For me the Pez Gun Project was my personal White Whale. The one that got away. The one that I pursued beyond all reason.
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| Pez gun picture courtesy of Rudi Left Pez Shooter Right Pez Space Gun Remakes/repops???? though does it really matter, they are very well made. Unless truthyness is important to you. |
My Great White Whale from day one to the bitter end, were the Pez Guns. From the very first conversation in 1998 to my last fax that year, the Pez Guns were the common thread. Early on though the conversation narrowed to the Pez Space Guns. Within this chapter I will detail the year long conversation as it happened using the Faxes back & forth. All of the Faxes are between me & Andre Zeich my broker in Germany for all of the Holiday Colors Deals in 1998.
Fax 1-22-1998. this fax generally was a response to my inquiry about guns. "Re pez space guns & regular pez shooters. Final I can say the molds for this pcs are gone. (they found the pez space gun molds later) No documentation are left about this pcs. Also no samples. So is also not an calculation for this pcs possible. Before we go in production. I want to know the price. I think you too. So if you agree and if you want to pls send me one pc from each gun as sample for check up the cost for a reproduction. Can you do this? Pls understand - I can't promise nothing. But I can try all.
I responded in the affirmative & sent the samples. After this the pez gun project was used over & over again as a tease to get me to buy many things. This went on for about 6 months.
5-22-98. "Space gun is possible. Minimum order 7,000 pieces. If you want 7 different colors so is this possible. (7 different colors 1,000 pieces each). $10.00 ea. If you're interest pls. let me know." He also generally complained about Toy shop ads & how I was not allowed to advertise projects he & I were doing. I responded that for what I payed for dispensers his contact could bite it.
It always amazed me. People I bought Pez dispensers from continuously tried to tie my hands selling pez dispensers. These people had no problem charging high prices for what they sold me, but wanted me to sell somehow by not talking about the Pez. I was never able to make them understand that the flow of cash they wanted was directly tied to me openly selling these Pez dispensers. This topic was a constant source of conflict for 10 years.
I swear if Scott McWhinnie had only been able to put our differences aside. I gladly & easily would have been willing to spend the 1 million dollars with him directly buying Pez dispensers. I believe in the end if we had, things would have turned out better for both of us. Unfortunately Scott was obsessed like a dog with a bone. That bone was his hatred of me & there was no talking him out of it.
I faxed back saying. I would like To do this as a December of 1998 project. I would like 10 different color, 1,000 of each color. for a total of 10,000 pez guns at $10.00 each. Tell your contact the colors can be run continuously. No need to purge molds between colors. As these weird color pez guns would sell also. Colors requested are; brown, black, gold clear, glow in dark, & 5 different neon colors.
On 6-22-98 I received a fax back. "Pez Gun deal looks good. I think I know more after complete current deal."
Then on 8-25-98. "Regarding pez guns & others. All this is for the time being put in cold storage." This fax was a reaction to the ongoing trouble caused by the need for me to sell the Pez dispensers I bought. Also as usual I was asked to buy other Pez dispensers to reopen the pez gun negotiations. Something else I only realized later was that this phase of negotiations was stopped out of greed. Evidence of this greed showed its head when negotiations resumed. The price per pez gun jumped to $14.00 per pez space gun.
On 12-7-98 . I received a new fax from German Andre.
Steve, I can offer Pez Space Guns. 12 different colors 1,000 pcs each @ $14.00 each. Pls let me know if you're interest.
