#10 - Alf

To start things off at number 10 we have Alf, the witty, cat eating 'Alien Life Form' from the planet Melmac.  Alf was the star of a hit TV series that ran from 1986 to 1990, which would make him a great candiate to show up on a Halo card ;).  Currently rumors exist that there could be a movie in the future, perhaps at that time he will receive the tribute that he deserves on a pez stem.

Top ten charactors that I would put on a pez dispenser

Although I do not own any custom made pez I often enjoy looking at the fantasy pez that people have created and from that I draw inspiration, being it Wednesday and the mind daydreaming a little in the middle of the work week, to create a list of my top 10 characters that I wish were immortalized on a pez dispenser.  I will only include animated or pupated charactors and will assume that the pez was realeased during the height of their popularity.  Keeping that in mind, I will count them down over the next couple of days in the Pez Post.  Please feel free to comment and make your own suggestions.

Halo Purchasing - Tips

So hopefully you are finding the Halo postings interesting and informative.  Perhaps some of you may even wish to add or expand this exciting segment in your pez collection.  Well here are some Halo purchasing tips:

1. Shipping - As a great deal of pez transactions occur online via Ebay or like websites you should be aware that shipping costs will be higher as carded pez require larger boxes.  It is a good idea to confirm the shipping costs with the seller prior to purchasing or bidding in situations where there is any uncertainty.

2. Soft Candy - I am not a scientist so I do not know the exact cause however sometimes pez candies will turn soft and remain soft feeling like a tube of toothpaste.  It will eventually leak out of the paper wrapping and begin to ooze and stain the card making a sticky mess and attract bugs.  This is not something that can easily be spotted by looking at a picture so you will want to confirm that the candy is hard.

3. Price - Generally you will pay anywhere from 25% to 150% more for a pez on Halo vs. loose with the greater increase for variations.  Remember price is what somebody is willing to pay for something and when Halos come up less frequently on the auction block collectors are a little more determined not to miss them.  This will also lead to a greater inconsistency in the market as of course there are also fewer Halo collectors in the market.

Next we will look at some card variations.

Pez & Scary Clowns

I am an avid reader and one of the most recent books I read was Stephen King's IT  - one of his early classics from the 1980's.  While I am not a big fan of Stephen King in particular, I had the chance to read the book and I thought it would be interesting to try a scary book to see if one could actually jump or be scared while reading a book.  Well it did not workout that way for me anyway but it was well written a not a bad read overall.
The reason I bring it up is that early in the book one of the characters as a child goes to the store to load up on candy and purchases a pez dispenser in the process.  While it does not say what the pez dispenser was, all of the events in the novel are dated very clearly and the date of the pez purchase was in 1958, meaning that it could have only been a select few dispensers available at that time: pez Regular; Witch A; Bunny A; Popeye A or full bodied Santa or Robot.  A little extra fun aside to think about while reading and it is cool to see pez pop up in pop culture.
Note that the pez does not make an appearance in the movie, also note that I found the movie to be corny.  No endorsement here, although I do believe it was geared to a somewhat different audience.

Halo Stem Variation 4 - What's left?

Below are two roosters from the Merry Music Maker Series. Both are on green thin footed stems of the same shade, although the picture is not great, the country of origin is not visable and no IMC numbers appear on the stem sides that we can see.  So what makes these a stem variation!?

Well we need to know a little bit more about the dispenser and need to look a little harder.  The Roosters in MMM can be found with different inner sleave colours.  Check out the picture below I borrowed from another collector website (www.pezcandydispenser.com).

Now take a closer look at the two on Halos.  What'da know there is a difference :P.


We can see from the back that the inner sleave colours are red and yellow.


Ok collecting differences that you can hardly see is a little crazy but you know if I came across one with a blue or green inner sleave I would just have to have it!

Halo Stem Variation 3 - Country of Origin

Well the next stem variation is for only the intense/crazy Halo collector, I am not quite there yet but for those who are you could also look to find the different countries for each type of footed stem, for each patent number, in each colour of stem.  If this is your mission good luck to you I hope you are good with spreadsheets and have plenty of space!
Typically Halo's will come on stems from Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary & Slovenia.  In cases of unmarked stems or dispensers turned to the side you can look at the IMC number at the top of the stem to determine the country of origin.
That should bring us to the end of stem variations right?  No there is still one more believe it or not!  Try to figure it out :)

Update - Cautiously Optomistic

My friend did not see her father this weekend as her 6 month old was under the weather, so we will need to wait for the next opportunity...

