This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here

on this show, including yours, send them to Our American Stories.com we tell stories about everything here on this show, including yours.

Send them to Our American Stories.com.

They're some of our favorites.

As you know, we're a nation of immigrants, but it's not just people that travel.

It's also their ideas.

One of these ideas is something that many of us loved as kids.

Sean Peterson of the Pez Visitor Center is author of Pez,

from Austrian Invention to American Icon,

and he's here to share how it evolved into the brick-shaped candy dispenser

that we all know and love today.

Here's Sean.

Pez, the brand or the candy, was invented by a man named Edward Haas III. He was an Austrian. The family had been very successful in a variety of

businesses up to that point, and they had a nice business providing baking products.

And one of the things Mr. Haas noticed were people were having a difficult time digesting some

of the cakes based on some of the ingredients that were in them and found that peppermint oil

was a good way to help in the digestion.

And a byproduct of that, you know, it was a way to

freshen your breath. And most of all, he really wanted to provide an alternative to smoking.

He was very much a man ahead of his time and didn't really think too much of smoking and the

health ramifications of that. So his goal was to kind of come up with an alternative to that.

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