PEZ GOES TO HOLLYWOOD...?
I read an article the other day which reported that the Pez candy company is planning to produce a movie based on their candy dispensers, more or less along the same lines as The Lego Movie.
Hmmm....
Now I stand second to no one in my fondness for Pez. I remember my brothers and I using our Pez dispensers as pseudo-action figures when we were little kids, and often find myself wishing that I still had the Green Hornet Pez Dispenser my parents bought for me (for a mere 33 cents, if I remember correctly) way back in the late 1960s; I played with that one until it finally just fell apart, I’m afraid.
(Back in 2006, when I was a guest speaker at the San Diego Comic-Con, I was nearly moved to tears when I ran across a vender who actually had one of the Hornet dispensers to sell - for about $300! Honest, I would have taken better care of mine if I had known...)
Yes, I still buy Pez candy from time to time (don’t tell my doctor), and still manage to recall the childlike thrill we used to get when we gobbled them down several at a time, calling them our “super-secret superhero energy pills.” I have even managed to build up a modest but much-loved collection of some of the newer dispensers in recent years. The crown jewel of that collection at the moment is a boxed set of dispensers made in the likenesses of the first five Presidents of the United States: George Washington through James Monroe; someday I really need to see if I can find the rest of that series.
And as a fan of Legos since well before being a Lego fan was cool - something I’ve written about a number of times over the years - I certainly enjoyed The Lego Movie (in spite of the presence of Will Ferrell, whose popularity I will NEVER understand).
But an entire movie starring Pez dispensers as characters? Maybe I'm just getting old, but I admit I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around that idea.
Wow. I just had a mental image of my head on the top of a Pez dispenser, being flipped back for a piece of candy...
In : Pop Culture
Tags: pez
John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996).
Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.)
John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something.
In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems.
He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.
