by Anura Guruge
on January 25, 2023
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Watch the YouTube trailer.
This I continue to learn from ‘Netflix’.
I was never into Pez so had no idea that Pez dispensers are a billion dollar business & that there are legions of committed & RICH Pez collectors who will pay $3,000 for a single dispenser. WOW.
The movie, is a HOOT. A riot — though ironically the protagonist, the Pez Outlaw, ‘Steve Glew’ has serious, self-confessed mental issues including depression, anxiety, etc.
It was quite the eye opener & the production is very slick. It moves along nicely.
As someone who has a better than average understanding of patents, copyright, trademarks etc., there were parts in this movie that made no sense at all, at all to I.
The part that I have still been UNABLE to get an answer to is how was he able to get Pez factories in Eastern Europe to make dispensers for him — based on his designs. Yes, I get it that he paid $500,000 for the first order of these & that these factories ‘needed the money’. Lot of detail MISSING. Were these factories OWNED by Pez?
Did the colorful dispensers he had made have ‘Pez’ on them. That would be illegal. A clear trademark violation. The movie conveniently glossed over these issues. That was frustrating.
But I still enjoyed it. I really would like to know more about how he skirted or violated the legal boundaries.
Mr, G,
I happened to watch this film last night and was thinking along the same lines as you. My impression is that Glew had the factories build his dispensers with the PEZ trademarks on them. In fact I think his proprietary dispensers were all existing PEZ designs – what Glew did was specify coloring changes. One aspect of this that was intelligent is that you can see that he specified multiple “stalk” colors for each redesigned head. This really helps to feed the collector mania that drives them to make a :”complete set” rather than to just buy one thing in isolation.
So I suspect Glew was blatent in his violations of the PEZ trademarks. Why would the factory go along? Same reason factories in China today turn out so many imitation products alongside the “real” versions of products (like USB chargers and 50% of everything sold on Amazon).
I think Glew’s genius in using existing PEZ designs came back to bite him, though, because it made it so much easier for PEZ USA to drive him out of business. All they had to do was locate which factory made the stuff and then order them to keep going after repackaging with their updated card. This was an elegant solution and much cheaper than litigating in court. After all, litigation could have tied things up for years and Grew might be “judgement proof” at the end of it anyway.
Very interesting and fun movie.
Glad you watched it & enjoyed it. We have much in common. The movie, I think, glossed over some of the ‘technical’ stuff so as to not get bogged down in the weeds. Folks like us would liked to have more details. IF there was a detailed book — I would BUY IT! NO, I don’t have the inclination to write it. Maybe YOU MIGHT. I am CURRENTLY TRYING to write two books in parallel — one in the afternoons & the other at night. That one book is very Christian & the other is about Buddhism makes it even more interesting. End result might be that I don’t publish a single book in 2023. But, there is no law that says I have to publish at least 1 book a year. In 2022 I did 4.
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Check out ‘Trail by Fire’. It is a series but very compelling.
Last night I watched the Saudi Arabia ‘Alkhallat+’. WOW. It was scary. They can’t say two words without having to mention Allah! Wow. You should watch it. Vaguely amusing. I watched it for the culture. Never been to SA. They have issues — they have, they have. SMILE.
All the best. Cheers, Anura