World's Wackiest Vending Machines

by Jason Best, Posted Oct 27th 2010 @ 2:00PM

How to explain the rather dull and predictable options when it comes to vending machines in America compared with the rest of the world? Why can't we get on-demand ramen, as the Japanese do. Or, even if we wanted one, a Chinese hairy crab? Sure, as Slashfood reported in May, there are Maine lobsters out there in a machine somewhere, but in the U.S. these aren't exactly around every corner, as they are in many other countries.

Vending machines in America: They're pretty much everywhere you don't want to be. Airports. Hospital waiting rooms. Down a long, fluorescent-lit hall in your office at ten o'clock at night as you curse your boss for another late night and try to cobble together dinner from a bag of chips, some powdered donuts and a Coke. Which is what makes the Village Voice's compilation of "10 Wild and Crazy Food Vending Machines" from around the world so refreshing, from a Chinese contraption that allows you to try to catch your own live hairy crab with a robotic claw to the Dutch automat that serves up croquettes.

These machines take the soft, mechanical whir and buzz of food being automatically dispensed that we've come to associate with the most banal realities of modern grown-up life and remind us instead of what was so fun about vending machines when we were kids: for a matter of pocket change, you get a kind of mini-carnival of techno-gadget wizardry that ends with something yummy.

Unless, of course, you're at that machine in China and you've got to go home and stir-fry your hairy crab.

Filed Under: On the Blogs, Fast Food
Tags: chinese food, fast food, japanese food, vending machines

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10-28-2010 @2:04PM Numb said... Not credit this shameless spammer, at least this one did a good job *attempting* to connect it to the actual post. Nice attempt.
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