Rest In Pez

Just when you thought it was safe to eat your peppermints, world pez has been disturbed once again. Men cry "Pez, pez, but there is no pez, only wars and rumors of war." And where are these pez-destroying warriors to be found? One side is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, the other in Burlingame, California.

Let's take a look at the combatants. The Austrian aggressors have launched their early missiles from the land of wienerschnitzel mit salat. The sneak attack originated at their top-secret base in the misleadingly bucolic city of Linz. The first bomb dropped on the unprepared California memorabiliasts last week like a peppermint bunker-buster. Nary a yodel to warn the victims of the impending attack. The Pez Candy Company had determined that the Dangerous Doss family in the suburbs of San Francisco were attempting to destroy the Pez empire's holdings in the United States. At least unlike the Germans in 1930s Berlin, the Austrian's didn't burn down the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna so they could blame it on the Doss family as their excuse to commit pezicide.

The Pez-Doss conflict has its historical parallels. Think carefully of the preemptive attack by Germany on Poland when Poland plotted the violent overthrow of the Third Reich. Those sneaky Poles were just like the perfidious Doss family. The arrogant Doss people kicked it all into motion back in 1995. They opened a Pez museum, cleverly-disguised as a computer store. Gary and Nancy Doss, owners of their upstart startup had been lifelong Pez candy dispenser collectors. Their initial inventory was rather limited, so they deceitfully used their complete Pez dispenser collection to dress up the store windows. They knew plastic Mickeys and Donalds that spit out candy were a bit more eye-catching than slightly shopworn Commodore 64s and Ataris.

The Doss family had been secretly hoarding all the Pez dispensers ever made, thereby stealing the state-of-the-art blood, toil, sweat and tears that the Austrians had poured into manufacturing characters with no feet and a gut full of peppermint pills. To give you an idea what an insidious plan the Doss family had come up with for stabbing Pez in the back, Gary Doss in 2005 added the only dispenser he didn't have until then--the Pineapple Pez worth $3,500. He had already cornered the market on the most valuable of all: The Make-A-Face Mr. Potato Head dispenser, worth over $5,000 (although there is an unverified rumor that a Mickey Mouse soft-head dispenser went for as much as $7,000).

Drunk with power, the Doss family abandoned all pretense of running a computer store, and turned the shop openly and brazenly into a Pez museum for collectors and curiosity-seekers. Still, the Austrians were unaware of the attack on their hegemony until the pushy Doss family went one step too far. They built (or had built for them, it's not entirely clear) a huge Pez dispenser. It is 7 feet 10 inches tall, and stands at the entrance to their Museum of Pez Memorabilia. Fortunately for the Doss enterprise, by this time Pez had put feet on their dispensers, which the Dosses appropriated to their own use in creating their giant gate guardian (snowman Pez dispenser with Doss partisan pictured above). And then, the plan was revealed! Too much fame brings unwanted attention. The Guinness Book of World Records recognized the Doss dispenser as the largest Pez dispenser in the world.

The Pez Candy Company has a major factory in Orange, Connecticut. After sending spies who didn't need Austrian passports into California to view the completely public Doss armaments factory, Pez filed suit in federal court for patent infringement and money damages equal to the entire income of the Doss family for the full fourteen years that the "museum/shrine" has been open. They also want Pezzy the Snowman turned into a large plastic puddle. The attorney for the Doss family said "From a branding perspective, I think Pez should embrace the Dosses and the museum instead of trying to attack them." (Roger Cole of Fenwick & West LLP in Mountain View, California) There has thus far been no response from the Pez attorneys.

I'm no patent expert by any means, but it does seem to me that the Doss family may have impinged on Pez's rights. Yet this sounds a lot like using an elephant gun to kill a gnat, or a blitzkrieg to take out a kindergarten. Jeez, guys, did you ever write a nice letter to the Doss family asking them to work with you on getting some sort of joint venture going out of this? We need to get the legal profession to adopt the philosophical approach: Just because you can sue, it doesn't necessarily follow that you should. Have you ever heard the word "overkill?" Have you checked with your accountants and public relations people to find out how much the negative publicity is going to cost you in one day as compared to the entire Doss family's fourteen-year income?

With a little luck and some serious reevaluation by the Pez Candy Company, perhaps this can be worked out. President Obama could be the mediator since he constantly talks about world pez. He could be like Wilson at Versailles. Of course he would have to find a translator who speaks Austrian. Pez has already put out feelers to the Obama administration, and has stated emphatically that if they are allowed to take over the Doss operation, they will have no further territorial demands in Burlingame, California. In the event that Pez won't back off, I intend to form a standing anti-Pez group. Our rallying cry will be "Pez On You!" Still, we can always hope that the Obama negotiator will come back to tell us that he has brought us "pez for our time." I wonder if the Governator might be interested in the job? After all, he speaks Austrian.