By Ben Marks — How sordid could the Pez-dispenser underworld be? That question was probably running through the mind of movie producer David Klawans when he noticed a curious item on eBay in the summer of 2014. It seems a guy named Steven Glew was offering the book and movie rights to his life story as the world's most notorious and successful Pez-dispenser smuggler. The price tag for this exclusive peek into the lucrative collectible-Pez-dispenser black market of the 1990s was several hundred thousand...

Attack of the Vintage Toy Robots! Justin Pinchot on Japan’s Coolest Postwar Export

By Lisa Hix — Everyone is always looking for the next big thing. In the 1960s, it was going into space. In the '40s and '50s, the frontier was technology, with a particular focus on "What's going to make our lives easier?" For the very first time, you had cars with automatic-transmissions, automatic washing machines, and perpetually cooling refrigerators. I mean, we were coming out of an era when you scrubbed your clothes on a washboard and cooled your icebox with a big block of ice. Even the first...