(Vending Machines of Ireland)
Search online for ‘shopfronts of Ireland’ and you’ll be justly rewarded. Like this;
Nice! Now let’s do the same thing for ‘old German vending machines’ (stay with me);
A few off-topic duds there but definitely enough for a junior school home work assignment, no? But let’s pretend Mr Booth has now also set us another assignment on ‘old Irish vending machines’;
That Cigarette machine wassold at an Irish auction house, but it clearly hails from East London – and the rest of the search suggests that the Nightender (which we’ve covered before) is the only mechanical era machine ever to come out of Ireland – and remember it too was made in Weston-super-mare, it also came back out very quickly! And if this informative article is to be believed, there were only ever 10 (yes, ten!) stamp machines in the whole of Ireland in 1990, all of which were scrapped by the time the Euro pitched up. Marking these assignments is going to get tiresome.
The rest of the results are far more recent machines, in fact it feels as if there could be more vending machines in Ireland now than there ever have been – just not stamps. I really don’t know what to make of this – the danger of the internet is that it shouldn’t be taken as a definitive resource especially when it comes to history and social matters, the absence of a result on a search engine says nothing about the reality of any given situation other than the possibility no-one had their opinion recorded for various reasons or that no-one bothered to record and upload an element of the past.
It may be that there were once hundreds and thousands of mechanical vending machines that simply no-one cares about or had ever bothered to record. It could well be that no-one is remotely interested in them either from a product or social history point of view. But I can’t answer that from a web search.
So, having let you down gently…
Nope, I didn’t get to see this in person, nor did my partner, it’s literally one of the few machines in Ireland that aren’t BGFMVs (big glass fronted multi-vendors) that I believe are available to the coin thrusting Dubliner. Which is interesting in that I’ve never seen one over here, like this.
Anyway, after a quick MacDonalds breakfast – always great to sample local produce when on holiday – regrets no Irish KitKat to upload to the KitKat page since next time you look at a good old Great British KitKat check out the Ireland specific extra bit on the back. I also did that typical holiday thing when I saw some local Irish confectionary, telling myself I’d buy / photograph it before I came home – I did neither.
I was careful not to allow my imaginary dog to do any made-up plops though, as I would have been given the worlds surely most specific fine of 1904 euros and 61 cents!
And here it is! Yes, the only actual upfront vintage coin operated item I managed to capture. In a barn where to be fair ‘Local Guide Joe Palter’ gives a fair and balanced review. Next to a field full of donkeys. An all-Irish renters(e.g. to be installed in someone’s home or a shared house, not a public kiosk) payphone. Is that vending? Well, maybe. Alas, again it’s likely a variation of an Associated Automation product from the UK (maybe it was locally produced), and there’s a reason I didn’t see any other public payphones in Ireland too – there aren’t any!
Just like over here, some have been converted to other things. Similarly although I didn’t see any, cigarette machines which require a token from the bar to start the vending process, will be banned in just a few months (at the time of writing), by September 2025.
Something that is going well in Ireland (actually, not so well, but big and well established for sure) is reverse vending. That’s where you bring your bottles and cans back to the shop, feed them into a machine and get money back. But please don’t do this [NSBL (Not Suitable Before Lunch) warning] Here’s one at Rosslare;
The future for vending in Ireland looks more interesting with farmgate milk and egg vending machines as popular as they are over here – though again I sadly didn’t get to see any close up.
And there we have it – in the highly unlikely event you’re off to Ireland expecting a heritage tour of old vendors – you’ll be disappointed!
So there I was, waving goodbye to Pembrooke Dock and hoping for a temporary future rich in vintage vending machines. But they do have cliffs, scenery and donkeys. So it’s not all bad.
Bye for now!