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Certex

Peerless Products, Kansas City, MO, c. 1930s, 20 ¹/₂". This model is art deco the way the Pack-It Shop and Ace Streamliner are art deco, which is bold and obvious. The Northwestern 33 Peanut, the Neko, and the Burel Vendor also have art deco styling, but the influence is more subtle. I love all forms of art deco, and the bolder varieties on this and the Pack-It Shop pull me in. You can see a closer picture of the front here. This model was also sold as the Surete.

The model's Peerless parentage, proof of which is on the front label and stamped into the right side, makes this a sibling to all Bluebird models. That relationship is far from obvious from the looks of their models. I can see a link to the Pamco Hot Nut Vendor through the identical bakelite knobs used on both models, but that's it. Other than that one model, the Certex and other Bluebirds appear to come from different gene pools.

Condoms from this machine were expensive. One dollar in 1935 had the purchasing power of about $24 in 2025, so you'd need about $5.75 today to buy what a quarter bought then. I guess if you were the responsible type and were desperate....but I imagine the high cost of a condom from this machine prompted some risk-taking and was indirectly responsible for some babies born in the 1930s. Kids born then would be about 90 years old today, give or take a few years, so some of them would still be around to thank this machine for their existence.

This model has tighter security than most, perhaps because of the jackpot of quarters it potentially held. The left picture at top shows the machine in its best-looking form, with the front secured in place by a lock at the top. That's enough for most vendors, but not this one! This model came with extra security, which you can see in the other two pictures at top. Two shallow U-shaped metal bars were placed over the top and midsections of the front, and a round metal rod was pushed through circular holes in both ends of the bars and the sides of the machine and locked into place. You can see one of the holes clearly here, along with the coin slot which is uncharacteristically plain. In the left picture above you can see notches in the sides of the front panel for the U-shaped bar and the holes in the machine's side for the rod. The left end of each rod is flared so it stops at the end of its insertion point, and the right end of each bar has a hole for a padlock. There ain't no way that front panel is coming off once Full Security is installed!

When I first got this machine I hated those security bars, and was actually a bit angry at Peerless for including a feature that interfered so much with the machine's aesthetics. The front has this amazing art deco design, which is what makes this model, and they degraded that perfection with bars that make it look more industrial? Yep, they did. But that anger has mostly faded by now. I display the machine without the bars, but while writing this page and looking at the pictures often, they don't wreck the aesthetics as much as I once thought they did, and---to be generous---they do add a feature that I think is unique and interesting in its own right. I don't know how many of these machines still exist, but I imagine those bars and rods got left behind on some of them. Despite my lack of enthusiasm about the full-security design, this example has it all and reflects how the machine was to be transported and used by vendors.

At 20 ¹/₂" tall and 5 ¹/₂" deep excluding the bakelite knob, this is larger condom vendor than most. This machine was the first example I'd ever seen in person and I was surprised by its size. Silent Salesmen Too doesn't list a height and I'd always envisioned it to be a cute little thing, maybe 15 inches tall and more shallow. I'm used to its size by now, but my first thought upon seeing it was "Whoa! That's big!"

The example above is 100% original. It came with a fitted case, which you can see here: :

My lust for Certex and Surete goes back to the late 1990s. I love art deco and this was a model I'd wanted since I first saw its picture in Silent Salesmen Too. Sometime in the late 1990s one of these appeared on this new online auction site called eBay---perhaps you've heard of it?---and I was gonna bid high right at the end. I did bid high at the end, but some woman somewhere bid higher. I was the underbidder, which did me no good other than confirm that I wasn't way outta line with my price estimate. I have equally clear recollection of it selling for $500 and for $800. I was disappointed that I'd missed it but figured that's okay, I'll get the next one. Then 20+ years passed without my seeing a hint of one anywhere, until this one appeared at a show. The Silent Salesmen Too price guide doesn't list this or the Surete as rare, but any model that I sought for more than 20 years and didn't see anywhere surely warrants that category.