Laura O’Leary owns about 550 PEZ containers.
Written By Lisa Breslin
For Westminster resident Laura O’Leary, PEZ candy dispensers offer a blast back to her past and other people’s childhoods as well.
A freelance artist, O’Leary has been collecting the colorful, themed plastic dispensers for approximately 15 years. She confesses that she does not collect them for their monetary value, but for the joy – and the stories – that they provoke.
“People always smile when they see the collection, especially when they see the volume of it,” said O’Leary. “PEZ dispensers take them back to when they were kids and they generate some interesting conversations. It’s fun.”
O’Leary’s collection, which totals approximately 550 containers, spans a broad range of super heroes and cartoon characters, as well as rock icons and everyday heroes like firefighters, nurses and members of the military.
Batman, Wonder Woman, Cinderella, Thomas the Tank Engine, Wiley Coyote, the Star Wars cast and the familiar faces from The Wizard of Oz are among many other PEZ dispensers that fill two custom-shelved walls of an upstairs room in O’Leary’s home.
“The PEZ dispensers offer interesting snapshots of history and popular culture,” said O’Leary.
She and her spouse, Donna Balado, usually look for PEZ dispensers everywhere they go, whether it’s a trip to the local store, or out of town for vacation.
“Sometimes it’s all about the hunt,” said O’Leary said.
“When Laura loves something, she is into it beyond 100 percent,” said Balado.
If O’Leary gets duplicate dispensers, she gives them to young (or young at heart) guests. Other duplicates have gone to students in Balado’s Westminster High School biology classes or to friends.
“I have a bridge partner whose teaching skills earned her the nickname of Yoda,” said Balado. “So a Yoda PEZ dispenser eventually made its way to her home.”
O’Leary admits that she “always had a passion for PEZ. I always liked the simplicity of them and how they spark imagination,” she said. “As kids, my siblings and I got them in our stockings, which were hung on the stairwell. We knew not to wake up our parents at Christmas, and we’d kill time finding the PEZ dispensers and playing with them.”
PEZ candy emerged in the late 1920s as a breath mint, according to David Welch’s book, Collecting PEZ.
The name PEZ comes from the German word for peppermint, pfefferminz: taking the “P” from the first letter, “E” from the middle and “Z” from the last, according to a PEZ candy web site (www.pez.com/history).
Although most of O’Leary’s dispensers are valued at approximately $3 to $4 each, collectors have paid more than $2,000 for rare PEZ containers, according to Welch’s book.
“PEZ dispensers are the kind of thing that people don’t think about all the time,” said Balado. “But when they do, they are so into them. Laura’s collection is a lot of fun.”
