The Pez Outlaw

THE PEZ OUTLAW, also known as Steve Glew, was a Michigan machinist in the 1980s, miserable at his boring and repetitive job. Paying the bills was a struggle until he put his obsessive, scheming, and dreaming personality to profitable use. He started by obsessively amassing cereal boxes and turning in the box tops for prizes that he sold at toy conventions. The cereal companies shut down his massive operation by limiting prizes to one per household. In no time, he switched his focus to the Pez dispenser, a combination toy and candy that premiered in 1949 Vienna. The many versions of the dispensers came with different colorful cartoon heads that angle back to push out individual candies. A few rare ones that hadn't been manufactured for public sale and distribution were fetching $1,200 each. Glew, with a long beard and described by an admirer as a "magical little troll," saw the potential for profit and ultimately made millions. He borrowed money, got a passport, and boarded a plane to audaciously seek his fortune. Before the internet and Google translate, he and his son Josh went traipsing through Hungary in search of a Pez factory, looking for products. Manufacturers were happy to provide some for a decidedly "gray" market in exchange for American dollars, and loopholes and luck got Glew through customs with his voluminous stash. The CEO of Pez USA, the sole legal distributor of new Pez dispensers in America, became his arch nemesis, bent on putting Glew out of business. The war between them is at the heart of this story about a vivid individualist, who made it big, lost it all, and lived to tell his story.