In Museum Exhibits and Gift Shops
In recent years, several museums around the United States have featured Star Wars Pez in their exhibits and/or gift shops. These products are displayed and exhibited because they are classic Americana. Despite the dispensers' "popularity and cult status," the manufacturer's original factory in Austria does not give tours or sell fancifully-shaped memorabilia. Only in January 2012, this group of dispensers became prominently displayed at the company's new North American headquarters in Orange, Connecticut: one travelogue wrote, "The company has been making the cartoonish plastic heads for 60 years now, representing everything from Star Wars to U.S. presidents to the Geico chameleon."
The Clayton Historical Museum, in Clayton, California opened a new exhibit on the history of candy manufacture in January 2012 that featured these confectionary dispensers.
Pez with Star Wars characters have been featured prominently in the Star Wars Museum in Maryland. The Star Wars Pez dispensers are pictured on a fan website, which describes them as "some Candy Heads from 1980".
The Pacific Science Center sold Pez at a popular exhibit about "Star Wars".
These branded dispensers are among the "top sellers" at the gift shop at the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia, outside San Francisco. This museum also displays "a whole lot of Star Wars Pez," in Plexiglas displays. This "unofficial shrine" to the collectibles is unaffiliated with Pez Candy, Inc., and the manufacturer sued the Burlingam museum in 2009 for copyright infringement. There was a notorious, giant Pez sculpture of C-3PO and Chewbacca locked in a slash fiction kiss. As of early 2012, this museum remains open. The sales manager at a major San Francisco hotel recommends that tourists visit the museum, noting "you have to check out the Star Wars section."
Another Pez museum in Easton, Pennsylvania also has featured prominently their obligatory Star Wars memorabilia, ("Of course, we had to include the Star Wars Pez Dispensers"), including an oversize Darth Vader figurine. As of early 2012, this museum appears to have closed to the public.
Read more about this topic: Star Wars Pez
Famous quotes containing the words museum, exhibits and/or shops:
“It is the space inside that gives the drum its sound.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 1189, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Americans are fascinated by their own love of shopping. This does not make them unique. It’s just that they have more to buy than most other people on the planet. And it’s also an affirmation of faith in their country, its prosperity and limitless bounty. They have shops the way that lesser countries have statues.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)