Trailer Vending
History
The history must be wrong, these machines were in use a long time before 1987. I can't be precise about the dates, but I remember them from my childhood, and I was born in 1956. They used to contain mostly trinkets, but usually one expensive thing, like a packet of cigarettes, (can you believe!), or a wristwath which looked expensive to my childish eyes. Of course, the grap never quite would fit around the cigs or the watch, but it didn't stop us trying! Assume I was 11, 12, maybe 13 yrs old, that must be some time in late 60s. I saw them in amusement arcades at Butlins or Pontins holiday camps, which were very popular in England at the time. Also in Blackpool... I think maybe some more research is required, because my memory is fallible of course....... Orelstrigo 03:21, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, you will note that classic Warner bros. cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny referenced this type of game. I recall one in particular with some golden-age film star trying to win an Oscar.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.131.201.226 (talk) 20:28, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Skill?
Also, these machines aren't skill. http://www.cromptons.com/pages/pagetext.php?pg_name=XFactor says "Audited % Payout" which implies that it's not skill based. Possibly by varying the strength of the claw. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.19.57.138 (talk • contribs) 20:25, September 15, 2005
Stub?
This Article is a Stub? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.142.234.138 (talk • contribs) 00:29, July 7, 2005
picture
it needs a picture of one —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.200.116.131 (talk • contribs) 13:00, October 12, 2005
East Asia
Live animals in UFO Catchers in East Asia? Never seen that in Taiwan, China, or Japan. If there is such a thing, I don't think it's such a widespread phenomenon that it requires special mention in an encyclopedia entry! Citation?
- That's exactly what I was going to say, and why I came here. I've never seen any in any part of Asia! However, a simple google search turned up some interesting results, including this article: http://www.seriouseats.com/tags/claw%20machine which talks about the machines in the United States! Note that while the newscast is about a machine in Maine, the picture is actually from Japan. Since this proves the machines exist in both Asia and North America, I don't know whether to move this information to a different section or not though. -Jaardon (talk) 14:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Ew
horrible writing and unencyclopaedic too. *bookmark* Blueaster 20:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Kids getting stuck in the machine
Maybe someone could do a section about all these kids that have been getting themselves stuck inside the machines...GodSka 19:41, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Skill
The game is entirely skill. I am an employee of America's largest supplier of these games, as mentioned in the article, and I can tell you, there is no box that says Grab Power on it, and doles out a prize only one in ten or some such nonsense. Perhaps this is the case overseas, but if you see a machine with my company's logo on it, you can rest assured that is not the case. There is a way to make the claw more or less powerful, but as is mentioned in the article, we have settled on a fair ratio that we can adjust afterwards if necessary. We do not adjust the machine to make people lose, we simply adjust it to make the game more challenging.
Nyabinghi43 00:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)Nyabinghi43
Success rate
In the section title "success rate" it says "In general, while getting the claw to pick up a prize is relatively hard, having the claw hold the prize long enough to bring it to the opening is easier." I disagree with this, many a time have I got the claw to pick up a toy only to have it drop it again. --Candy-Panda 12:17, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Controversy link?
"The video can be found on Youtube." - Someone please supply a link for this one. Supermagle 10:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Bias
This article contains a lot of bias, particularly in the 'success rate' and 'controversy' sections. I'm flagging it as such. Orkie2 12:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
British theme to them?
Just wondering if there is a tune pinned to these, I've heard it many times and just a random thought wondering if it had a name to it, especially in Britain at the seaside, where I would predict the theme is well known and wondered if it should be included in the article.
As an employee of Coinstar Entertainment Services (the largest provider, servicer, and manufacturer of these games), I can say definitively that they do not have a yellow box here in America that defines the number of wins and losses. We do audit the payout, and that is supposed to be in a certain range, but we almost never get it in that range. I have found on my machines that more often than not people are good enough at these games to buck the ratio we shoot for. My machines are not fixed, as people seem to think, but they do have a certain tensile strength they have to adhere to, and it is adjustable, but the idea is to get rid of the toys, not let them sit there. I don't know about anyone else, but when I go to my stops, I want as many toys gone as possible, and adjust my machines thusly.
Guaranteed payout version?
When I went to Taiwan, there were at least two different locations with several arcades in which the machines had a sticker on them with a price. If you spent at least that much on one machine without getting anything, someone would open it and give you the prize. (They would also move everything back to where they were before you started messing everything up.) --68.161.148.207 (talk) 09:41, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Information on payout odds
After doing quite a bit of research, including reading maintenance manuals, I've been able to determine the following:
- All post-1980s crane games allow the operator to adjust at least the claw grip strength via a screw on the mechanism or via a potentiometer on the PCB (if applicable). Most of these machines also allow the grip width (i.e., how far apart the claw fingers will be when the claw is "closed") to be adjusted.
- Some crane games also allow the operator to enable special features, notably a "2-stage claw power" mode -- when this is enabled, the claw is energized at full strength when dropped, but after a brief delay, weakens its grip to the "normal" level (again, set by the operator as described above). This is why the claws in some machines sometimes look like they're about to deliver, but then drop the prize.
- Modern computerized claw machines are fully programmable, and allow the operator to set a payout percentage. One manual I looked at described features including a net payout percentage and a daily payout percentage, all in terms of the value of the prizes. Thus, the operator sets the average value of a prize in the machine, and the onboard computer uses this to determine how often to pay out. And what does payout mean? It means adjusting the claw grip and timings upward or downward as needed.
- On these same computerized machines, a "fail limit percentage" can be set. This makes the machine appear to be out of order and stop accepting coins if people are winning too much. Interesting, no?
- The claw machines are not designed to "rip people off" -- a claw machine no one plays is very costly to the operator. Operators will obviously try to set a percentage (either by trial-and-error in the case of older machines with screws and potentiometers, or by computer in the new machines) that keeps people coming back to play while also giving them a nice profit.
Now, I also did some research on the legal aspects of claw machines. Looking at the laws of various states, an amusement such as a crane game is usually exempt from the laws governing gambling so long as at least some skill is involved in winning. However, I've also seen legal opinions (in old cases I wasn't able to read the full versions of without paying) that decided crane games were inherently chance games because the player is not able to know or control the claw grip strength or the depth to which the claw will descend. Other (lawyers, judges) have decided that the game predominately depends on the skill of the player.
I'm not sure how computerized crane games such as the one I described above (Cromptons X-FACTOR) figure into this. If the machine has programmable "payout percentages", then it may as well be a slot machine. If the crane always gripped strongly, then people would win almost 100% of the time, because placement of the claw doesn't have to be very accurate in that case. Thus, I think the argument that the crane game inherently involves skill because the player has to move the claw to a "good" position in the first place is based on a technicality (positioning the crane is too simple). It might be worth looking into the gambling laws of other countries to see how crane games are considered, but I suspect that in any jurisdiction where you see crane games around, there are loopholes in the statues to allow for the "auto-payout" techniques des
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