You've seen the rest, now here's the best. Some of the vending machines shown below are far from typical, requiring days (okay, hours) of research to locate. You'll see everything from fake chickens to live quails and beyond, and if you consider the first letter of each paragraph in this article a word scrambler puzzle, you'll be fighting an uphill battle trying to come up with an answer because I absolutely did not attempt to create a word scrambler puzzle. I say these things to save you from trouble.
THE SPY PACK: Machines like the "Spy Pack" represent my favorite type -- vending machines with glorious mystery prizes. I never much cared what came tumbling down the chute; the thrill was in beating the odds and ending up with anything worthwhile. The teaser cards on mystery prize machines always promote top notch prizes, comparatively speaking. In this case, the #1 gift is a tiny FM stereo complete with speakers. You've got a better chance of hurling a pig in the air and single-handedly building a four bedroom condo before it lands before winning that. To the producers of the Spy Pack's credit, other prizes shown are completely obtainable: you've got small plastic puzzles, tiny mugs and lame keychains featuring space aliens in romantic settings. Nobody who's spent much time at the vending machine section is a stranger to such prizes. The teaser card also promises that each of the shown trinkets are inside the machine in equal quantity, and I blame the supermarkets and toy stores not so much for towing the line of bullshit, but for allowing the bullshit to be towed. There's a different level of responsibility involved, but I'd give 'em all the chair anyway.
Not too surprisingly, the Spy Pack spat out a small toy gun keychain, the kind most kids got one halfhearted "bang bang" pantomime out of before disowning the prize forever. Basically, we know we could've done worse -- it's a mystery prize machine after all -- but that's no reason to get jiggy with a shitty prize just because it wasn't as shitty as it could've been. This is similarly why Sister Kate got the ax after season one.
Final Conclusion: Now my Dilbert bobblehead doll can pretend to commit suicide, like it should. THE TOY BOX: Ah, now this...this is the perfect mystery prize machine. Nothing shown on the teaser card seems the least bit out of the question, and the prizes are so varied that no one can guess what might come out next. Even judging by the small assortment they let us know about beforehand, it could be anything from a giant purple slime hand to the black kid from Hey Arnold who kept everyone on the straight and narrow. It's the children's equivalent of a slot machine; you expect to lose, but if you don't, oh ho yow zap! For once, I won. I actually came out with one of the best prizes shown on the teaser card, the gigantic sticky worm from Hell. Life at the vending machines isn't always a bed of roses, but when it is, look ma no thorns.
Course, it's rarely a bed of roses. On another attempt at a different mystery prize machine, I came out winning a small charm necklace featuring the Japanese symbol for "Flirt." I hereby declare that historians of the distant future will reflect on the downfall of this our current society, universally marking the trend of preteen girls marking themselves up with "Flirt," "Tease" and "B*tch" stickers, buttons, keychains, T-shirts, Henna tattoos and notebook scribblings as the exact point where we could no longer save ourselves from oblivion. How this fad began is beyond me; we went from just "hating mean people" to christening ourselves as tramps and hookers. Suddenly "Keep On Truckin" feels almost Shakespearean. If I ever have a daughter, I'm tattooing "Easy Tramp" on her forehead so I can avoid having to buy her 18,000 belly tees bearing the same message later.
Final Conclusion: There's a level of counterproductivity of announcing yourself a "Flirt" with a Japanese symbol. GUMMY SNACKS: Not a bad machine -- you always get what you're promised, and it's almost worth the money. There existed a time where finding a gummy candy in any shape other than the traditional worm or bear seemed thrilling. For instance, when I first found gummy cherries -- now only one of 150 trillion varieties -- I sprouted wings and painted my face yellow so I could be the singing spokesman for Don't Worry, Be Happy novelty pins. Today's world finds gummy candies in every shape, flavor and color possible. The recent craze has involved taking traditional family meals and converting them to the Ways of Gummy. Gummy pizza pies were popular for a while, but this machine offers a lot more than that: gummy burgers, gummy ice cream cones, gummy cakes -- a whole gummy smorgasbord of individually wrapped candies. The neat thing? Each individual "ingredient" can be separated from the pack, so in the case of a gummy cheeseburger, you can make your way from the lime lettuce to the fruit punch patties step by step. Now you know why so many people still thank God at night.
I drew the lucky hot dog gummy, with lemon bread, bubble gum meat, and a pickle that, I swear, really tasted like pickles. The classic pink lemonade gumball is still my favorite kind of vending machine candy, but it's nice to have gummy hot dogs on hand if I ever want to make a joke about sweetmeat while entertaining dinner guests.
