Over the years we’ve been asked to do a number of custom jobs, from a ‘goth themed’ chocolate machine, a pink machine for a fashion shoot, the machine we’ve featured below, and of course we’ve supplied a few machines to TV companies on loan and made sales to film studios (one of which might have a connection with a schoolboy wizard).
No pictures? A lot of this, especially the TV type work, we can’t tell you much about, usually as we don’t know ourselves! So it’s nice to be able to just feature this very unusual machine we made which also has an electronics component – all sourced, configured and installed in-house. The fact that it also vends KitKats on the right hand side column is virtually forgotten to be honest!
Firstly if you’re not familiar with the oeuvre of Mayall and Edmondson c. 1991, there is a fantastic, first hand blog here that is probably one of the best short retrospectives you can find on the TV series that was ‘Bottom’, not a hagiography but considers the fantastic, the not so great, and the ‘Keith & Deirdre’ that travelled alongside that kind of ’90s comedy.
In the Bottom episode ‘Smells‘ (yes, there exists a highly sophisticated title structure, ladies and germs) which is the first episode of the first series, our two pals need to use the pub condom vending machine to, er, buy a condom. Whether they are ever going to get to use it for its intended purpose, ever, is another matter, but here’s the scene;
And to cut a long story short, after a commission, some homework by me (helpfully also already a Bottom fan!), and a bit of inspiration, here we have…
Our commission was to recreate the machine from the scene above, but interactive, amusing, and with a ‘surprise’ action, which is that pulling the left hand drawer triggers the audio from the entirescene. There are some buttons above which trigger small snippets, including one from another episode which just seems to fit the machine! Almost forgotten now, is that the right hand drawer completely conventionally vends KitKat’s for a £1.
Mike was kind enough to send us these pictures – just so you know that to keep costs down and to make it more realistic he was happy with the ‘shabby’ appearance of the machine and drawers!
Let us know what we can do for you! Do you have a custom requirement that can’t be fulfilled by our ‘universal’ vending machine we’ve just launched? Left white for your own artwork and inspiration, it’s sure to get audiences and customers talking, and sharing photos.
p.s. Here’s a little late 2025 update – I’d long since assumed that any real Bottom fan was also a Talking Bottom fan, but what I didn’trealise was that there have a been a fair few extra episodes since the last regular one, many of them this year – check them out today!
Geeky note – you might have noticed that the featured image for this post is from the usual Bottom title sequence but somehow looks less grainy than others on the net. That’s because it was taken from the two upscaled episodes, ‘Digger’ and ‘Holy’ that were broadcast on TV channel ‘GOLD’ (now called U&Gold, the sort of nonsense corporate rebrand that I’m certain Rik would have taken the piss out of) which also featured unused footage from the titles to create ad bumpers which obviously weren’t needed in good ‘ole Auntie Beeb days. I used that unseen image for the 2nd featured picture. Both I believe have been upscaled digitally – in the featured image it’s Eddie’s trousers that show the artifacts of this the most, rather than the discovery of any secret hidden footage, although whether they re-scanned the original videotape one last time, is another question. The two episodes I thought might have been a toe-dipping prelude to a superior quality DVD or even upscaled Blu-ray re-release, but no such luck so far…