Full-court Pez: The Burlingame, California Museum of Pez Memorabilia

You wouldn't think such as unassuming storefront would house such an awesome collection.

Our Master of Ceremonies Gary Doss tells us about the Germanic origins of Pez.

This is their rarest Pez dispenser: a German model that was a choking hazard. Fun!

They've also got the world's largest Pez dispensing machine: It's Peztacular!

In addition to Pez, there's a classic toy collection including this Easy Bake oven...

...and some vintage Colorforms, in case you ever wondered what Fred and Barney looked like in their underpants.

And just for fun, there are some banned toys including these ferocious-looking lawn darts...

...and an Atomic Energy Lab with real radioactive material.

Pez, the sweet candy bricks known for their lovable cartoon-characters-with-decapitated-heads dispensers, has been around since 1927. Eduard Haas, an Austrian candy man, created Pez and took its name from an abbreviation of "pfeffermenz", the German word for peppermint. The first Pez dispenser appeared around 1950. Pez has a wildly devoted group of followers, probably none more so that Gary and Nancy Doss, founders of the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia, located in a strip mall a little south of San Francisco, California. They boast they are the only place in the world where you can see every Pez dispenser ever made – no small feat since over 600 of them have been produced since 1950. From Spongebob to Barney Rubble to the Creature from the Black Lagoon, if Pez made it, the Dosses display it. Betsy Ross and Mozart are in there too, next to Papa Smurf, Wile E. Coyote and Darth Vader. Probably the rarest item in their collection is the Make-A-Face dispenser. It's similar to a Mr. Potato Head, but was considered a choking hazard and was recalled after only six months on the market. Only 10 are in circulation and each can fetch up to $5000. There's also a wealth of other Pez-abilia, including vintage posters, ads, signs, toys and other tie-ins. But the pride and joy here is the 7-foot 10-inch snowman Pez dispenser, recognized by the Guinness Book as the world's largest Pez dispensing machine. We got a wonderful museum tour from the very contagiously enthusiastic Gary. He had a computer business 15 years ago and when the Pez dispensers he displayed around his shop gained more attention than the computers, he went in the Pez business full time (he sells Pez dispensers internationally, in addition to displaying his collection).

And as if that weren't enough, the Dosses also have a classic toy collection including Colorforms, Play Doh, Viewmasters, Erector Sets and other delights from Baby Boomers' childhoods. Even more intriguing is the Banned Toy Museum featuring items pulled off the market for safety reasons or because they were deemed offensive. Here you'll find the Matador Barbie, offensive to animal rights groups; a cap pistol belt buckle, which could accidentally go off causing serious burns; lawn darts (do you really need an explanation why these were recalled?); and the Atomic Energy Laboratory, containing real radioactive material.

So the next time you're in Silicon Valley, remember: All we are saying is give Pez a chance.

For "The Birds": Bodega and Bodega Bay, California

Here's the schoolhouse as it looks today in Bodega...

...and with a little bit of Photoshop artistic license.

The Tides back in 1963...

...and today...

...where a few of our feathered fiends, er, friends still like to hang out.

The dock where Tippi got her boat from Doodles Weaver.

The Bodega Country Store offers a wealth of Hitchcock-abilia...

The store's lucky proprietor got his picture taken with the one and only Tippi Hedren...

...who likes to come back to the area often.

Prior to 1963, the small northern California villages of Bodega and Bodega Bay were known for their rugged coastal charm and small town ways of life. That all changed when the great Alfred Hitchcock chose Bodega Bay as the locale for his thriller "The Birds" and used sites in both towns for the movie. In the film, a San Francisco socialite played by Tippi Hedren pursues a potential lawyer boyfriend played by Rod Taylor. They meet rather testily in S.F. and then again when she travels to his weekend home of Bodega Bay, about an hour up the coast. This game of romantic cat and mouse takes a sharp turn (or is it tern?) when the town is repeatedly attacked by hostile birds for no apparent reason. It's a great movie, with its weird dysfunctional characters, only-in-a-Hitchcock-movie dialogue and you-never-know-when-they'll-attack-next surprises. And the location is as much a star of the film as Miss Hedren and Mr. Taylor. The schoolhouse used in the film is in Bodega and today it looks freshly painted and even better than it did in the movie. The jungle gym where all those crows convened and Suzanne Pleshette's house, next door to the school in the movie, are nowhere to be found, though. In Bodega Bay, you'll find that the Tides restaurant, where Tippi, Rod and the locals all debated and then hid from the birds, has been vastly expanded and modernized. It's a very nice place on the water and, yes, birds still congregate there. There's no sign of the explosive gas station or phone booth that Tippi caged herself in, but the dock where she rented a motorboat to get to Rod's house across the bay is still there in Bodega Bay. The Bodega Country Store, in Bodega, has a terrific Alfred Hitchcock memorabilia section where you'll find posters, autographed photos, a Hitchcock life mask, and a stuffed crow or two thrown in for good measure. And Tippi is still a bit of a fixture around town...we just missed a personal appearance she was making by a few days. Too bad. That would have been a real feather in our caps.

