ORION, Ill. — Two Orion educators have a unique sense of style when it comes to their classroom and office décor.
CR Hanna Elementary School third grade teacher Christina Carlson collects PEZ candy dispensers, while Principal RC Lowe collects Mr. Potato Heads.
Carlson has 638 PEZ dispensers on almost every available shelf or ledge in her classroom. The tiny candy holders, which don't actually have any candy in them, come in the form of basically any character you can think of. There's Care Bears, Minions, Star Wars, Smurfs, Finding Nemo, Avengers, Strawberry Shortcake, 12 days of Christmas, Easter bunnies, Elvis, Eeyore, Thomas the Tank Engine, you name it.
It all started, she said, about seven or eight years ago.
"It kind of started at home, probably with my own kids because they would get them in their stockings or their Easter baskets," Carlson said. "I was like, 'What do I do?' I have three bunnies now and three Santa Clauses and so they just would come to school and add to my collection."
Her very first one was a Lightning McQueen car. Now, she gets emails from the PEZ company about new ones coming out or will shop for some of the older ones on eBay.
"I have been known to go to multiple stores on the same day," she said. "I found out that there was a hamburger, a pizza and a taco that came out at the same time and the Walgreens I drove to only had one of them, so I drove to another to see if they had one."
Carlson ended up putting out an SOS call to her friends who were able to help her locate them.
Students and staff will often buy her new ones.
"I need like a spreadsheet or something organized so I know what I have," Carlson said. "I don't mind duplicates but it's cool when I can get something new that I don't have."
She's learned to display them out of reach from students because they're like dominoes, if you knock one over, they'll all go down.
"They're just so fun and they're colorful, and everybody can find one that they love from when they were younger or the movies that are recent," Carlson said.
As of now, she has no plans of stopping her collection but admits she's not sure what she'll do with them when she's no longer teaching.
"I used to tease my classroom because I started over (in one) corner and I just kind of worked my way around that, when I reached the end corner over there that I was going to have to retire because I didn't have any other places for my PEZ dispensers, but I'm way too young for that," she said. "So I just find more places for them."
While she doesn't enjoy the actual PEZ candies herself, she does keep them in a jar and will hand them out to her students for good behavior.
Down the hall at the front of the school, Principal Lowe has 120 Mr. Potato Heads in his office. His are also character based, including Bob Ross, Mandalorian, Chicago Bears, Transformers and baby Mr. Potato Heads.
His first one was a Bumblebee transformer from a student 15 years ago.
"There's something special about each and every one," Lowe said. "It's kind of hard to pick your favorite. I have a fourth grader who gave me a Mandalorian at Christmas time and that was my favorite for a while. But then this past spring break, I was able to find the whole Mr. Potato Head kids at an antique mall. So I'm always on the search."
Lowe also keeps some extra spare parts or more unique pieces at home. He has four shelves on his wall and each month he rotates the Mr. Potato Heads that are on display there to match a theme of the month. Right now, his Mandalorian ones are on the shelf in honor of the new season that came out in March. In April, he plans to put up an Easter bunny or decorate the female Mr. Potato Heads with flowers and raincoats in honor of spring.
"Sometimes the principal's office can be a scary place, but by seeing this, it kind of breaks down and allows kids to have some fun in here," he said. "And it's not always scary."
Staff and students will also give him Mr. Potato Heads as gifts, but staff have also been known to steal them occasionally. For his 40th birthday, the PTA also snuck in and made him a book filled with pictures of the stolen Mr. Potato Head's adventure.
There are some characters he's still on the hunt for, like the band Kiss and Star Trek.
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