I collected a lot of things growing up – marbles, rocks, sea shells, of course trading cards – but there was one collection that I prized most of all – my PEZ collection.
By the time I was 10 or 11, I had accumulated a little box of PEZ dispensers, mostly from relatives at holiday gatherings. I didn’t really see them as a collection at that point.
Everything changed when I discovered the Warman’s PEZ Field Guide. To my surprise, PEZ dispensers had been around since the 1950s, originating in Vienna, Austria. I began to learn about the history of the objects and how my little collection fit into a greater narrative. I learned about how different patent numbers correlated with different years, and that it wasn’t until 1987 that they added “feet” to the bottom of the dispensers.
My collection grew in many different directions. I got some new releases in stores and I began to scour eBay for rare “no feet” dispensers (most of which were way out of my price range). I also took to the PEZ website, where they released some special collectors edition items – this is where some very special dispensers caught my eye.
Misfits used preexisting molds, but different and weird color combinations of plastic. I already had all of the original versions of the skull, witch, and snowman. When I saw these special alternate colors, I fell in love.
Fast forward to April 2023, during our Kickstarter campaign, I was on a plane home from Reno, where we had just exhibited Gem Blenders at GAMA Expo. As I browsed the movie selections I came across a peculiar title – The Pez Outlaw. To my surprise, there was a whole history behind these funny discolored dispensers. Steve Glew was the visionary behind their design, working directly with the PEZ factory in Europe and smuggling them into the US. Soon after these alt-colored dispensers started making waves, PEZ USA responded by copying Glew’s designs and offering them at a lower price point, labeling them “Misfits.” These Misfits were the same ones I fell in love with as a kid!
After successfully funding the Kickstarter, months progressed and our team was deep in the design process of the base set. With some extra slots on our secret rare print sheet, Ben, our product development lead, recommended we make a rarity one step beyond the secret rare. My gears began to turn and I thought of my beloved miscolored PEZ dispensers – and just like that, the misfit secret rare was born.
With six guest artists contributing to the base set, I decided to make a misfit secret rare featuring each of their artworks. Indicated by an upside down heart rarity symbol, each misfit uses an alternate colored blend with a borrowed background from another blend in that guest artist’s series. For example, Misfit Fume Blitzer by Slava Singh is green instead of gray and features the background of Singh’s secret rare Miracle Conductor.
Roughly 1/200 booster packs contain a misfit secret rare, making them the rarest cards in the base set. Good luck finding them!
