I haven’t devoted much effort to documenting the PEZ part of the collectible candy world. It’s not that I don’t like PEZ – I love PEZ dispensers. It’s just that collecting PEZ dispensers is a topic that has been well-documented and well-covered by other folks already. There are a handful of quality books on PEZ, as well as numerous websites devoted to them, so if you’re at all curious about their history, you should check them out.
In spite of that wealth of information out there, I thought I’d devote today’s post to one of the lesser-known parts of PEZ – the Japan mini-PEZ releases of the mid-2000’s. I won’t delve too much into the details of the releases – this is more of just me tipping the hat to something I like.
Produced by PEZ and Bandai for a few years in the mid-2000’s, the mini-PEZ line-ups differentiated themselves by having miniature stems. Likely influenced by the popular super-deformed figure movement, these were cute short little dispensers, mostly featuring licensed characters from Japanese cartoons and video games.
Japan Mini-Pez display
What I love about Japan mini-Pez is the high-level of sculpting they received, as well as some of the characters and properties they took on. My absolute favorites were the Nintendo series they did:
Japan Mini-Pez shot – Mario
Japan Mini-Pez – Peanuts
Japan Mini-Pez
Early last year, my brother Jeff took on the task of continuing the Japan mini-PEZ collection I started, and today’s snapshots all come from him. I do have one last photo from a couple years ago, before he picked up the Japan mini-PEZ collection baton:
And that’s everything for today.
Going to be working to come up with some fun patriotic posts for this week’s July 4th Independence Day holiday. See you next time!!
