My family and I have passed signs for the Pez Visitor Center for years. The center is located in Orange, CT. Pez has always been an icon in my house growing up. My friends and I would walk around the corner to Manny’s Candy Store and buy Pez with the money our parents gave us for allowance.
Fast forward 40+ years and I’m still in love with those little dispensers known as a Pez dispenser. So my husband, son and I went to see what it was all about. We walked into the entry way and say nearly 1000 unique Pez dispensers on the wall.
Pez was invented by Eduard Haas III in Vienna, Austria as an alternative to smoking. In 1952, the candy was introduced to the US. The word Pez comes from the German word, “Pfefferminz.” Haas took the P from the first letter, the E from the middle and the Z from the last letter to form the word PEZ.
At the center, they had a scavenger hunt. You had to find the eight dwarfs with codes to spell something out. When you collected all the letters, you won a free Pez dispenser. While we checked out all the cool dispensers ranging from Mickey Mouse to Kiss (the rock band), we gathered information for the form. We even saw a President Barak Obama Pez!
I particularly liked the Star Wars and Star Trek Pez dispensers.
But, when I found out they had a whole array of Hello Kitty dispensers, I was excited. Of course, I had to buy one!
After collecting all the letters from the seven dwarfs (and I have to admit, I overheard a little child scream out he found one. Of course, that was the one I needed!) we handed in our form and got a free Pez dispenser.
Would I recommend the Pez Visitor Center? Sure would, why not? It’s a great way to spend an hour or so and it gets the whole family active on a scavenger hunt that changes every week.
P.S. We visited the center the day before the disastrous Easter Egg Hunt… Good thing we went the day before, otherwise this review may have had a different twist.
