Two vending machines rise to prominence among my childhood memories.
My father had taken us to see the Disney cartoon Cinderella, and had given us (my sister Kath, my brother Tom, and myself) a dime each to get a soft drink from the lobby vending machines. Kath, as the oldest, was running the show, so she got Tom's first, and we watched, fascinated, as the machine dispensed a sicky-sweet purple ("grape") liquid into a white paper conical cone.
Kath then got hers.
Me next.
Alas, by the time my turn came, there were no more paper cups, and we stared - our fascination now turned to horror - as the machine dispensed a sicky-sweet orange ("orange") liquid right down the little vending machine drain.
This was an era when kids were expected to take their lumps and just suck it up. So we did. Kath and Tom drank their little drinks and, knowing my sister, she probably gave me a sip from hers. But once we returned to our seats, we didn't bother to mention anything to my father. My father would certainly have gotten his dime back and/or a drink for me, but it wasn't worth mentioning. We were all pretty little. I'm guessing 6-4-2 at the time. But we'd already absorbed Lesson Number One of Irish Catholic life: “To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” (And thank you, Daniel Patrick Moynihan for articulating this idea so well.)
We did get something out of this trip to the movies: Kath and I gave Tom the nickname Gus, after the Cinderella mouse. And it stuck. Childhood friends still call him Gus. (Boys of my childhood all seemed to have nicknames. Worcester boys still call my other brother (Rick) Stick.
Fast forward a few years and I found myself with a quarter in my pocket and an hour to kill at the YWCA between swimming and craft class. From a young age, I was a chocoholic. And here I was with access to five nickel candy bars from the not-so-vast array on offer from the Y's vending machine.
I don't remember everything I bought with that quarter, other than a really nasty tasting Howard Johnson's candy bar that in no way resembled real chocolate.
Q. Why wasn't I sharing this wealth of candy? After all, kids all went sharsies on everything back then. If you had a nickel for a popsicle, you learned early on how to rap it on the edge of the drugstore soda fountain, splitting the two halves perfectly in two so you could hand one to your friend.
A. None of my friends went to the Y, and I guess I hadn't made any new friends yet. Kath was my Y companion, and she was off with older girls. Going to the Y was pretty much a sin. The nuns had told us that the Y was a big anti-Catholic Protestant conversion racket and that Catholics should avoid it under pain of sin. So most parochial kids didn't go there. For whatever reason, that one year, we were enrolled for Saturday swim lessons. So, with no one to share with, I glutted my way through all five candy bars.
Anyway, I ended up with both a stomach ache and hives.
So much for vending machines.
But my experience in the years since has pretty much come down to vending machines for candy/snacks, something to drink (bad coffee, when I drank coffee), stuff in the ladies room (tampons, not condoms - I was never that kind of girl.) Oh, yeah, cigarettes came from vending machines, too. (For a while there, I was an occasional smoker.)
Little did I know that there'd be a new category - "unattended retail" - that is putting all sorts of goodies at our fingertips. As long as those fingertips are near a vending machine. And that the pandemic is speeding up their use.
“It’s touchless, it’s considered safe and it’s prepackaged so products haven’t been fondled and breathed on,” [Carla Balakgie, chief executive of the National Automatic Merchandising Association] said. “And technology has made it even safer: Some machines have a hover feature so you don’t have to touch the buttons and you can use an app on your phone or use mobile ordering.”
She said adoption in the past year has been swiftest by first responders needing sustenance on the go, but what might have previously been novelty “stunt” vending machines at trade shows are becoming normalized as regular avenues of commerce: bread-baking machines, customize-your-yogurt machines, even machines that dispense slippers, mascara and sundries at airports. (Source: Washington Post)
What else can you get beyond candy bars and mascara?
Why, gourmet pizza, for one thing, which Basil Street is focusing on the college and military base market. Now I really doubt that the pizza coming out of a vending machine is any nearer to gourmet than that Ho-Jo candy bar was to chocolate. But who knows?
Stellina Pizzeria is taking it a step further. They're selling - for $25, so I'm guessing they don't require coins - "pasta kits that feed three or four — Bolognese and cacio e pepe sauce have been top sellers so far. There are also cannoli-making kits and jars of tiramisu."
Cacio e pepe out of a vending machine? I'd rather try to replicate the recipe I saw on Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy. And jarred tiramisu just sounds, well, jarring.
Then there are "cupcake ATMs". (Wouldn't mind one around the corner.) Airport kiosks that dispense "healthy bowls and salads in jars." And how about vacuum-packed "artisanal butchery."
Don't know quite why it's any easier to buy a rib eye out of a vending machine than it is to go to the grocery store, but I guess if you get a hankering for rib eye at 2 a.m., when the supermarket is closed...
Bottom line: looks like the brave new world is going to include a lot more vending machines.
Guess we've come along way since I lost out on that ten-cent orange drink.
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