BAY AREA PEZ MUSEUM DISPENSES POP CULTURE - ONE BIT AT A TIME.

Byline: Diana Marszalek The (San Mateo) Times

To Gary Doss, PEZ candies and their cartoon-crowned dispensers have secured a spot in American pop culture for one simple reason.

People eat 'em up.

"It's a toy that dispenses candy," Doss said. "What could be more happy than that?"

Doss should know. As owner of the Burlingame PEZ Museum - the only institution of its kind in the country - Doss is one of the foremost authorities on the wacky little candy carriers that have been part of American life for more than 40 years.

Step into the museum, which Doss and his wife, Nancy, opened last year, and it's easy to see how a guy like him got so smart.

With a collection of about 270 PEZ dispensers, the PEZ Museum is a tribute to the sugary little sweets and their headed holders. Among people who love weird things, PEZ dispensers are tops.

Though young, the Burlingame PEZ Museum, which is housed in the back of Doss' computer store, has become a hot spot for PEZ fans across the country.

Doss once showed up at work to find eight suit-clad businessmen who wanted to make sure they got into the museum before returning to St. Louis from a business trip.

And hanging on the museum wall is an Austin, Texas, couple's travel itinerary mapping out their trip. In addition to crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and sipping wine in Napa, the PEZ Museum is listed as a must-do.

While the bulk of the museum's collection started out life in the same place - usually a supermarket check-out line - the highlights are far from run-of-the-mill.

The museum has some of the earliest, rarest and strangest candy-spitting contraptions out there.

Topping the list is one of PEZ's first creations: a Mickey Mouse model that may have been the first dispenser with a head, in the early 1950s. A spaceman and Santa Claus lucky enough to have arms, legs and torsos - PEZ briefly experimented with giving characters complete bodies, rather than just heads - also date back to PEZ's earliest days.

A psychedelic eye PEZ dispenser - branded with the colorful swirls of the 1960s, the words "Luv PEZ," and crowned with a hand holding a disembodied eye - is unquestionably the creepiest.

The Mr. Ugly character, green face and all, has to be the biggest eyesore.

The collection also tracks PEZ through the ages. Original Casper the Ghost, Flintstone characters and Jungle Book PEZ dispensers are tributes to the hippest cartoon characters of the past four decades.

PEZ's bicentennial collection and a lifelike spaceman on sale during the space program's heyday highlight PEZ's role in American history.

And PEZ's trademark cartoon character boy, who has been available in a range of costumes, from a police uniform to a sheik's turban, to coincide with his appearances in the Sunday newspaper comics pages, showcases PEZ engineers' marketing expertise.

PEZ collecting is big business for folks like the Dosses, who started the hobby seven years ago.

A rarity such as a make-a-face PEZ, quickly pulled off the market because its removable pieces were dangerous for small children, is worth $3,000. A Mary Poppins dispenser that came out a year and a half after the movie - and fizzled quickly - is worth about $700.

With that in mind, the museum also is a source of hard-to-find PEZ dispensers for the collector in all of us.

European Body Parts PEZ and costumes - that's right, in Europe, they dress their PEZ in clothes - are sold at the museum.

The PEZ business has its own mystique. PEZ officials rarely say which characters are coming, or which ones are being dumped, Doss said.

And PEZ officials don't explain their decisions, like why they'd produce a Bullwinkle dispenser but never a Rocky, or why they'd leave Wilma and Betty out of a line of Flintstones characters.

"They're very secretive," Doss said.

Nonetheless, there's nothing undercover about Americans' love affair with PEZ. The candy has appeared in numerous movies, on magazine covers, is the subject of books - and is available in supermarkets and drug stores in big cities and small towns around the world.