The Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia

I first heard of The Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorbilia when I moved to the Bay Area in 1998. We were renting house in Burlingame, and I was psyched when I heard there was a Pez museum there. Turns out it was less than a 10 minute walk from my house, to CalTrain. I was all excited, expecting big 10 foot Pez dispensers. I was sadly disapointed. The museum is in downtown Burlingame, which has a bunch of little restraunts and over-priced shops. The museum blended in with the shops. It was just a little store rented out in a strip mall-like building.

I never actually got to go in there. They are only open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am-5pm. I must admit, I looked in the big storefront window. It looked kinda dirty and dingy, and slapped together. Like a thrift store. Thirft stores are cool, but not when you are expecting 10 foot Pez dispensers, and everything to be pez-colored.

If you are in the Bay Area, stop by. Maybe it's changed. (For those of you not familar with the Bay Area, Burlingame is a 20 minute CalTrain ride from SF, about a stones throw away from SFO. It is within 4 minutes walking, slowly from the train station.) The address is:

214 California Drive
Burlingame, CA 94010
phone number -- (650) 347-2301

Unlike Juliet, I have been inside of The Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorbilia. While it's certainly not the Louvre, it's well worth the time of any true Pez Aficionado. The Pez Museum is just a two-room shop: the front room being the gift shop with Pez t-shirts, hats, candy and other, various, sundry Pez-related merchandise and the back room having the bulk of the actual exhibits. There's a short looping video about the History of Pez and about a half-dozen separate displays behind glass (well, plastic) of Pez dispensers from around the world. There's no museum guide, so bring a camera.

It's not at all dingy, which is sort of too bad, because I think it could use a little tone. The owner/curator, Gary, seems like a nice guy. The story is that he used to own a computer store in Burlingame and just occasionaly brought in his Pez collection for fun, but then people started coming into his store to see the Pez and it kind of pushed the computer thing aside.

There is, of course, a web site at:
http://www.burlingamepezmuseum.com/