Seven Days freelance photographer Daria Bishop started buying PEZ candy dispensers 20 years ago as holiday gifts for her young children. She loved the bunny rabbits at Easter and the Santa figures at Christmas. For Bishop, 57, it was less about the candy and more about the zany characters. As her kids grew, so did her PEZ collection — she now has about 600.
PEZ is short for pfefferminz, German for “peppermint.” The candy brand was founded in Austria in 1927. By the 1950s, the company had introduced 3D heads for the dispensers. The variety of the characters has made them popular with collectors such as Bishop. After years of storing her impressive arsenal in plastic tubs, she hired a local woodworker to make some shallow shelves to show them off.
In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger visited Bishop’s apartment in Burlington to peruse her colorful collectibles.
Sollberger spoke with Seven Days about filming the episode.
What interests you about collectors?
As someone who has collected many items over the years — Spice Girls memorabilia, vintage clothes and comics — I am curious about what draws people to accumulate thematic things. I’ve covered a number of collectors in the past: a couple who display Barbie and Ken dolls; a dairy farmer captivated by all things John Deere; treasure hunters who search the state for hidden carved eggshells; and married makers who amass work by self-taught artists from across the country. Collectors are often obsessive and fascinating individuals. That makes for excellent video content. When Bishop showed me a photo of her PEZ collection at the last Seven Days holiday party, I knew I had to see it in person.
This isn’t the first time Seven Days has featured a PEZ collection.
Right! In April 2023, the paper did a story about unusual Vermont collections, and Bishop was actually the freelance photographer assigned to take photos of George DeCell’s PEZ trove in Fairfax. DeCell has thousands of PEZ, and Bishop said she was a bit intimidated — she only has hundreds. DeCell kept his collection in bins, so Bishop posed the PEZ around him to make the photo more captivating.
Does Bishop have a favorite PEZ?
She loves her Japanese mini PEZ and gives pride of place to the cuter PEZ, such as Hello Kitty. She keeps the weirder ones — presidents, trolls and comic book villains — boxed up. Even though we are both in our fifties, digging through the bins of PEZ felt like afterschool playtime. We giggled a lot.
Bishop’s apartment and life are overflowing with vibrant colors and characters. She also makes quirky creatures out of clay, which appear to be distant relations to her PEZ. As she put it, “We’re in a time that just feels very dark. And I’m just looking for things that bring me joy and bring others joy.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “A Passion for PEZ | Daria Bishop has been collecting PEZ for 20 years”
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This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2025.
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