My reply. Andre. With the proposal that you made of 12,000 pez space guns at $14.00 each = $168,000.00 . Here is what we think. In my business I always expect to triple on retail & double on wholesale, with the expenses of operation this is what is required. Since the target price for the retail of the pez space gun is $30.00 each, your proposal fails at the first review. To lay some ground work back to your chef scenario, I don't mind all the risk when product fits in my basic business requirements. Your offer of $14.00 does not fit, so therefore we have to look at this as a different kind of situation. Again at $7.50 to $10.00 per pez gun we have a situation that fits my requirements. You say this is impossible. Fine. What this is telling me is that you & your contact are now interested in working on a partnership. Because when you ask me to work on 100% for wholesale I am no longer working independently and am no longer the chef. You are by asking this price making me the retail outlet for a 3 way split on product. For your $14.00 price to work, here is how: when you have the pez space guns in your possession I pay $18,000.00 immediately as my part of the risk. Every 30 days from that point on you will receive $15,000.00. This period would last for the next 10 month's. (rumors were starting about Pez USA copying the pez colors) Provided as you promised Pez USA does not come out with these pez space guns. (this would have provided a safety net, as if Pez USA copied the pez guns, Andre & Pez Europe would get no more money from that point. duplication would nullify the arrangement) Provided as you promised Pez USA does not come out with these pez guns. You say this is so, so this should not be of concern to you. Please remember I am very aware that the initial $18,000.00 would cover cost of product for your contact. So if he b*****s remind him that for the next 10 months that you & he would be dividing up $15,000.00 per month pure profit. I have no problem with this arrangement. You asked to be partners by wanting me to pay $14.00 each, so partner this is how it works. I would also like one gimme in this arrangement, as an added inducement for me to take on all of the risks & only 1/2 of the profit. I want something that is wholly mine and the profit is mine. I want 3,000 clear pez regulars (clear cap & clear outer sleeve). Following is a list of how we want the pez space guns done:
2,000 black pez space guns; 400 black grip, 400 neon green grip, 400 neon yellow grip, 400 neon pink grip, & 400 neon orange grip.
2,000 clear pez space guns; 400 black grip, 400 neon green grip, 400 neon yellow grip, 400 neon pink grip, & 400 neon orange grip.
4,000 glow in the dark pez space guns; 800 black grip, 800 neon green grip, 800 neon yellow grip, 800 neon pink grip, & 800 neon orange grip.
1,000 neon pink pez space guns; black grip only.
1,000 neon green pez space guns; black grip only.
1,000 neon yellow pez space guns; black grip only.
1,000 neon orange pez space guns; black grip only.
Andre. The grip variations will ensure faster sales and as always if I can beat the payment schedule by selling faster you know that I will. These color variations I feel would hasten this process. For production purposes your man would be making 5,600 black grips, 1,600 neon pink grips, 1,600 neon yellow grips, 1,600 neon orange grips & 1,600 neon green grips. So the assembly as you can see is the only real area of work to accomplish variations required for faster sales. Thank you. steve.
The hobby came very close to this deal. Very close.
Long & reasoned arguments like this were always an absolute waste of time. Over time I have learned that most Europeans just ignore anything that they don't want to hear & move on like you never even said it. Very frustrating to reason out a position, only to have it ignored as not relevant. Today for the kind of money I was spending if someone wants to do business it is on my terms. I will adjust up like $2.00 can become $2.50, But that's about it. It's amazing how poverty sharpens your negotiating skills. My problem back then was Pez Money, there was lots of it & I did not respect it like I should have.
After that fax though a new problem started to affect these negotiations. Richie was reporting Scotts plans to duplicate the pez colors. So my immediate reply was.
Andre. 12,000 pez space guns x $14.00 each = $168,000.00 "NO WAY!" Yeah sure I pay this, then 6 months to one year later Scott will bring to the US & he will pay $1.00 to $2.00 ea gun. Thank you NO. I've had enough of this B******t. What was exclusive to me, should have stayed that way.
On 12-17-98 I received this fax from Andre.
