SYSK Selects: How Pez Works

# Stuff You Should Know: The Pez Edition

Josh and Chuck dive into the surprisingly fascinating history of Pez dispensers, from their origins as a smoking-cessation aid in 1927 Austria to becoming one of the most collectible candies in America. They explore how genius product design—combining candy with a toy dispenser—created a collecting craze in the 1980s, and share wild stories about rare dispensers selling for thousands of dollars and one Michigan farmer who allegedly made millions smuggling custom Pez from Eastern European factories. It's a quirky deep-dive into how a compressed sugar brick became a cultural phenomenon.