Final Conclusion: If I juiced this shit I bet I'd be able to kick the crap out of 80 ogres and make really cool noises while hopping. FAKE CHICLETS: Not Chiclets...Chicles. They still taste just as good as any gum provided from a metal chamber full of snotty kid hand residue could. It's a nice machine for stores to have handy in case they ever want to implement some kind of "guess how many are green" raffle. I love those contests. I've never entered one, but they're fun to think about.
Final Conclusion: I heard Mackenzie Phillips chewed these while trying to quit being a crack addict. In defense, I heard it from her archenemy.
Okay, now we're up to the big one. The reason this article exists. For years I've thought about this next machine from time to time, remembering loving it with all my heart, but not recalling quite where it was. I asked everyone I knew and got blank faces and misinformation in response, but just before giving up and knifing a socket with a wet hanger, I found it. The most magnificent vending machine of them all. The prize peddler who knows no rules but only a buckaw. Yes folks, it's true -- it's the one, the only...
When I was a wee lad, forced against my will to go grocery shopping with Mommy, this very kind of Chicken Machine was the only thing that got me through the terror. In desperately boring aisles containing bleaches and bathroom cleaners, I kept my spirits alive with thoughts of what awaited just beyond the checkout line: a huge musical chicken coup featuring a plastic brown chicken who spun around and shot out plastic Easter eggs full of prizes and joy. In my area at least, these machines used to be fairly widespread. The prizes were completely random -- just a huge assortment of two-cent plastic and rubber doodads, never amounting to much excitement but still oh so desirable because they were being presented by a musical chicken.
I can only truly illustrate my fiery passion for the Chicken Machine in song, something woefully impossible in this medium. But it's a really good song; you're missing out. Various Chicken Machines I've seen through the years have had varied musical scores -- in this case, the machine blasted an all-instrumental Yankee Doodle through its speakers. The motorized chicken itself, completely brown save for fiendish yellow eyes and bright feathery trim, spun with all the grace you'd expect from a thirty-five year old motorized chicken. Terribly outdated in style, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see brand new Chicken Machines lining the entrance to our local grocer. The beasts exist only in our memories, or occasionally as in this case, in the aquarium sections of odd pet stores owned by people just crazy enough to think such a scheme might work. A sticker on the machine quotes the chicken inside: "Insert a coin and I will lay an egg with a present inside for you!" One of my old teachers from middle school used to say that.
Finally, I took my eyes off the bird for a moment and slipped a quarter down her love tunnel. That same familiar music and chicken-twirling motion I fell for as a kid started up again, and my prized fowl didn't disappoint. Her dance is a lot slower now than it used to be, and she looks kind of beat up, but let's put it like this: I came to see a plastic chicken spin around in circles and play Casio born-with beats out its ass. That's exactly what I got. Soon, a mysterious Easter egg appeared in the chicken's prize box -- and once that happened, gone went the music, gone went the spinning, gone went all of the fucking insane chicken stuff. I would've been just as happy letting her keep the prize in exchange for more cluckaloscity. I can't change the rules, and had no choice but to crack open the plastic egg and thank Ms. Chicken for the memento.
The prize was a one-inch metallic space dude with big Spock ears, a gun, a knife, a soulful expression and eyes each the size of Liberace's cubic zirconium. You know, that big one he has.
Final Conclusion: I'm giving serious consideration to making the pet shop an offer for their Chicken Machine -- potentially the last of its kind. I don't really have room for it, but I'll throw away all my clothes and the television if it means I can sit next to the Chicken Machine every night and pretend I'm the Edith to its Archie. And I'll only respond to what anyone says to me with a dry "only if it's poultry." I picture wearing a monocle as I say it. STICKER CENTRAL: I use the term "Sticker Central" to refer to the many rectangular machines that trade glossy foil stickers for lots of quarters. This particular machine demands four quarters per sticker, a ridiculous sum that has me considering legal action. The sticker assortment varies, but it's usually brand-name stuff: cartoons, pop stars and big kiddy movies. They're usually at peak popularity in early September, when children nationwide duel each other to the death in the hopes to be the kid with the coolest shit on their marble notebook. Most Sticker Central machines only demand a more reasonable fifty cents, and they're usually equipped with those awesome coin slot devices that work sort of like timecard markers. Dunno what I'm talking about. Guess there isn't much to say about stickers.
