Spring Loaded: A Message from the Editor top of page | cover page

Welcome to Pezhead Monthly!

Thanks as always for reading, and remember, your questions, comments, and submissions are always welcome at joe@pezheadmonthly.com.

See you next month!

Joe Durrant
Editor, Pezhead Monthly
joe@pezheadmonthly.com

Pezamania 22: Holy Donkey Vamp, Batman! top of page | cover page

I recently had the opportunity to attend Pezamania 22 in lovely Cleveland, Ohio. This marked 12 times for me at Pezamania, and it was as grand as a Pez dispenser filled with 12 bricks of candy.

After packing a Pez shirt or two, I arrived on Thursday afternoon as usual and quickly headed to the hospitality room to meet John and Linda and pick up my welcome packet, complete with a very cool Pez Spaceman tote bag, t-shirt, lanyard, and other assorted Pez goodies. The convention dispenser this year was a Pez Visitor’s Center Pez Pal with a special Pezamania sticker on it. Not bad, not bad at all!

After a quick lunch, I began unpacking and setting my room up, as I was once again planning on selling some extras that I had accumulated over the course of the past year and beyond. I have learned, slowly but surely, how important it is to plan ahead for this. And I am only selling extras; I can’t imagine how dealers, or even those with lots more to sell, pull it off. Another part of setting the room up was hanging up multiple signs. Directly outside my door, I posted a Pez haiku, one of the Monkees Pez song parodies, a Dirty Harry Pez Almost-Quote, and an invitation to create a group Pez poem (a bit more on that later).

Then there was a sign that mentioned who I was and what I was selling. This year, I tried something new: adding hours that I would be around. I also posted this in all elevators, on the first floor, and on the wall facing the elevators on my floor. I was away from the main action on the first two floors of the hotel, so I figured this was a good way to let people know that they didn’t need to make the trip to my room if I was off room-hopping (as I tend to be). This also was a good reminder to me that I needed to dedicate some time to spend in the room, as I definitely wanted to sell a lot of stuff and go home with a lot less than I came with. While also bringing home a lot more than I came with. Hey, it’s complicated.

There were a couple of final touches I added to the room this year. One was a photo slideshow of many of the pictures and quotes from Pezhead Monthly, set up on my computer tablet. It was just something that I set up on the TV display, and a lot of people actually stopped to check it out, which was quite nice. I also hooked up my computer to the TV and had some episodes of the classic 1960s Batman TV show to play in the background as I was in my room (also partially in honor of the new Batman movie opening that weekend, and, yes, because of my particular fondness for all things Batman Pez (LINK)). Many people did double takes when they saw the show, or even when they heard the famous theme song from the hotel hallway. So, while these added touches did not translate to high sales, I was glad that they brought joy to fellow Pezheads over the course of the weekend.

Just down the hall from my room was one of the rarest and most unique Pez dispensers ever: the legendary Political Donkey. Up until Pezamania, only one has been known to exist. It was offered by the Pez corporation to President John F. Kennedy but was returned. As it turns out, a second Political Donkey surfaced, from a man who did some business with Pez in the 1960s. When his grandson cleaned out his house, he found the treasure, and after learning of what it was (he was not a Pez collector himself), came to Pezamania to display it. And there it was, right in front of me! I could not believe that I actually gazed upon it with my own eyes. Here is a picture.

The word “epic” gets thrown around a lot. I am often guilty of doing this, and I am sure I will continue to do it (likely many times in this recap), but in this case it really applies. On the heels of the Pez factory tour and meeting the President of Pez Inc. in April, seeing the Political Donkey has truly made this the most unforgettable year I have ever had as a Pezhead, and likely ever will.

After that little bit of magic, it was off to the swap party. This year I had one full plastic tub set aside to bring to the swap party, along with a backpack filled with water, my iPad, .and more In the past, I had kind of scattered this across multiple boxes and bins and it was a real chore to bring it all to the swap party room. This year, while not quite a finely tuned machine, it went a lot more smoothly.

And I did pretty well at the swap party, too. I would say the best I’ve ever done. I quickly sold some extras of newer sets like Spider-Man and Strawberry Shortcake, as well as other stuff like the European tins that I picked up from my trip to the Pez Visitor’s Center in April. Not to mention, lots of carded, bagged, and loose Pez, sold for very cheap. And I gave away a few Pez Poetry Slams along the way too. The goal was not to make a lot of money, it was to offload a lot of stuff and, yes, to make room for even more that I was surely going to get over the course of the convention. And on top of all this, it was a great opportunity to meet old friends and new ones alike, as this was the first official convention event and a lot of people had just arrived. Sitting at the table, I got to see and talk to many people who passed by. It was a great time.

Feeling like I was on a roll from the swap party, I then went up to my room in an attempt to sell some more stuff. “Attempt” is the key word there. Very few people came by. In fact, maybe only one or two. And I think I knew why. You see, this was during the next big Pezamania event, a card game called Pezamania Wars. In past years, I had participated in this game. While it was fun and a couple of times I won some really nice prizes, this year I made a tactical decision to head back to the room to try to sell stuff. Turns out that not only did I miss out on what from all accounts was a good time at Pezamania Wars, I also did not get any customers in my room (which was kind of the point) because the vast majority of them were likely at… Pezamania Wars. Not my smartest moment, I’ll grant you. At least I had the magic voice of Adam West’s Batman to keep me company. And Bailey’s Irish Cream.

After an hour or so, I did finally manage to get some room hopping in before calling it a night. Nothing really jumped out at me, though, and so for what may be the first time ever, I did not get my first score of Pezamania on Thursday.

Making up for my scoreless Thursday, as it turns out, did not take long at all. In fact, it happened right out of the gate on Friday morning. I headed on down to one of my go-to dealers for vintage Pez, John LaSpina, and got my third Eerie Spectre. I am proud to introduce: Vamp!

This makes 3 of 6 Eerie Spectres in my collection, along with Diabolic, which I got at Pezamania 21, and Spook, which I got at NE PezCon 14. I’m halfway there and can’t wait to collect the rest!

The rest of Friday afternoon was split between more time in the room and more scores. I only sold a few other things out of the room, but it was nice to chat with people and give them some smiles with the photo slideshows and the Batman episodes on TV.

As far as the Friday scores, I got quite a few. In particular, I added some nice pieces to my ever growing Batman Pez collection: a pair of Batmans on rainbow cards, and a pair of hand painted fantasy Batman dispensers which are quite awesome. Here is a picture of these 4 dispensers.

I also made it out to b.a. Sweetie again on Friday. Just a few miles away from the convention hotel, ba Sweetie is, quite simply, the world’s best candy store. At least, that’s my guess. This year I picked up several packs of Pez candy- some cola and some chocolate flavors- and went through most of them later on Friday. Along with the candy, I picked up a Chewbacca dispenser to replace the one signed by Peter Mayhew last year, and a couple of Pez trucks that I surprisingly did not have already- but, thanks to pictures I have on my mobile phone, I was able to see which ones I needed. In addition to the Pez, I also picked up a couple of other things, including some Jones Soda candies that were quite delicious.

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