Halo Stem Variation 2 - Feet and Patents

Well there are many dating methods used in the world such as radiocarbon and dendrochronology to name a few, pez collectors have the simple method of looking at the patent number on the side of the dispenser: the lower the number, the older the piece.  That combined with the offcial pez website which will tell you the dates of the patent numbers as well as what year a dispenser was released will narrow the gap to a relatively small window, packaging can also provide some additional clues.

Halos can be found on both 3,9's and 4,6's patented stems. What is also cool is that you can find these with no feet, thin feet and footed (or thick feet).

3 Pluto's all on 3,9 stems one non-footed two with thin feet.
 

Closer look

 

Note that the non-footed stems on halo's are rather difficult to find, to date I have only seen these in the Disney and Merry Music Maker series.

 

Below we have two Penguins from the Merry Music Makers, on the left is a 3,9 thin footed dispenser and on the right we have a 4,6 thick footed dispenser.  These are also in chronological order.

 

One obstical you will encounter is that when the dispenser is side facing you may not be able to see the patent number, that is, without extracting it.

So in addition to unique colours, you can also look for the patent numbers 3,9 & 4.6 as well as footed, non-footed and thin footed. Hmmm ... a person can really get carried away with this...

Cautiously Optomistic...

For those of us who are publically known as pezheads amoung family, friends and workmates, we will often be led on by people claiming to have great hidden treasures saying things like 'I still have my pez from when I was a kid, you can have them if you want' coming from somebody in their 40's or 50's.  This naturally leads to extreme excitement for a great find as the possibilities are endless!!  Only to find out that what was suppose to be 40 or 50 years old somehow is only 4 or 5 years old and you are left wondering how their parents were able to build a time machine and yet only went into the future a couple decades to purchase pez for their kids and return.
There is another person that I work with who has made a similar statement and I believe it has been 6 or 7 years now that she keeps 'forgetting' to bring them in, or could not remember which box they were packed in their latest move but confirms everytime the subject is brought up that they are certainly somewhere and they are old.
Well yesterday I received a new lead from a friend of ours saying that her dad has a lot of old pez however does not really collect them and does not know what they are worth, if anything.  The other points of interest include that they 'allegedly' have no feet and there are characters that she does not recognize (which would leave me to believe there should be more scarce dispensers than the usual Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and Santa Clause).
She will be at her fathers this weekend to pick them up or at least take a picture so stay tunned and see if we have a 'great find' or yet another disappointment.

More Halo variations to follow...

Halo Stem Variation 1 - Colours

The coolest thing about collecting pez in the original packaging is that you can find unique stem colours and be confident that nobody has done the old switch-a-roo on you to make a buck and charge you a premium.  A different stem colour can change the entire look of the dispenser!  And of course some colours are going to be harder to find than others.

Some of the best series to collect colour variations include the Merry Music Makers; MGM (Tom & Jerry) and the Muppets.

Merlin Mouse on 3 different stems (Brown, Purple and Blue).  Can he be found on some of his other known colours on Halo as well? Red, Yellow, Grey or Black???

Here are some more cool stem colours.

Halo Collecting - The Unknown.

What perhaps is most intriguing about the Halo collection is that while it has nearly been two decades since these stopped leaving pez factories you never know when you are going to discover a new character on a Halo.  To date I am aware of more than 100 different characters before variations and the list is always growing.

If you collect a series such as Merry Music Makers, you know that there are 18 then done (good luck with the owl btw) or if you collect Disney you know exactly what is out there and only need to add new releases to the list.

Given this, the premise of a 'complete' Halo collection is a bit of a faux pas.  The quest is unending and even when you think you can find no more there are a numerous variety of variations yielding plenty more to find ... next I will categorize variations.

My Collection

While I have new and old pez and pez items that dispense anything from bubbles to salt & pepper (actually not a whole lot of things inbetween) the focal point of my collection are the ones that land right in the middle, the new old, or the old new, intermediate or whathaveyou.  Basically from the mid to late 1980's to the mid 1990's and more specifically halo carded pez.

What are halo carded pez you may be asking yourself?  Well these beauties come from the aforementioned timeperiod and are still in their original packages or 'cards' referring to packages with a hard cardboard backing.  Halos have splash of white behind the head of the character (surrounding it like a halo) and come on pastel striped cards.  Halo cards were only available in Canada and Europe.

Over the coming posts I will go into further details as to what makes this segment of Pez collecting so much fun!

The 2 Roadrunners on the right are on Halo cards

Note the 2 Roadrunner variations stenciled eyes and painted eyes (far right)