Final Conclusion: Sealing every envelope with a sticker from this magical box would require a gross of 14,000 dollars during every Christmas season. Unless you only know a couple of people, mostly Jewish. STICKY ICKY SLIMY STUFF: My love for Dr. Mad's Blobs notwithstanding, another of the true can't-miss items of any vending machine section are the myriad whipping sticky hands, bugs and objects that smack against walls and collect cat hair on every landing. The toys come in every imaginable style -- I even got one patterned after a medieval mace -- and they're actually fun to play around with as opposed to most of the other stuff that only presents a second of aesthetic joy before complete and total boredom. The joy is magnified if you have pets; try tormenting your cat with one of the sticky hands sometime. Ours start meowing like they're trying to get screwed the second they see the first slimy jiggle -- by the time I whip the toys around their heads in a constant motion, they're pretty much consigned to spending the next three hours absolutely batshit crazy. Also, if you're known to go through daily life commando style, the sticky hands are a great way to retrieve dropped dollar bills without having to show half the world your ass.
There's no reason to run through each and every slimy toy I plucked during this exposition -- you're bored enough already -- but the coolest by far was the gigantic green cockroach shown at right. No joke, it's at least five inches long, heavy and three times stickier than the norm. It's the sticky bug that gives you hope for other sticky bugs purchased sight unseen in the future. Currently residing on my ceiling in what only appears to be an extremely messy misfired sneeze, the juicy slimy cockroach will forever be my happy thought in hours of need, alternating with the sweet scent of cherry Chapstick, or as I call it in private, nature's candy.
Final Conclusion: Check it out -- they even carved veiny body lines into the bug. That's dedication. I wish I had that. NINJA FIGHTERS: Just wanna give a quick shout out to my buddies, da Ninjas. I mentioned these guys in the last vending machine toy review, and I'm so happy that they haven't gone and messed everything up by disappearing. These were wildly, insanely popular in my elementary school -- it kinda went like this: we were of a huge conglomerate of student ninjas, and the only admissions prerequisite was owning one of these small, rubber ninja figures and carrying it around at all times. Our ranks in the ninja squad were determined by the color of our ninja figures' outfits -- black and red were tickets to stardom, blue and green were middle ground, yellow and orange were the pathetic wannabe ninjas who carried our schoolbags like little bitches. We never actually did much as a team; at best, we'd pretend to hand-chop through our desks and squint our eyes in ways that made the only Chinese kid in class cry and ask for the bathroom pass a lot. The life of the ninja was never said to be an easy one.
Hot damn, they even come in translucent colors now, too! The blue warrior on the left represents the standard for the series, but that Alien Ninja Yellow Boy From Future is totally news to me. It's like I should be seeing his internal organs...but I can't! Ninjitsu is truly the undiscovered country, off the coast of my heart.
Final Conclusion: Now wait, a conclusion in of itself is always intended to be final, thus making the term "final conclusion" both redundant and annoying to read. I could go back and fix the others but the ninjas tell me I shouldn't.
We're down to the final contender, and though it's not really a vending machine and wasn't anywhere near a section of vending machines, I can't resist mentioning a tank full of baby quail that transforms your quarters into crickets for it to murder. Here's the "Feed Us A Live Insect" machine, and I swear they came up with the title themselves...
FEED US A LIVE INSECT:
While gathering the materials for this article, I hit up plenty of Mom & Pop style pet stores -- they always seem to have vending machines for some reason, machines with far more absurd prizes than any supermarket or department store. They're also the only places with solid connections to get yourself a sugar glider or baby crocodile, but we'll save that for another feature. The "Feed Us A Live Insect" tank is housed at an obscenely large pet store in Jersey, and the tank shown above is only one of several on display -- some are empty, but others let you feed lizards or even GIANT SPIDERS. In this case, all we get are "button quails," a bird species known for sounding like something Emeril would talk about as an alternative to chicken in-between comedic throws to that smiling guy on the drums.
So, you grab a quarter, push it in the slot, and viola: down falls a large, healthy, completely unsuspecting cricket. As you could guess, I put more than one quarter in this bitch -- the concept was too oddball to skip out on. The quail alternated between attacking the crickets like a hungry shark and completely ignoring them like a shark who just ate a lot. You tend to believe there's some level of animal cruelty involved with this setup, though I can't for the life of me pinpoint what it is. Perhaps limiting a quail's diet to the kindness of customers is wrong, and maybe sacrificing crickets for our own entertainment is a tad bit sadistic. Fortunately, even the most devout animal rights activists don't give a shit about button quails or crickets, so the pet store's probably gotten away with this for years without a single incident. The manager didn't seem to want the tanks photographed (hence the flash being left off for the photo above), but he reacted with equal annoyance when I asked if they carried aquarium salt. For what it's worth, button quails aren't particularly attractive, but they've got interestingly huge orange feet that look like Satan's pitchforks. Yeah, I got nothing.
So ends another voyage through the wonderful land of vending machine prizes. I'll do another in a few years. I'll be 50 by then.
