PEZ
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
PEZ is, at its core being, brightly-coloured small blocks of compressed sugar and a touch of fruit flavour. But it's so much more than that.
PEZ allows one to fully explore the possibilities of foodstuff and bad eating habits. For example, a few PEZ in the middle of the workday make one forget that lunch has been missed, therefore sharpening the dinner appetite. Movement into dinnertime prompts one to eat a few more PEZ, releasing you from the desire to eat a well-balanced meal. By late evening you realize you haven't eaten a substantial thing all day, but you feel strangely at peace and calm with yourself and those around you.
The PEZ-Zen phenomenon is a widely documented event causing most frequently nausea, giddiness, and thirst, and in some extreme cases religious visions, euphoria, the desire to create a new programming language, etc.
The distribution method of PEZ has given birth to yet another cult-like following: the dispenser. It consists of a spring loaded rectangular kind of tube, topped by the head of an animal, cartoon character, or other cultural icon. The candy is eaten by tilting back the head, which causes the PEZ to pop out of the neck of the creature. Most people will eat the entire dispenser full of PEZ in 2-5 minutes, causing an experience much like that of Disneyland, where the experience of enjoying the PEZ lasts a far shorter amount of time than the frustration of preparing it. Most will agree, however, that brightly-coloured plastic injection molded into a smiling pumpkin or a Stormtrooper shape is hard to resist on the shelf, making PEZ one of the most attractive foodstuffs that has almost zero nutritional value.