You push the button.

Ding.

The churn is gone, replaced with a claw machine.

Cool, I guess?

Are you any good with these things?

You are! You know the trick to these things. It’s all about hand-eye coordination.

Or something. Personally, I am not good with claw machines.

You don’t have any quarters on you, but you see that the “credit” screen has an infinity symbol on it. So presumably you don’t need any quarters.

You crack your knuckles and push “Start”. Music starts as you push the joystick right, aiming for a raccoon. You push it up, wait for the claw to stop moving, and hit the button. The claw drops, grabs, and comes up empty.

Damn.

BUT! You know what you did wrong.

Without a moment of hesitation, you hit the start button again. You push the claw right, a nudge further than last time, then up, not quite as far, wait, and down.

The claw falls down, almost missing the raccoon, but it doesn’t! It catches! Slowly, ever so slowly, it pulls the raccoon up, and brings it to the prize chute. And releases.

The raccoon drops, landing in your waiting hand. Woo!

You are proud.

But why stop there? There are two types of completely different animals in there, which in no way look alike. Absolutely, completely different. Yes. So you decide to get both.

Now that you know which way the claw tends to lean, you move the joystick with confidence, and quickly hit the down button.

It catches a tanuki, and drops it into the chute.

See? Easy.

Hey, why not? You put on your game face, and focus. You know this will take a while, but that doesn’t bother you. You have nowhere else to be.

All in all, it takes you about an hour to get every last stuffed animal out of the machine. You have to nudge it a bit, to get the ones on the shelves down to where the claw can reach them, but that’s fine.

You line them up against the opposite wall, staggering tanuki and raccoon. It’s super cute.

When the last raccoon is out and in place against the wall you nod to yourself, proud at a job well done.

You’ve never really played with these things. You’ve seen them around, but they just never really appealed to you. I mean, most of them are filled with plushies or rubber balls with faces on them, and who needs one of those? The ones that have more expensive things in them are probably rigged.

Did you know that there’s a debate about whether these things should be considered gambling machines the same as slot machines? Yep. In Canada they’re basically illegal. And in the US of A most lawyers suggest removing the word “skill” from anything describing the machine.

Of course, there is some skill involved. My co-worker Max is pretty good at getting crap from claw machines, but he fully admits that some of them are completely rigged.

But, he got a phone from one once, when he worked in a mall across from one and could watch it to see how many times it was played before it allowed something to be won. It still cost him close to thirty dollars, though.

Anyways! You’re here, the machine is here, why not give it a go?

You walk up to the machine and hit the start/down button. Music starts playing as you swivel the joystick, aiming for a tanuki. There’s one on the edge that looks like it shouldn’t be too hard to get. Right?

Ehhhh well, you fail your first attempt.

But don’t worry! Even experts at this kind of thing miss most of their first attempts. It takes time and patience to get the toy!

You fail your second attempt, too, but not by much!

You grit your teeth, focus, and try again. And fail. The claw got the tanuki, but dropped it halfway over.

This is personal now. You focus harder, determined to get something.

Did you know that early claw machines sold stuff like candy and cigarettes? And cheap jewelry. It took a couple of years for people to realize that kids really liked them, and to start putting in cheap toys. That’s really why they stayed popular, because it’s a dynamic thing that costs an individual a pittance to play once, and brings so much joy to win.

You know, like a slot machine.

So parents can hand their kid two quarters, wait half a minute, and then they go on with their lives. The parent thinks no more of it; neither do the other fifty parents that day who do the same thing. But the people who own the machine have just gotten twenty five and a half dollars in exchange for three dollar’s worth of toys. The machines themselves last forever with little maintenance, so while they don’t exactly rake in cash, they’re a fairly steady source of income for the owner.

Meanwhile, you’re at attempt number thirty and still haven’t gotten that damn tanuki.

You’re starting to think this is impossible.

At attempt forty seven you give up. This is impossible.

You move to the side, put your back into it, and push the machine over.

It crashes to the ground, the plexiglass cracking. You kick it a few times for good measure, reach in, and pull out a tanuki.

There.

You won.

Don’t you feel fulfilled.

Feeling ready to move on, you turn back to the red button.

DO YOU PRESS THE BUTTON? Yes No