween memes. How do you do, fellow kids?

Also be sure to check out the Pezhead Monthly Halloween page, which has been newly updated with some of the features from this month's issue.

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: August/September 2022 | top

My August scores were not plentiful, but what they lacked in quantity they made up for in quality.

From Pez.com, I picked up the latest in the ever-growing series of Pez mascots, this time the Blue Raspberry Sourz mascot. This is the second Sourz mascot released by Pez this year. I scooped up the previous one, the Watermelon Sourz mascot, in July. Also from Pez.com was a most welcome surprise: the new Five Nights at Freddy's POP+Pez set! According to my notes (which may be wrong), the last POP+Pez released were all the way back in March 2021. My most recent POP+Pez score was back in January of this year, when I happened upon a gold Hulk POP+Pez in a Half Price Book store of all places. So it's been quite a while since I've any new ones to my collection. Hopefully some more are coming soon!

From my Pez pal Topher, I picked up three more very well done custom painted Pez. The first was another Batman with cool purple cowl and blue face, which is of course destined for my Batcave. His other two creations are pretty wild: One is a mashup of mascots: the candy brick mold of the current mascots, combined with a paint job, hair, and hat that calls back to the Peter Pez mascot. It's simply wonderful. The star piece though has to be his zombie groom. Topher painted the face to look like a zombie, and the cherry on the sundae is the green translucent hat from this year's St Patrick's Day groom. Inside the hat? BRAAAIIIINS, of course! The detail here is astonishing. Click here for a closer look. Thanks again, Topher!

Out in the wild, specifically at a Festival Foods in Madison, Wisconsin that I visited while on a road trip with my lovely wife, I found the new Jack O Lantern Pez that joins the Halloween assortment.

And finally, also in Madison, I picked up a pair of socks that are not technically a Pez score, but I think they deserve a call-out here. They read "A Real Solid Dude" and contain a number of different colored bricks that definitely remind me of a certain brick-shaped candy. Here is a picture. You can buy them from the Blue Q website here, and you can also look for them at your favorite store that sells quirky socks.

Here is a picture of all of my August 2022 Pez scores.

The pace of my Pez scores picked up considerably in September. Let's start with my Pez.com scores. I picked up the new giant Spider-Man Pez dispenser that celebrates 60 years of the famous web slinger. This will display nicely next to my other giant Spider-Man, which was featured in my video "A Celebration of Spidey Pez" a few years ago. Here is a comparison picture, with the original on the left and the new one on the right. The original Spidey plays music and the new one does not. Then, very soon after Spidey swung into Pez.comtown (I think maybe a day?), the 2 new Game of Thrones 2-packs and the new Black Panther 2-pack dropped. The two new GOT packs had 1 character each from the tin that was released last year, plus the same new character in each pack, Drogon. Because I collect both 2-packs to keep in box (for the time being, anyway) and loose dispensers, I got three total GOT 2 packs. As for the Black Panther 2-pack, this included the previous Black Panther dispenser (which, I may add, has already been included in at least two other 2-packs as well as two 4-packs, and as I understand it also in a new 4-pack tin coming down the road) and the new Shuri dispenser. And yes, I bought two of these packs to get the loose Shuri. (And even though I don't collect stem country variations for any dispenser except Batman, I will note here that the new Black Panther is on a China stem instead of the Hungary one that it originally came out on.) So all told, Pez.com took a pretty big bite out of my wallet in September (self-inflicted, I admit), and the worst part is that because I bought the giant Spidey separately from the 2-packs, I had to pay shipping for both instead of combining them for what would have easily put my over the free shipping threshold. But sometimes that's just the way it goes, and that's okay.

Speaking of adding to the boxed part of my collection, from Funko.com I picked up the 4-pack of the new Five Night at Freddy's POP+Pez set. If this sounds familiar, it's because I picked up the four individual dispensers in this set [[uh... checks notes…]] in August, as noted above. But at least the POP+Pez multi-packs are not nearly as common as those for standard Pez dispensers. I think this is the third POP+Pez pack in my collection, along with 2-packs from The Mandalorian and Masters of the Universe. And I can dig the 4-pack!

I also continued to add to my ever-growing Topher custom collection with a wild set of custom painted Pez, 3 of which were Frankensteined from multiple dispensers. These included Lucy from Peanuts, Pluto, and my favorite, a Kermit the Frog with bug eyes that is just so cool and creative. Check it out! The fourth in this set was not Frankensteined, but rather Bride-of-Frankensteined, in the form of Marge Simpson. Also from Topher, I got seven (that's right, I said SEVEN) new custom Batmans for my Batcave. Room is getting a little tight on the top shelf of my Batcave, but that's exactly where these guys are gonna go and I am here for it.

To wrap up my September scores, I was quite pleased to come across the new package of Halloween minis at Kroger. The package contains 3 sets of 4 mini dispensers: Trick-or Treat, Black Cat, Bats, and Pumpkin. This is the second set of Halloween mini dispensers, with the first set of 6 being released a few years back.

Here is a picture of all of my September 2022 Pez scores.

Pez Poetry | top

Pez Haiku #164

You need nerves of steel
When hunting for vampires
Or Pez dispensers.

Norman

There once was a Pezhead named Norman
Who found Pez collecting rewardin'
One time at IKEA
He yelled "Mamma Mia!"
When his eyes saw the Billy that mornin'

Flippin' Pez and Takin' Names

Flippin' Pez and takin' names
Is how we play this groovy game;
Load 'em up and pop 'em out
And spread the Pez love all about.

A very hairy day at work?
A driver driving like a jerk?
Well, there is something for your pain:
Flippin' Pez and takin' names.

The lawn is overdue to mow,
So much to do, nowhere to go,
Take a breath, there ain't no shame
In flippin' Pez and takin' names.

A three-day weekend? Hey, let's hear it!
A friend who calls to lift your spirits.
These things are precious, much the same
As flippin' Pez and takin' names.

When that head gets to a-tiltin',
Joy is felt and cheer is buildin'.
Where there's smoke, there too are flames:
Flippin' Pez and takin' names.

Pez Halloween Memes | top

Memes, am I right? Pezhead Monthly has dipped its toe, perhaps even its foot (and perhaps even its non-foot) into the meme pool in the past on a few occasions. A couple of years ago, Pezhead Monthly's first Pez Halloween meme was released. This month offers three more Pez Halloween memes for your treat bag. They are based on famous scenes from the horror movies "It," "Scream," and "The Shining." Enjoy!