Hello Steve. regarding pez guns. I can't offer under $14.00 ea. (sorry) I'll clear you up that Haas must produce two molds - just for 12,000 pieces. (it appeared that two of the component molds were missing for the pez guns) Haas must produce two special feathers for each pez gun which are special - manufactured. No company which made usually 100,000 pcs or 1,000,000 pcs is interested in made specials in less quantities for less money. The complete assemble of the pez guns is hard work which takes a lot of time. Terms of delivery 6 months. Add to this that it's positive clear plastic is maybe not fit for the load of the feathers and the lasting load which comes from the feathers. The result can be that the clear plastic can't stand the lasting load and the plastic pin inside the gun can break and you're a damaged pez gun. Besides I can't offer this 12,000 pcs pez guns for $14.00 ea. include 3,000 pieces pez regulars and I can't accept your terms of payment because I've to pay directly to Haas. I can't finance $168,000.00 because I'm not a millionaire.
By this point it really did not matter much any more as I was beginning to believe what Richie was reporting. Scott was going to duplicate the pez color project. Man was I hung up on this pez gun project, I just could not let it go. It was over. Even still I made this last offer.
Andre 7,000 pez space guns. 1,000 black, 1,000 glow in the dark & 5 x 1,000 each neon color guns. Plus 3,000 black pez snowmen; red hat & red nose. $70,000.00 delivered air freight.
We actually came close on this one also. Andre was now realizing that the jig was up. That I was now aware of what had been going on & that I now realized that the Pez Color Wars were about to begin. Amid all this chaos Andre still wanted to salvage one last deal. Problem was my world was crashing all around me & within weeks this deal was no longer possible. The decline in revenue stream was escalating by the day. Things I had not thought twice about just 6 months prior were now distant memories.
So there you go that is the pez gun story. It was a few years later that the huge pez space gun & pez shooter "find" was made. Coincidence, you be the judge. Me I'm skeptical but then again I'm kind of a cynic. Pez Gun Molds exist, almost used them, 5,000 to 10,000 pez guns appear as if by magic & there is oil inside the cartridge that looks & smells fresh. Sorta like they were only a couple year old.
This is the very reason this chapter is important. It shows in detail the following. Haas had the pez gun molds. Haas was willing to use the pez gun molds, for a price. Cash is King. The quantity needed for a production approx 10,000. The fact that 6,000 pez guns or so is what appeared in the "find" is logical. Say somebody in Europe contracted for about 10,000 pieces of each about 2 years prior to the "find". That person would have sold some of the production over the two year period. As with the pez trucks Joe & Dave had made, this person starts getting antsy after a couple year of selling. Deciding to sell the remainder of the production faster in bulk. This is exactly how it would happen. Or do you prefer to believe a massive quantity of pez guns was found out of nowhere looking brite as daisies 20 years after production ended.
The next phase of this story about the shooters & space guns. If as I suspect these guns were produced not found. The next tell would be rare colors of space guns & shooter turning up for sale. Though probably these would have turned up prior to the find. Colors people had rarely or never seen before, origins explained away in various ways.
After dealing with the European sellers of Pez Dispensers for 10 years, I believe the "find" was actually produced sometime after 1999 as this is exactly when Haas was ready to go on the pez guns. Though any time in the 1990s is possible. It would not surprise me if German Andre was the one who made them or at the very least had a hand in it.
Further, the production Andre was trying to sell me & possibly later produced. Could have been through Haas or molds in private hands in privately owned injection molding machines. The very producer The King Of Austria I suspect used. There is evidence Andre had access or knowledge of this, as for years his circle of friends were coming up with hundreds of guns at a time. This is fact not conjecture, as I bought a large group of them in the mid 1990s.
Recently I was contacted by a reporter who was thinking about championing the latest Pez corp vs a collector. Not Gary. He wanted to know if I knew of any other cases besides Gary & this fellow where pez had come down on collectors. I'm afraid my email responses were disappointing. Maybe I have seen to much, because I told him there are no innocent little lambs.
Collectors happily buy liberated black market pez dispensers (any pez dispenser not intended to be sold by pez corp is a liberated pez dispenser), actually they prize them. Color variations liberated from Pez Corp, or pez dispensers brought into the country in direct violation of copyright laws. I sold a lot of them. I'm using the word liberated because Stolen seems to judgemental.