Days of twine and roses: The World's Biggest Ball of Twine of Cawker City, Kansas

1500 miles of twine. That's a lot.

Cawker City has decorated their vacant downtown storefronts with some awesome whimsical twine-inspired paintings:

Your accomodations await.

Cawker City is named after a fellow who won a poker game to decide the town's name.

I've often used the phrase "the world's biggest ball of twine" as a generic label for any really eccentric roadside attraction that makes an awesome feat out of something mundane. It wasn't until recently, though, that I actually got to see one of the actual world's biggest balls of twine (there's more than one, depending on who you believe), which makes its home in the small north central Kansas town of Cawker City. A Mr. Frank Stoeber, a local farmer, started the twine ball with odd bits in 1953 and within four years he had a ball that weighed 5,000 pounds and stood 8 feet tall. In 1961 he gave the ball to Cawker City and at the time of his death in 1974 the ball was 11 feet tall and contained 1.6 million feet of sisal twine (sisal being an agave plant that yields a stiff fiber). To keep the ball growing and its place in the record books, Cawker City holds an annual Twine-A-Thon every August where the public is invited to add odd bits of twine to Mr. Stoeber's overgrown baby (string and yarn are prohibited and rules are strictly enforced). Today, the ball sits under an open air gazebo (its second after outgrowing the first) complete with park benches to meditate on its magnificence. As of September 2009, the ball weighed over 9 tons, has a 40-foot circumference and over 1500 miles of twine -- enough to reach either coast from the heartland of Kansas, or wrap up an awful lot of brown paper packages.

And as if that wasn't enough, Cawker City did something even more wonderful. In the windows of the melancholy downtown abandoned storefronts are parodies of art masterpieces such as The Mona Lisa, The Scream and American Gothic, all containing balls of twine. Local artist Cher Olsen has painted over 40 of these gems that delight with every passing glance, making Cawker City one of the eccentric roadside wonders of the world. To twine own self be true.

Preston, Idaho: A dynamite town

Tina, you fat lard, come get some DINNER!... Tina, eat. Food. Eat the FOOD!

Do you mind if I use your guys's phone?

Preston High School

Pedro's house

Preston, Idaho is where the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" was shot. It's a great, funny movie that's quirky and derivative of nothing else. It was made on a shoestring budget by some clever people who are from this quiet, nondescript but pleasant part of southeastern Idaho, an hour or two from Salt Lake City. In 2006, I found an Internet site that gave directions to places around town used in the film but they were a little iffy (One street says East 1600 South, another South 1600 East. Huh?). The nice post office lady gives us vague directions to a house that might be Napoleon's but when we get there there's someone inside and we don't want to park and gawk so we move on. Pop'N Pins bowling alley is easy to find but, wait, was that in the movie or not? Finally we make it to a bonafide locale from the movie, Pedro's house. It's small and unassuming, just like in the movie. Then, the mother lode. Preston High School, where so much of the movie takes place, is around the corner. I shoot some exteriors and a teacher going home for the day (it's 4pm) says why don'tcha just go on in... nobody'll mind. Apparently they were used to lots of sightseers stopping by, even though the movie came out two years prior. Once inside I stop at the office to ask if its okay if I look around a little bit. Sure, they say. You want to see the office phone (a key element in the film)? There it is. They tell me Napoleon's locker is just down the hall, go check it out, and I do. Apparently, an uninvited 46-year-old (at the time) man wandering around a high school isn't discouraged in Preston. Gosh!

The lighter side of Little Big Horn and other Montana delights

You wouldn't think there'd be anything funny at Little Big Horn, but check out these names on the memorial wall... Plenty Lice? Chased By owls?

