Pez is the brand name of an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n confectionery

Confectionery

Confectionery is the set of food items that are rich in sugar, any one or type of which is called a confection. Modern usage may include substances rich in artificial sweeteners as well...

 and the mechanical pocket dispensers for the same. The confectionery itself takes the shape of pressed

Tableting

Tableting is a method of confectionery manufacture that shares many similarities with tablet pharmaceutical production.A powder or granule mixture is prepared, a die mold is filled, and then the mixture is compressed and ejected. While drug tablets are constrained to shapes that can be swallowed...

, dry, straight-edged blocks (15 mm (5/8 inch) long, 8 mm wide and 5 mm high), with Pez dispensers holding 12 Pez pieces.

The name Pez was derived from the letters at the start, the middle and the end of the German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 word for peppermint

Peppermint

Peppermint is a hybrid mint, a cross between the watermint and spearmint . The plant, indigenous to Europe, is now widespread in cultivation throughout all regions of the world...

, Pfefferminz, the first Pez flavor.