Pez Museum

There's not a whole lot of stuff to do in the immediate area where we live, since most of the exciting museums and cultural landmarks are up in San Francisco, but we do live close to a Museum of Pez Memorabilia. We tried to go with friends once before, only to discover it was closed so its proprietors could attend the PEZcific convention of California Pez collectors. We tried again yesterday, and happily they were open this time.

The museum itself is a very unimposing storefront in downtown Burlingame - if we weren't watching the street numbers we would have gone right by it. Inside is a giant room full of every Pez dispenser ever made (over a thousand!), and a very enthusiastic curator who gives a really great guided tour. We learned a lot about Pez, including that it's actually an Austrian company, and "pez" is short for "pfefferminz" - German for "peppermint" - because that was the candy's original flavor. Also, the original dispensers didn't have heads, and just looked like cigarette lighters:

There are a lot of different heads:

They also used to make gun dispensers, but those have understandably been retired:

The gift shop had many current varieties of dispenser, including Harry Potter:

And US presidents:

In addition to Pez memorabilia, the museum also had a variety of other classic toys, like Potato Heads:

And ray guns:

They also had a variety of toys that are now banned - some for obvious reasons (i.e. they contained radioactive material):

And some for less obvious reasons (matador Barbie encouraged violence against animals, sky dancers could be used as projectile weapons - we actually had that toy and used it that way all the time, and the Mickey comic contains "adult behavior"):

We had a great time at the museum, and even got a picture with the world's largest Pez dispenser (although unfortunately it does not contain correspondingly giant Pez candies):