>Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
>Subject: Curtis Allina, Executive Who Put Heads on Pez, Is Dead at 87
January 3, 2010
Curtis Allina, Executive Who Put Heads on Pez, Is Dead at 87 By MARGALIT
FOX
Curtis Allina, a candy company executive who presided over a powerful
innovation in marketing that was less about the candy itself than it was
about the container it came in - and who in unintended consequence
created a universe of enraptured, determined and by their own account
fanatically obsessed collectors - died Dec. 15 at his home in Olympia,
Wash. Mr. Allina, who helped bring the world the modern Pez dispenser,
was 87.
The cause was heart failure, his son, Johnny, said.
For nearly three decades after World War II, Mr. Allina was the vice
president in charge of United States operations at what is now Pez
Candy. In 1955, at his urging, what had been an austerely packaged
Austrian confection for adults took on vibrant new life as a children's
product.
That year, the first character dispensers, as they are known in the
parlance of Peziana, were issued, giving birth to what is today a highly
collectible pop-cultural artifact. Instantly recognizable, the
dispensers are slim plastic containers, usually anthropomorphic in
design, whose heads - modeled after those of TV characters, cartoon
figures or historical personages - flip back to disgorge brick-shaped
pieces of candy.
Driven in large part by baby-boomer nostalgia, Pez dispensers are now a
staple of eBay and the ubiquitous subject of conventions, Web sites,
newsletters, books and even a museum, the Burlingame Museum of Pez
Memorabilia in Burlingame, Calif. They have been featured in movies; a
memorable "Seinfeld" episode (in which Elaine ruins a piano recital by
laughing uncontrollably at the sight of a Pez dispenser); and a 2006
documentary, "PEZheads: The Movie," which explores the Pez-collecting
phenomenon.
Today, Pez Candy, based in Orange, Conn., sells tens of thousands of
dispensers each year in 80 countries.
A Pez dispenser is a simple little machine: back snaps the head, out
pops the candy, and the head flicks shut again with a satisfying click.
But oh, the variations, from a spate of licensed characters to those
designed by Pez. For serious collectors, the most highly prized
dispensers, long discontinued, are elusive objects of desire that can
run to thousands of dollars apiece.
Hundreds of different dispensers are extant. ("Hundreds" is a
conservative estimate, for collectors count minute alterations in a
dispenser's shape or color as meaningful in ways civilians do not.) They
include Popeye Pez, Pokémon Pez and Paul Revere Pez; SpongeBob Pez and
Elvis Pez (in several historical variants, from '50s boyish through '70s
dissipated); Mozart Pez, Hello Kitty Pez and Mickey Mouse Pez.
Precisely whose idea it was to put heads on Pez dispensers - previously
headless, unadorned and tastefully Viennese - is the subject of
continuing debate among Pez historians. In a telephone interview, David
Welch, the author of "Collecting PEZ" (Bubba Scrubba Publications,
1994), said that in researching his book he encountered half a dozen
possible candidates, Mr. Allina among them. This much, Mr. Welch said,
is certain:
"The idea came from the United States. And for the idea to have come out
of the United States and made it to Austria where it could be approved,
Allina was the only guy who could have made that happen."
Curtis Allina was born Aug. 15, 1922, in Prague, and raised in Vienna.
Between 1941 and 1945, he and his family, Sephardic Jews, were forced
into a series of concentration camps. Mr. Allina emerged at war's end as
his family's sole survivor in Europe. Making his way to New York, he
worked for a commercial meatpacker before joining Pez-Haas, as the
company's United States arm was then known, in 1953.
Pez was invented in 1927 by Eduard Haas III, a Viennese food-products
mogul. Small, rectangular and mint-flavored (the name is a contraction
of pfefferminz, the German word for peppermint), the candy was marketed
to adults as an alternative to smoking. Originally sold in tins, Pez was
repackaged in the late 1940s in plain, long-stemmed dispensers meant to
suggest cigarette lighters.
Introduced into the United States in the early 1950s, Pez sold fitfully.
Then someone thought of remarketing it as a children's candy, in fruit
flavors, packed in whimsical dispensers. It fell to Mr. Allina to
persuade the home office in Vienna, by all accounts a conservative
outfit that took sober pride in its grown-up mint.
Mr. Allina prevailed, and the first two character dispensers, Santa
Claus and a robot known as the Space Trooper, were introduced in 1955.
Unlike today's plain-stemmed, headed-and-footed dispensers, both were
full-body figures, completely sculptured from top to toe.
Mr. Allina, who left Pez in 1979, was later an executive of Au'Some
Candies.
Mr. Allina's first marriage, to Hanna Hofmann, ended in divorce. He is
survived by his second wife, Hannelore; two children from his first
marriage, Babette Allina and Johnny Allina; two children from his second
marriage, Tanya Carlson and Alexia Allina; and three grandchildren.
His legacy also includes hundreds of Pez-related Web sites, dozens of
conferences with names like the Swedish Pez Gathering and the Slovenian
Pez Convention, and scores of organizations, from Lone Star Pez (in
North Texas) to the Association Française des Collectionneurs de Pez.
There is a collector in Oklahoma who owns a Pez-dispenser-encrusted
automobile, and thousands of others around the world, it is entirely
safe to assume, who dream Pez-infused dreams at night.
Perhaps all this renders moot the question of who came up with the
now-familiar dispenser in the first place.
"Whose idea was it? Who the hell knows," Mr. Welch, the Pez historian,
said. "Who was more important in getting it done? Allina."
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
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