Collectors & dealers make & sell fantasy pez dispensers. The reporter said well yea but he only traded to other pez collectors. Yeah right maybe in the beginning, but eventually most do sell them. Also if fantasy pieces are created to trade to a dealer for real pez, won't the dealer sell them. I often traded old no feet pez dispensers for groups of fantasy pez items & we all knew I was going to sell them. A fantasy pez creator can't maintain innocence if they know the trade will result in the sale of the pez creation.
In the early days it was the resin head fantasy pez; Spock's, Pillsbery Dough Boy, Pee Wee etc by that artist. The Kaleidoscope guy, put his creations in the pez stems. The cookie Jar guys created the pez cookie jar & only went lagit after being forced to. Dwayne's Hitler pez, which he sold & was very proud of. The guy who put corporate logos on the ball pez. The guy who molded heads at pez conventions in your image then baked them in a toaster oven. These are just a few & it does not even take into account other pez fantasy pieces where portions of toys are put on pez dispensers. Pez Collectors & pez dealers violate copyrights all the time, explaining it away in various ways that make it sound justifiable. Take a minute & think about it before just automatically hating me for saying it. It does not make anybody a bad person, but it is the truth.
Besides fantasy pez dispensers, "artist creations", black market pez dispensers, imported pez dispensers that violate copyrights. There is the out & out fake stuff; pez pins (not just the ones I made), pez plastic yo yos, pez money clips, pez rings, pez stenciled cars, etc, etc, etc. Composite pez dispensers where the sum of the pez dispensers used is less valuable than the components needed to create a more valuable pez dispenser. Like Mr Majestic pez creations, some pez regulars, Batman with Cape & footed heads that can upgrade to a no foot pez stem. As a lot of heads stayed the same when pez stems went from no feet to feet & it is an easy upgrade for a lowly no feet pez dispenser to a good piece with the right head.
Pez Stem switching when done right & if you have the knowledge (which I don't) is impossible to tell the difference. Except maybe the stress marks at the top of the inner sleeve. There is also stem shaving & melt mark repair.
Reproduction using existing molds of Pez cosidered out of production. Some I know to be true others I suspect.
Then there is Pez corp Europe/Haas. Items knowingly sold out of copyright. One example blue Dumbo pez, plus massive amounts of other pez dispensers liquidated after copyright ended into Russia. Again don't tell me what I saw with my own eyes was not true. Also the over a million dollars different people within the company made & still do "helping the hobby" with rare pez color variations or product to be sold out of copyright. Rare pez color variations are now a cottage industry within Pez international.
As the reporter said he just traded to other pez collectors. Even if that were so & the website says different. But say it were so, eventually the fantasy piece or pez creation is sold down the line. There are no innocent lambs. Pez Collectors are not let in on the whole story out of fear of how these things if reveled would impact the hobby yet everybody knows some or a few of the pieces. An illusion is maintained & for good reason, money.
The fantasy in the end has always been about the money. As pez collectors you do realize that at least in the mid to late 1990s, the combined take for pez dealers at a single convention was around $100,000.00. Sometimes depending on the year & the particular pez convention, combined dealer take was about $200,000.00. This would be one with 6 plus big pez dealers; Dave, John, The king, The Queen, Slovenia, me & 10 to 20 smaller dealers. Add to that a pez collection or 2 up for sale & there is your number. This is a lot of money.
Per year in the mid to late 1990s overall it would not surprise me if pez collectors spent roughly two million dollars per year on Pez dispensers. Easily true as one year alone I made $750,000.00 selling pez & I truly doubt everyone else was idle that year. In that year pez collectors easily spent two million on pez. To me that is a lot of money & any time a lot of money is at stake people want in. The German Andre crowd though was the most notorious. Always coming up with ways & items to get some of that pez money.
