Curtis Allina died at the end of December 2009. For those who don’t know-he’s the guy who came up with the idea of putting famous celebrity heads on PEZ dispensers.
Allina was born in Prague, in what was then the Czechoslovak Republic, and raised in Vienna, in what was then the First Austrian Republic. A Sephardic Jew, he was imprisoned in various Nazi concentration camps and most of his family was killed in the Holocaust.
In the post-war period, he emigrated to the United States and settled in New York. After working as a meatpacker, he joined Pez-Haas. The first sculpted Pez dispensers (the candy had previously been distributed in tins) were introduced in 1955—Santa Claus and a robot.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that. I did not until tonight. May God grant him rest and peace-PEZ dispensers rank up there on the “cool” list.
http://www.lens.blog.nytimes.com might be of interest to you as it depicts the plight of Japans homeless The Jan 4th edition.