The 2019 Detroit Lions Funko POP + PEZ Is the Retired Honolulu Blue Essential Every NFL Collector Needs
Something happens every year around this time that gets my whole feed talking football before a single preseason snap is played: Training Camp opens in Allen Park. This morning, right at 10 AM, Lions fans everywhere were online claiming their free tickets to the 2026 Training Camp at the Meijer Performance Center, the 20th straight year the team has hosted camp there, complete with Back Together Weekend, a Pre-Practice Helmet Handoff for the littlest Cub Club members, and five practices open to the general public. Watching all of that Honolulu Blue energy roll in reminded me exactly why the Detroit Lions Funko POP + PEZ dispenser has been sitting on my need list for way too long.
A Proper Crossover Piece
Released in 2019 as part of Funko's NFL-wide POP + PEZ wave, this one puts a Funko-style bobble-headed Lions player, helmet and all, on top of a classic PEZ candy stick mechanism, with the team's Honolulu Blue and silver worked into the base and the Lions logo front and center on the packaging. Funko did this across a big chunk of the league that year, from the Packers and Bears to the Broncos and Patriots, so it scratches that team-collecting itch for football fans the exact same way the standalone POP! Vinyl figures do, just shrunk down onto a candy dispenser stem.
The sculpt itself is simple compared to some of Funko's more detailed lines, but that is part of the charm. It reads as unmistakably Funko and unmistakably Lions at the same time, which is a neat trick for a dispenser that has to work at PEZ scale.
The best sports dispensers are never about the candy. They are about a team logo finding its way onto a shape that has been sitting on kitchen counters since the 1950s, and somehow that combination just works.
Why This One Is Trickier to Track Down
PEZ's own online store now lists this piece as retired, and it was never a Lions-exclusive release to begin with since it shipped alongside more than a dozen other teams in the same wave. That combination, a short print run plus a whole league of teams competing for shelf space at the time, is exactly why it has quietly become one of the harder team dispensers to find complete with its original card intact. Anyone chasing a full division set is going to run into this one eventually.
- Brand: NFL, licensed through Funko
- Year introduced: 2019
- Format: Funko POP! sculpted head on a standard PEZ candy dispenser stem
- Status: retired from official PEZ distribution
Displaying It
I like these grouped by division rather than scattered alphabetically. A little NFC North row with the Lions next to the Packers, Bears, and Vikings tells a much better story on a shelf than a single dispenser ever could, and it is a fun way to needle family members who collect the rival teams' colors right next to yours.
This is one I still need for my own shelf, and with Training Camp officially underway it jumped right back to the top of my list. It is marked on my needs list in the Collectiblz app if anyone spots one at a show before I do.
