A quick trip to Coventry Transport Museum whilst in the general West Midlands area collecting more stock (watch this space!) revealed this machine which has been placed in one of their more creative areas;
Presumably starting life as another boring spiral dispenser and now repurposed with some jazzy graphics, the idea of selling these items at the point of use (this particular gallery is quite far from the main shop) highlights the role of vending machines getting products to people where you really couldn’t justify having someone sat behind a till, but an honesty box won’t cut it. Looks like selection A2 might come with a 2 for 1 though. One nice bonus of a machine like this is that you can operate with minimal stock too, but the machine will always look full as everything is faced up to the front. The domain ‘thevend.co.uk’ used in the contact email doesn’t currently point to a website but nice work ‘Clara@’, whoever you are!
There’s actually a lot of early bikes at the museum too (after all, Coventry was the site of the first mass produced, steel framed bicycle, fact fans – see below) but if you got a puncture on the way there, you’d be in luck if you happened across this machine;
German brand, but UK money. Sadly I don’t know where this was previously located, but had already been removed. I wonder how many otherwise modern machines like this were junked because of the new £1 coin when the machine could probably could have been converted to contactless cards?
Just going back to the Coventry bicycle thing, I couldn’t help buying a pin badge that was designed around that first mass produced bike;
Large tech companies have long used ubiquitous spiral-based vending machines for the quick and easy provision of consumables, so it’s not always a case of money rather than accountability – leaving a stack of spare mice, toner and keyboards in a cupboard without some sort of control never seems to work as well.
This German based branch of IKEA, presumably finding that spare parts didn’t last too long when left out on a rack for anyone to take (they are supposed to be free to those that need them) – came up with the idea of selling them for 1€ and including a café voucher for the same amount in the packet, limiting people from taking things they didn’t need;
And so now we head stateside for, hmm, don’t fancy cleaning this one, a bait vending machine…
That looks like a former can machine, and I believe in the US you can readily buy plastic containers the exact same size as drinks cans to go into such can machines and expand their use. To be fair they’ve obviously gone to some effort to do that full-sized front panel art, even if there is some suspicious leakage from the refund button.
When you’ve caught your fish, what next? How about tinning it? There’s obviously enough interest in tinned fish within Chilean healthcare environments to justify a whole machine for it;
Hands feeling a bit rough and smelly after changing a tyre and eating a tin of fish? Not a problem!
Closer to home, and in case you missed it over on our owners machines section, here’s how this machine ended up after it was bought by Rachel of bonzo-art.com. Rachel has converted this machine into a fantastic art vending machine, and you can visit the website, buy a token voucher, and give the machine a go!
That’s all for now – if you spot something interesting, why not send it in to us?