Vending Machine Fever

Nowhere else in the world have I ever seen toy vending machines like I have in Singapore. Perhaps there are plenty of places that have these things and I’ve never noticed, but with two young kids we rarely fail to see the rows and rows of coin operated machines which spew forth toys inside plastic balls. For between $1 and $6 you can turn the handle and collect a surprise toy. Invariably the boys really want to have just one of the range of six or so inside each machine, and as Murphy’s Law applies as much on the equator as anywhere else, you can pretty much guarantee that the one they get is NOT that one.
Happily my lot aren’t too fussy. Movie theatres in particularly seem to specialise in these, and at Cathay Cineleisure, which is where we go for most of our kids movies, there are literally hundreds of these things. It’s a good way to fill in 15 minutes if you‘re early for a film because the kids can easily spend that much time peering at the pictures on the outside before making their final selection. Oddly there is also a huge stack of them outside Toys R Us in Paragon. Because obviously after ploughing their way through 10,000 different toys in the store what parents really want when they stagger out past the till with their wallets almost empty is to pour all their remaining change into one of these machines to buy....more toys!