Though February can be a very gloomy month, it can also be a very SWEET month! With Valentine’s Day looming, candy purchases are on the rise. Americans spend about $2.2 BILLION on Valentine candy each year, which equates to 58 MILLION pounds of candy.
This month’s Pocket Museum exhibit pays tribute to one special candy – PEZ. PEZ was created in Vienna, Austria in 1927 as a breath mint for adults as an alternative to smoking. The name came from using the first, middle and last letter in the German word for peppermint… PfeffErminZ, and the very first PEZ dispensers were called regulars and did not have character heads on them.
Though PEZ started in Austria, the USA is the biggest consumer of the candy, and so now PEZ is manufactured in Orange, Connecticut as well as Traun, Austria. The US factory alone produces 12 million tablets every day and uses 12,500 pounds of sugar to make them. It takes 3,000 pounds of pressure to compress the sugar into the familiar brick shape of PEZ candy, and there are 12 PEZ in every sleeve and they come in ten flavors.
Special thanks to PEZ CANDY, INC for providing this month’s sweet exhibition!
