|
|
|
He’s the candy man: Nova Scotia man has collection of 3,000 Pez dispensers |
|
|
|
Written by Bill Spurr, Halifax Chronicle Herald
|
|
Thursday, February 25 2010, 9:19 PM |
HALIFAX — Scott Ferguson is a sweets guy. And a sweet guy.
What began one day 20 years ago as an innocent trip to the candy store to buy treats for young relatives is now a collection of Pez dispensers that takes up a sizable part of his sizable house.
“I brought a bunch home to give to my nieces and nephews and I thought they were cool, so ... I bought some for myself and just started collecting. I would have been around 30,” said Ferguson, whose collection has the blessing of his understanding wife, Anne.
“I think she was probably with me when I got them, and she gets Pez for me all the time now, anytime she can get any. She got me some for Christmas that I didn’t have, which is hard.”
Hard because Ferguson has about 3,000 individual Pez dispensers, most of them intact in the original packaging with the little hard candy bricks still inside.
“The majority of them don’t come out of the package, but the ones that do usually end up with next-door neighbours’ kids or my nieces and nephews,” said Ferguson, who eats Pez candy “very rarely,” and who has moved the vast collection about 10 times over the course of a banking career that has seen him pull up stakes quite frequently.
During one of those relocations, movers damaged one of the jewels of the collection, a two-metre-tall display case with rotating racks that can hold several hundred dispensers. The case, which dates back to the 1970s, had been sitting in a drugstore somewhere in rural Nova Scotia — Ferguson doesn’t know where — when a friend rescued it.
“She was a drug rep and she walked into a drugstore, saw it and said, ’What are you going to do with it?’ and they said, ’We’re going to throw it in the garbage.’ I was living in Newfoundland and she shipped it to Newfoundland because she was coming over,” recalled Ferguson.
“She brought it over to my house, and my wife sent me out to pick up dinner and they (brought it in) and put it all together while I was gone. When I saw it, I almost (messed) my pants.”
The rack holds Pez dispensers depicting Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown with his tongue stuck out and Charlie Brown with a frown. Next to them is one that “Seinfeld” fans would recognize right away.
“I saw it on a rerun, and I thought it was a riot,” he said, picking up a Tweety Bird dispenser. “They show up on TV from time to time. The show ’Pretender,’ in every single episode, there was one or two Pez dispensers.”
Some glow in the dark. Others can’t be bought in stores but come from Austria, where Pez originated.
“Most you can get, as long as you’re willing to pay for them,” he said.
On a shelf in his basement, Ferguson has four Pez lunch boxes with matching Thermos bottles inside. Upstairs, in a room that would be a dining room if it wasn’t filled with Pez stuff, are giant dispensers — Kermit, Cookie Monster, Pluto, Lisa Simpson, a limited-edition Big Bird with a transparent head — that dispense whole packs of candy instead of single pieces.
In the living room is a row of mini stock cars that dispense Pez candy through a scoop in the hood. In the kitchen are three sealed packages of Mickey Mouse dispensers, made for the Disney character’s 80th birthday, one of which is encrusted with Swarovski crystal.
“It’s three different Mickey Mouses from three different decades,” Ferguson said. “They are on special stems, they were only sold at auction and there’s only 50 of them. I got it on eBay. They also put out a set that has gold-coloured stems and it’s limited to 100 sets.”
Almost all Pez dispensers represent fictional characters, but there are a few notable exceptions, including Betsy Ross, Elvis Presley and the guys from the reality show “Orange County Choppers.”
A Looney Tunes cardboard display case, water glasses, jugs, card game, puzzles, huge C-3PO and Darth Vader dispensers, a set of all the Disney princesses — it’s all in the living room as Ferguson tries to come up with some sort of inventory system. Even with all this, he can occasionally walk into the Freak Lunchbox candy store in Halifax and find one he doesn’t already have.
“The odd time I’ve bought a Pez that I already had, but very seldom. I can tell by the look of it whether I’ve bought it or not,” he said.
“I’m going to sell some of it, but I won’t sell anything I have just one of. I’ll sell stuff that I have extra of, and I’ll use the proceeds to buy other ones that I want.”
Ferguson especially likes dispensers that show a monkey from the “Donkey Kong” video game and Peppermint Patty from “Charlie Brown,” but another is his ultimate favourite.
It’s the only one on his desk.
“My mother gave me that, and she passed away so it’s my favourite Pez,” he said.
“It’s an angel with a halo.”
|
|
|
|
