Perhaps, like me, you have only a small brush with PEZ from your youth. Being in my early 60's I fondly remember the PEZ candy dispenser as being the big point of interest as the candy was rather sweet but hardly memorable on its own. Is almost anything collectible? Some things more than others apparently and PEZ dispensers grew through years as collectible toys for a certain subset of folks. Enter one curmudgeon type of a OCD guy. One who battles his own inner demons of depression named Steve. Steve becomes infatuated with PEZ while becoming a burgeoning seller of dispensers at toy shows. This leads to something only a certain kind of OCD person might segue to. That is finding the real source of these things and that leads to Eastern Europe.
You see there is a disconnect between the European branch of PEZ and the U. S. branch. They are separate with the European PEZ founders controlling everything but the U. S. market. It might be said the U. S. company was lazy and content to just kind of exist modestly. They didn't bring in many new and exciting designs nixing most of the European's designs. Of course whenever something isn't available it becomes desirable and those Euro designs would fetch very high prices whenever the few were traded among collectors in the U. S.. While I wouldn't call Steve a Wharton Business School whiz I will give him credit for figuring out how to supply the collector's demand. I'd say he did it brilliantly as he was able to import through a loop-hole the U. S. PEZ company created themselves. Of course "Pezident" Scott of the U. S. PEZ company was irate. Battle lines would be drawn and not in the usual courtrooms where U. S. PEZ was hamstrung. Maybe a bit of international intrigue too?
This is a very well put-together documentary about a sublime little known tug-of-war between an individual and a corporation. The corporation's short sightedness and sheer greed made it lazy. It actually did not meet the market it sold its wares in literally opening up a cottage industry one man would come to dominate. In the end, the corporation does what corporations do: starve their competitors out of business through all possible manipulations. Even so PEZ USA has egg all over them and Steve comes out as a sort of hero standing up against long odds far longer than most folks could have. And he's left with this great story which is somewhat heartwarming even. From now on whenever I see a PEZ dispenser I'll think of Steve first and foremost. That's a win.