Free Your Inner Robot: Rocket Pen to Robot PEZ

Over the years I've seen robot PEZ dispensers for sale and always thought they were very cool.  I knew they were made from PEZ Rocket Pens released in 2000 as you could see the same heads being used.  What I didn't realize until recently was the stem for the robot PEZ came from inside the Rocket Pen.  I discovered this from watching PEZhead Eric Thorell's YouTube video and from reading Pastor PEZ's blog post.  After this realization I had to get busy and create some robot PEZ of my own!

In this post I want to show you photos of the method I used to free the robot PEZ and a little decorative twist for the stem.  The tools I used for this DIY PEZ project were a Dremel rotary tool with cutting wheel (my favorite attachment!), standard screwdriver, and needle nose pliers.

Step 1: With your fingernail, carefully peel off the oval PEZ sticker on the front of the rocket pen and keep it aside for later.

Step 2: Break off the little clip on the back of the rocket pen to expose the full seam on the back.  You can see the rocket pen with clip broken off in the photo below with the Dremel.

Step 3: Turn on the Dremel to a low speed and gently start cutting along the seam on the back.  You just want to cut deep enough to make it through the outer housing.  Take extra care near the head because you don't want to cut it.

Step 4: Flip over the rocket pen and gently cut along the seam on the front.

Step 5: Once you have the front and back seams cut, insert your screwdriver in the slot and gently pry open the housing.  Do this in a few spots along the seam and soon you'll pop open the housing to reveal your robot!

Step 6: Gently wiggle the stem back and forth until you free it from the pen housing.  Sometimes the stem is wedged in there pretty well, so just be patient.  For a couple robots who didn't want to escape, I used a pair of needle nose pliers to break away some of the housing near the head, which seemed to help.

Step 7: Place the PEZ sticker on the stem.  The spot I liked best is in the middle of the PEZ logo on the non-patent side of the dispenser.  Another spot that might look nice is in the middle of the front spine.

I recently bought my set of four rocket pens from eBay for $15 shipped, which is a fair deal.  This deal is still available here in case you're thinking about freeing some robots of your own!

As you'll see in the photos, I sliced right through the lights, but I'm now thinking it would be cool to preserve them to attach to the stem somehow.  The lights in the rocket pen activate by shaking the pen, so you could shake your robot PEZ and it could light up!  Of course, you'd have to deal with concealing the circuit board, wires, and batteries to make it look good.  Details, details. :-)

One last note... the pink head robot is also available with a pink stem as you can see in the YouTube video and blog post I mention above.  I'd be interested to know if the black, blue, and yellow head robots are available in stem colors other than white?

Well, that's all for now.  I hope I've inspired you to tackle this or another PEZ project.  Until next time.