PEZ is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026, and the milestone runs straight through one factory in Orange, Connecticut, the only place in America where the candy is made. That plant produces 12 million PEZ pieces every day and ships every order from there, which means the brick of candy you picked up at a Suncoast checkout counter started its life on the same line.
The brand’s origin story surprises most people. PEZ began in Austria as a peppermint candy aimed at adults, marketed as an alternative to smoking. The character dispensers came later, and Popeye became the first licensed one. Mickey Mouse followed in 1961, and the collectible era was fully underway. Today the factory’s visitor center displays roughly 5,000 dispensers from the personal collection of company historian Shawn Peterson, and about 80,000 visitors from 80 countries make the trip each year.
For anyone who grew up with a shoebox of dispensers in the closet, the appeal is simple nostalgia. Every box still reads made in the USA. A hundred years in, the formula hasn’t changed much, and that’s the point. What’s the one PEZ dispenser from your childhood you wish you still had?
