[Deathwatch] Curtis Allina, candy company executive, 87

[Notification of departing celebrities]

Thanks to a long-time reader for this one...

January 5, 2010


  Curtis Allina Dies at 87; He Put the Heads on Pez

By MARGALIT FOX 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/margalit_fox/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

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 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 
<http://www.pez.com/>. 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 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/ebay_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
and the ubiquitous subject of conventions, Web sites, newsletters, books 
and even a museum, the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia 
<http://www.burlingamepezmuseum.com/> 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) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLnl8pQ4_HU>; and a 2006 
documentary, "PEZheads: The Movie <http://www.pezheadsthemovie.com/>," 
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 
<http://www.burlingamepezmuseum.com/pezexhibit.html>. ("Hundreds" is a 
conservative estimate, for collectors count minute alterations in a 
dispenser's shape or color as meaningful in ways others do not.) They 
include Popeye Pez, Pokémon Pez and Paul Revere Pez; SpongeBob Pez and 
Elvis 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/elvis_presley/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 
Pez (in several historical variants, from '50s boyish through '70s 
dissipated); Mozart 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/wolfgang_amadeus_mozart/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 
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 
<http://www.patentplaques.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/pez.jpg>.

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 <http://doit101.com/Collectibles/PEZCollecting.html>, 
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 
<http://www.pezcollectorsnews.com/index.html>, dozens of conferences 
with names like the Swedish Pez Gathering 
<http://www.svenskapezgruppen.tk/> and the Slovenian Pez Convention 
<http://www.slovenianpezconvention.com/>, and scores of organizations, 
from Lone Star Pez <http://www.lonestarpez.com/> (in North Texas) to the 
Association Française des Collectionneurs de Pez 
<http://membres.lycos.fr/pezclubfrance/>. There is a collector in 
Oklahoma who owns a Pez-dispenser-encrusted automobile 
<http://pezcar.collectingpez.com/>, 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."


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