The point of all this is, with the amounts of pez money being spent per year by pez collectors you need to be more careful. If you consider what I've said is not good for the hobby, then don't support it by buying it. The act of buying say rare pez color variations or pez fantasy pieces only guarantees there will be more. Feed the beast & it only gets hungrier. Soon the beasts friends want to eat also.
Police your hobby by not buying pez items that are not good for it. After all if you don't buy it, it will of its own accord go away. When in doubt, don't buy it. Be careful of Europeans, except The Queen & The Slovenian. It has always bothered me that Europeans feel a freedom & immunity to create because there is an ocean between them & there victims. When in doubt ask Richie B, John the Cool Pez Man or Marry Anne Kennedy. These are good people whose only motivation is there love of Pez collecting.
One more thing. No pez dispenser should ever be valued at more than the value of the Pez dispenser components required to make it. As pez collectors you really need to pressure anyone who writes pez price guides to enforce this guideline. If a person can't make more money by reconfiguring pez dispensers, than they can just leaving them as they are. They will leave them as they are, as why bother when you could break them in the process. Pez Collectors need to be more aware of the outside influences now hunting for there piece of the pie.
The reporter just set my mind to working. It seems like every year or two a new innocent lamb is being persecuted unjustly by the big bad pez company, but when everything is put in context it just seems different to me. At this point I have no idea how I fit in all this, not completely anyway. I'm just a guy trying to sell a story.
In the end you just need to remember Pez are plastic. Plastic is doable. It's just a matter if it is profitable to do. I have readers in Russia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan etc. I guarantee you this story has got somebody thinking maybe it would be worth doing. That never occurred to me before.
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"How To Make A Pez Gun"
The ZEP Gun Project
About the same time period as the Pez Space gun project I also began the ZEP gun Project. The zep gun came into being when I was made aware by Mike Mitros/M&J Variety of a toy gun suitable for conversion. This clear plastic pellet shooter was manufactured by a company he did business with. The gun was commonly available in dollar stores in the mid to late 1990s. For all I know it still is or just contact Mike Mitros at M&J Variety. I bet if you are willing to buy by the case he could facilitate it. Mike can facilitate many things but you really need to buy by the case.
This pellet shooter was approx 6 to 8 inches long, made of clear plastic. There was a slide area in front of the trigger that accepted a clip of plastic pellets. The pellets were smaller as was the clip size & the barrel, but functionally everything was ready to go with modification. Key was that the trigger connected to a striker that knocked the top pellet only in the slide through the barrel. I believe I had to add one of the pellets it used to shoot over the striker so it hit the candy properly. At the correct position & force as to not break the pez candy.
The barrel bore was round so I had to rifle it with a small rectangular file so a pez candy tab could pass through it properly. The cartridge for plastic pellets was approx same size side to side as a pez dispenser stick, though the head & head return mechanism must be removed. So all that is left is the pez stick with top piece of candy exposed, no obstruction to the striker to send top tab down the barrel.
Pez dispenser side to side same, minor filing needed. Pez dispenser stick front to back was longer. Front to back meaning side with the guide channels. So what you needed to do was remove the back wall of the slide chamber in the toy gun. Back wall being the wall trigger side. I did the entire first gun with just a small file part of a multi type utility tool. For the rest though (I made several hundred) I used a band saw. So remove back wall of slide & open hole in bottom of gun to accept Pez cartridge. Bit more filing & voila A Pez Shooter.
A lot of people, several hundred bought these custom Zep shooters from me at I believe $10 each. Ask around I'm sure someone can post a picture of one. Actually if someone could post them so I can use them I will post here. Need pictures of each side, front of barrel where customized & bottom with clip in & one without clip.
Other Books By Pez Outlaw/sj glew
The Cereal Box Price Guide
Princess Puddy n The Golden Bowl
The Barrel Book
Used Dogs
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