These Real People Have Been Featured As Pez Dispensers

Pez candy has been around for a lot longer than you might think. It was invented in 1927, although the Pez website tells us that the iconic dispenser didn't appear until 22 years later. While the first dispensers were pretty plain, 1957 saw the introduction of the first character head, a Halloween witch. As the Pez Collector's Archive shows, the following year saw a few more holiday characters (Santa and an Easter bunny) as well as the brand's first licensed character, Popeye.

Throughout subsequent decades, the Pez dispensers in all their infinite variety have become the main attraction with this candy. In fact, most Pez fans would probably be hard-pressed to describe the taste of the candy, and many may never have bothered eating the candies at all. Fun-to-collect Pez toppers, however, have featured all manner of characters from TV, movies, and the wild imaginations of the Pez designers, including 1968's groovy psychedelic flowers and hands and 1982's space guns. While many Pez dispensers portrayed generic and/or fictional humans, the first dispensers to depict real people didn't show up until 1975.

In the run-up to the nation's Bicentennial, Pez's 1975 collection featured two history-themed Pez: Daniel Boone and Betsy Ross (via Pez Collector's Archive). No more real people joined the lineup until 2006, at which time Pez released its first-ever dispenser to feature the likenesses of people that were not only real, but still alive — the cast of Orange County Choppers. The following year brought an interesting assortment of famous folks no longer among the living: Elvis, Mozart, and Sissi, the wife of Austria's Emperor Franz Joseph.

The year 2011, marked the release of Pez's new Presidents of the United States series featuring the first five men to hold that office. Subsequent Pez POTUS sets came out in 2012, a year that also saw the band members of KISS honored in Pez form. To date, there have been no official Donald Trump or President Joe Biden dispensers, but if Pez holds true to form, they may wait until we've had a few more presidents to round out their next set. They did, however, release several more real people dispensers in 2019 (Colonel Sanders, albeit in Funko Pop version), 2020 (Marilyn Monroe), and 2021 ( LeBron James as part of a Space Jam gift set). Pez also manufactured a single set of dispensers featuring Harry and Meghan in 2018. As per the Pez blog, the royal Pez sold at auction in for $9,893.33 with the proceeds benefiting the Make-a-Wish Foundation.