Little Big Horn is in southern Montana and it's location of the famous Indian battle. I always liked hearing about this battle as a kid because the Indians won for a change, and Custer, that pompous twit, got his just desserts. Unfortunately, this would be the last hurrah for the native peoples and the American west. Coming in from the west, the landscape is rolling hills and scraggly prairie. Wide, wide spaces with nothing on them except the occasional abandoned shack and grazing horses and cows. The sky really is big here in this state, just like they say. It's a roadside attraction in and of itself. People really say "howdy" here, too. I love that, when cliches earnestly come true before your eyes. One odd thing about Montana is the number of billboards addressing the meth abuse problem. I didn't even know they had a meth abuse problem, but apparently its so big they have to put up grotesquely graphic billboards (I should have a shot a picture of one, but never did). We passed a "facility" on the highway (a brand new concrete cinder block prison, actually) with a spray painted sign outside calling it the "Meth Motel". Gallows humor for sure. "Club Meth" would have been a little more clever, but I'm not going to quibble with the locals. We get to Little Big Horn and its a somber field with nondescript rolling hills, not the big canyons they had in the movies. Lots of markers where battling union soldiers and Indians met their untimely demise. One thing I wasn't expecting, though, was some unintentional levity in the form of some of the Indian names memorialized in stone: "Guts", "Chased By Owls" and my personal favorite "Plenty Lice". This really isn't the place for humor but I can't help it... funny is funny.

This spud's for you: The Idaho Potato Expo of Blackfoot, Idaho

We're honored to have Idaho Potato Expo's giant concrete potato as our masthead. Here's what we had to say about it in an earlier post from our trip there in 2006:

This roadside attraction is everything we'd ever hoped for -- one of those small town, earnest, lovable places that's a tribute to something ordinary that makes America great. A sweet, friendly lady greets us at the front desk/gift shop and is impressed we're all the way from Rhode Island. Inside is the story of Idaho potatoes, told in a low-tech way with lots of folk-arty paintings and exhibits. The gift shop is a vast array of great, goofy souvenirs... who wouldn't want a memento from such a fabulous place? And, true to their slogan ("We give taters to Out-Of-Staters") we receive a box of yummy hash browns to take home with us! You can't beat that.

An Enchanted Highway slideshow

Udder perfection: New Salem, North Dakota's Salem Sue, World's Biggest Holstein Cow

This may be milking it, but Sue is udderly cool.

And don't forget to visit the rest of New Salem, too!

This post is a rerun from some time ago but one of our favorites:

North Dakota offers a glittering array of eccentric roadside attractions for those willing to pull off the Interstate and gawk, not the least of which is Salem Sue, who bills herself as the world's biggest Holstein cow. Seems funny they have to add "Holstein" to the title... does another state have the world's biggest Jersey or Hereford? One can only hope. Salem Sue was built as a tribute to the local dairy farmers by the New Salem Lions Club and she stands 38 feet high and 50 feet long. She sits high on a hill and can be seen from Interstate 94. She's made of the finest fiberglass money can buy and is beautifully painted. The drive from the highway to Sue builds up anticipation, as you can see her profile off in the distance, as well as "New Salem" proudly spelled out in rockwork on the hill. Not a heck of a lot else to see here folks, just a really big cow, but how can you not stop? That would be udderly ridiculous.

Stuck in traffic: Travel decals picked up along the way

Back in the 60s when I was little and my family took a roadtrip, we commemorated our journey with travel decals proudly displayed on the left rear window of our giant family station wagon. Back then you had to soak the decals off and ever so carefully place them on the inside of the window. My brother and I made this a two-man job; he was the older and more coordinated one so he was the inside glue man, and I was the outside checking for straightness man. We filled that whole window with colorful maps, state birds and gals in bathing suits from the states we visited along the eastern coast. A few years ago I found a shop selling some old-style decals and had to put 'em on the car. These were Baxter-Lane selfsticks, not the Impko soak-ems of my past, but I loved them anyway. I notice they get lots of looks in parking lots and people seem to like them. And it's always easy to find our car...it really "sticks" out, you might say.

Butt weight, there's more!

A personal trainer in Hamden, Connecticut put up this whimsical sign. Perhaps in ancient times it would have read "Friends, Romans, Countrymen – lend me your rears".