On The Pop & Caught On Camera

(A blog post to nominally celebrate tonight’s England vs. Spain match in the 2024 Euro’s, but actually an excuse to trot out a bizarre alcohol-related vending machine I’ve been saving up for nearly a year, and one alcohol proximal machine I’ve had for about a month).

If you’ve been overindulging on the old 8-Ace and Monday mornings alarm clock is about to come knocking, you’ll be glad that this irresponsible and likely plain wrong vending machine is as historical as the auction that sold it.

That’s right, the machine claims you can chug down a phial or 3 of fructose, sorry, pure FRUCTOSE for 50 new pence and avoid blowing positive as you weave your merry way home from the pub. It then offers a snippet from the Scottish Medical Journal to back this up. I think the referenced trial is this one* (note the adjacent article*!), and there are many more like them from the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, there has been a recent-ish attempt in France to market a soft drink with similar claims, which rather irritated the authorities over there. After one agency spoke to another they published an opinion, helpfully also in English, containing a brief history of fructose vs. alcohol claims and offer their opinion that it probably does very little for the average intoxicated Joe.

*To my surprise not only are these ancient articles not Open Access, but even my two fairly broad usual methods show no subscription. An abstract for the machine cited article (can machines cite an article? What referencing style should they use? Is this a new concern for the AI age? Write in!) is available at the host site here. And has a conclusion the machine manufacturer would probably rather you didn’t see.

It is suggested that laevulose [a form of Fructose] is helpful in the management of inebriated patients in whom there is clinical suspicion of accompanying head injury.

Patel AR, Paton AM, Rowan T, Lawson DH, Linton AL. Clinical Studies on the Effect of Laevulose on the Rate of Metabolism of Ethyl Alcohol. Scottish Medical Journal. 1969;14(8):268-271. doi:10.1177/003693306901400803
  • Most of the trials involve severe intoxication. The named Glasgow Western Infirmary (Rest in PFI) were however particularly involved in research involving alcohol intoxication and misuse and many of their findings and protocols (but not this one) have gone on to national adoption.
  • Some of them involved IV (injection or infusion) use of Fructose.
  • Most of the trials involve small numbers, so extrapolation to general population is foolish.
  • The results vary wildly in any case.
  • You would need to bash yourself over the head to fit in with the citation on the machine.

So beat that Ben Goldacre; Viz, Vending Machines and actual empirical evidence in one post. And we’ve not even finished yet…

Part 2.

And so now we move on to the award for Best Re-Use Of A 1970s Vending Machine for 1990s problems, Southern England Coastal Section.

As Harold (you know, Harold…?) reminds us in point No. 9, pre-smartphone obsession taking pictures in clubs was a bit of a hit-and-miss affair even when you could be bothered. And we mostly couldn’t be bothered to take pictures of our nights out. Mostly. In fact, why bother when the results usually looked like this?

Or that. In fact that second one is probably by a professional photographer rather than a disposable, but you get the idea. And so did this lot;

Seven quid though, seems a bit steep even then doesn’t it? And if you need to get a token from the bar (suspect the exact shape of an old 10p, possibly the downfall of this machine) why not just sell cameras at the bar on commission? I mean, you’d have to account for the cash / tokens anyway? Maybe Sir John Harvey Jones didn’t get round to Photovend (reference there for the cool clubbing kids) which is surprising as he definitely liked a drink. [Great tie in to Part 1, keep going! – Ed.].

Sadly there are no internal pictures but I imagine certain makes of disposable camera would just about fit into a milled out Locwil drawer. Actually I also now realise that the eBay seller of this machine is based in Gravesend but the machine might have had nothing to do with that part of the country. It does have a London phone number though so I’m in the right ballpark. That said I’m sure the vending machines at Glasgow Western Infirmary could have had London phone numbers on. Ah well. [You’re fired, better enquire about that Photovend franchise opportunity – Ed.].

I’ll leave you with a treasured memory almost certainly NOT taken with one of Photovend’s Disposabl’e Camera’s. Let’s hear it for the whistle crew!