THE SPY PACK:
Not too surprisingly, the Spy Pack spat out a small toy gun keychain, the kind most kids got one halfhearted "bang bang" pantomime out of before disowning the prize forever. Basically, we know we could've done worse -- it's a mystery prize machine after all -- but that's no reason to get jiggy with a shitty prize just because it wasn't as shitty as it could've been. This is similarly why Sister Kate got the ax after season one.
THE TOY BOX:
Course, it's rarely a bed of roses. On another attempt at a different mystery prize machine, I came out winning a small charm necklace featuring the Japanese symbol for "Flirt." I hereby declare that historians of the distant future will reflect on the downfall of this our current society, universally marking the trend of preteen girls marking themselves up with "Flirt," "Tease" and "B*tch" stickers, buttons, keychains, T-shirts, Henna tattoos and notebook scribblings as the exact point where we could no longer save ourselves from oblivion. How this fad began is beyond me; we went from just "hating mean people" to christening ourselves as tramps and hookers. Suddenly "Keep On Truckin" feels almost Shakespearean. If I ever have a daughter, I'm tattooing "Easy Tramp" on her forehead so I can avoid having to buy her 18,000 belly tees bearing the same message later.
GUMMY SNACKS:
I drew the lucky hot dog gummy, with lemon bread, bubble gum meat, and a pickle that, I swear, really tasted like pickles. The classic pink lemonade gumball is still my favorite kind of vending machine candy, but it's nice to have gummy hot dogs on hand if I ever want to make a joke about sweetmeat while entertaining dinner guests.
FAKE CHICLETS:
Finally, I took my eyes off the bird for a moment and slipped a quarter down her love tunnel. That same familiar music and chicken-twirling motion I fell for as a kid started up again, and my prized fowl didn't disappoint. Her dance is a lot slower now than it used to be, and she looks kind of beat up, but let's put it like this: I came to see a plastic chicken spin around in circles and play Casio born-with beats out its ass. That's exactly what I got. Soon, a mysterious Easter egg appeared in the chicken's prize box -- and once that happened, gone went the music, gone went the spinning, gone went all of the fucking insane chicken stuff. I would've been just as happy letting her keep the prize in exchange for more cluckaloscity. I can't change the rules, and had no choice but to crack open the plastic egg and thank Ms. Chicken for the memento.
Final Conclusion: I'm giving serious consideration to making the pet shop an offer for their Chicken Machine -- potentially the last of its kind. I don't really have room for it, but I'll throw away all my clothes and the television if it means I can sit next to the Chicken Machine every night and pretend I'm the Edith to its Archie. And I'll only respond to what anyone says to me with a dry "only if it's poultry." I picture wearing a monocle as I say it.
STICKER CENTRAL:
STICKY ICKY SLIMY STUFF:
There's no reason to run through each and every slimy toy I plucked during this exposition -- you're bored enough already -- but the coolest by far was the gigantic green cockroach shown at right. No joke, it's at least five inches long, heavy and three times stickier than the norm. It's the sticky bug that gives you hope for other sticky bugs purchased sight unseen in the future. Currently residing on my ceiling in what only appears to be an extremely messy misfired sneeze, the juicy slimy cockroach will forever be my happy thought in hours of need, alternating with the sweet scent of cherry Chapstick, or as I call it in private, nature's candy.
NINJA FIGHTERS:
Hot damn, they even come in translucent colors now, too! The blue warrior on the left represents the standard for the series, but that Alien Ninja Yellow Boy From Future is totally news to me. It's like I should be seeing his internal organs...but I can't! Ninjitsu is truly the undiscovered country, off the coast of my heart.
So, you grab a quarter, push it in the slot, and viola: down falls a large, healthy, completely unsuspecting cricket. As you could guess, I put more than one quarter in this bitch -- the concept was too oddball to skip out on. The quail alternated between attacking the crickets like a hungry shark and completely ignoring them like a shark who just ate a lot. You tend to believe there's some level of animal cruelty involved with this setup, though I can't for the life of me pinpoint what it is. Perhaps limiting a quail's diet to the kindness of customers is wrong, and maybe sacrificing crickets for our own entertainment is a tad bit sadistic. Fortunately, even the most devout animal rights activists don't give a shit about button quails or crickets, so the pet store's probably gotten away with this for years without a single incident. The manager didn't seem to want the tanks photographed (hence the flash being left off for the photo above), but he reacted with equal annoyance when I asked if they carried aquarium salt. For what it's worth, button quails aren't particularly attractive, but they've got interestingly huge orange feet that look like Satan's pitchforks. Yeah, I got nothing.