Today I finally got around to buying a bunch of the MLB caps. Only two more to go! While staring at the cards, I noticed there were four different card designs, which you can see in the photos below. I don't recall seeing this mentioned before, so I thought I share here. Normally, I don't pay a
whole lot of attention to the cards before I open them, but I thought
these card design differences were interesting.
On the leftmost card there is "I Live for This" under the MLB logo, while the other three card designs don't have that element.
The middle two card designs look nearly identical on the front, except for the upper left: one has "Visit our website www.pez.com", but the other doesn't. However, when you look at the back of the middle two cards, the layout is very different with one having "Gluten Free".
The rightmost card is the most unique one in the group. It has a different photo of the glove, baseball, and bat than the other three designs. Additionally, both the MLB logo and flag logo are larger on the rightmost card. The back of the rightmost card has two elements that the other backs don't: a little plug for the PEZ Visitor Center and a MLB logo. Lastly, the back of the rightmost card has no trivia about the baseball team, which the others do.
Speaking of cards, anyone else like the card designs for the all the German, English, and Scottish soccer dispensers? Those are excellent, in my opinion, and I'm keeping all those on the card!
Today after buying the new set of 3 Walgreens trucks I worked on a little PEZ project I've had in my head for a couple weeks. With all the advertising trucks lately, I was thinking it'd be cool to display them on a two lane road with staggered trucks.
Below are photos of the prototype I came up with with. My daughter had some black construction paper, which I used for the road. The dashed line I created by cutting up an extra name badge label sticker I had.
The paper was 12" x 9", so I kept the 12" length and cut the road 3" wide which seemed to fit two trucks side-by-side pretty realistically.
The dashed line was a bit more work. I wanted it to scale properly with the trucks, so I did a little research on the internet. Apparently, the standard length of highway dashed lines is 10 feet with 30 feet in between dashes. The length sure seems a lot shorter when we're speeding along the highway, huh?! The standard dashed line width is about 6 inches.
To scale them I then needed the standard length of a big rig cab with trailer and the length of a PEZ truck. The typical length of cab with trailer is 70-80 feet and PEZ trucks are about 4 ¼ inches. Armed with all these numbers I broke out the calculator and figured the dashed lines to be 5/8 inches long, 1/16 inch wide, with 1 and 7/8 inches between each.
Overall, I think the prototype came out pretty well. Of course, the elephant in the room is that most collectors have dozens of trucks and this only supports three. What can I say, except the design is expandable. ;-)
Please let me know what you think in the comments section below and thanks for reading!
Up for auction on eBay now is the rare Scholastic Expert Space PEZ dispenser. I've never seen it on eBay before and honestly had never even heard of it. Currently, it is at $93 and there are 21 bids. The auction ends Sep 20, 2013 14:16:14 PDT so you still have time to get your bid in.
Doing a web search shows there were a few sales of this dispenser in 2010 and 2011, so my guess is it was released in early 2010 or maybe late 2009. I'm also guessing it was limited to 100 or less. If anyone has more details on this dispenser please post in the comments section.
I must say I like this dispenser a lot. A nice simple look and the textured hair reminds me of the Marge Simpson dispenser. :-)
Apparently, Expert Space is a "powerful digital science and social studies curriculum" for grades 4-12 per Scholastic's website here.
Today on my front porch was a big box waiting for me. That huge box couldn't be the seven Safeway PEZ trucks I ordered could it? Sure enough, the label had Safeway on it, so this was it! Eagerly I brought the package inside and opened it up while making sure to take photos along the way to document the unveiling.
The large box contained a counter display box inside, which I wasn't expecting. No wonder the box was so big! It was like a building next to my little ghost PEZ.
The seven trucks are: Safeway, Vons, Pavilions, Carrs, Randalls, Tom Thumb, and Dominick's. Safeway, Vons, and Pavilions are grocery stores I see all over the Southern California area. Carrs is based in Alaska, Randalls and Tom Thumb are based in Texas, and Dominick's is based in the Chicago area.
Here's the order link to Safeway Employee Store for those who would like to order these PEZ trucks too. The whole process was easy. Three days after placing the order I received an e-mail saying it was being shipped. Shipping took a bit longer than I was expecting (7 days) given the package came from Arcadia, CA which is only 30 miles away. The package arrived via UPS Ground instead of FedEx, which was listed when I ordered it on the web. Apparently, Safeway is in the process of switching their shipping provider so maybe that caused some delay. Whatever, at least the PEZ made it safe and sound.
I find it interesting that all of the trucks and web sites have the Life logo and "Ingredients for life." except for Pavilions. There must be some good story of why that is, but I haven't heard it.
For the hardcore, all seven trucks have the © PEZ 2004 stamp, which is consistent with the other advertising trucks. Additionally, all seven have the PEZ logo on the back as shown in one of the photos below. I was hoping for some unique design on the top of the cabs like the Wegman's PEZ trucks have, but nope. Btw, I must say those Wegman's trucks are some of my favorite advertising trucks and I'm looking forward the Sushi Girl due in October.
All in all, these trucks are nothing groundbreaking obviously, but still cool advertising trucks. They came in under the radar for me on Aug. 31 with none of the usual advance notice from the PEZ scouts. Here's hoping for some more PEZ surprises like this!
