Those are very cool! 

Thanks for sharing the pic and story
I'm glad the thread is actually getting some action.

That IS so awesome. Post up some pics! Share the treasure!

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Working on a new post with update of todays haul...
 

Instead of going to a mall and dropping 10 bucks into a machine i'd be much more apt to go quality over quantity and get me a Silly Dillies #1



http://www.ebay.com/itm/SILLY-DILLIES-1-Matte-Yellow-MINI-Jo...

you'd love Japan and it's Vending machines lol

Today I gathered up a bunch of quarters and contacted my friend, letting him know about my intent to go on a vending expedition around town. He said it sounded stupid. Just stupid enough to be cool. We picked one side of town to start and went from there, trying to think of any weird place that might have machines.
Here is the haul:

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Assorted Capsule shot.

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Uncapsuled bounty

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From left, some weird looking cat thing from a machine at ShopKo that ripped me off , some stupid Domo thing. The solid black capsule was at a bowling alley and it was one of the only old style machines they had. We bought 3 and they all turned out to be glo-stick crosses... It was obvious the assholes just slapped some crap nobody wants into a black capsules just to scam. Whats worse, 2 of the 3 crosses didn't even glow. No miracle in that capsule... Moving along, cool white stretchy whatever ball thing, and a cool sticky frog. One thing I did realize on my journey today is that sticky things seem to be hard to find these days. I wasn't able to locate any of the classic sticky hands that were mentioned earlier in this thread.
I always loved the way slime and sticky things smelled. 

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From random prize machine. I think the left monkey must be pulling a "hear no evil", which would make it cool to have all three poses if they exist. The other monkey is just lounging, and the thing in the middle is a crab, which I have a suspicion is the type you could soak in water to make it grow, although they don't even mention that anywhere so you would just think it's some crappy crab and chuck it. I guess I only suspect this because its texture is akward, and I had saw a different machine that sold things you were supposed to soak in water.

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These are something called "Sqwishland" I think. There were pieces of paper in the capsules with codes for some kind of online game apparently. If it wasn't a game for small children that would be a cool concept. These are like the Nino ones where the capsules are either opaque or not. For some reason most seemed to be the "special" type. I don't know if the Gods of sqwishland were shining down upon us or not but I only got one of the schwaggy type. As a rad bonus we determined they glow in the dark!

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I was able to determine what the "plant head dudes" are called today after running into another machine that sells them.
Nino n' Dip

Here are the new "rares" I got.

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 Another reason the "rares" are cool...

They Glow in the Dark!!!!!!!
 

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Here is all the bogus crap I ended up with. Some bracelets, a ring, a fake moustache, and some folded up NFL stickers.

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...and in the spirit of saving the best for last...

Robots!!! It's weird I ran into these today, as last night when looking up vending toys I happened to come across these and commented to a buddy that I wish I could find some of them. I was able to score them from a laundromat in a $.25 random prize machine. Laundromats seem to be the best place to go for cool trinkets in my experience so far. There's also the bonus of having machines to change $1 and $5 to quarters. 

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Also as a possible point of interest; I found a ninja machine today. If anyone wants ninjas or to trade crap for ninjas, or any of the other items, let me know.  
I changed my first and second post to keep a list of machines I find that are sort of unique.
I did want to add that WalMarts vending machines completely sucked balls. They didn't even have one thing that was remotely cool, so consider yourself lucky if you can snag sweet Pac-Man merch from a grubby machine.
I will continue my journey another day...
Hopefully that inspires more stupidity!

 

Just noticed the Playstation super ball near the middle. That's pretty cool. Any idea where it came from?

Nice, I was just telling some people in chat about those machines. It sounds like someone was salvaging parts from a Dino's Lucky Egg machine and put them in one of the chicken ones. Gives me hope that there's at least one chicken machine that inexplicably yells Yabba Dabba Doo, Dino loves you. 

I totally forgot about the gold eggs though, good call! I think Dave's right though, and the prizes weren't any better in them.

Herb, that's fuckin' boss that you found those robots. Small capsule machine world, I guess.

I've gotta write a 20 page paper today/tomorrow but if I feel like I need to take a break, I'm gonna pop around town and see if I can find a few of these. I'm kinda bummed I didn't last month...  Zellers shut down for good in my city on March 30, and I know they had a bunch of old capsule machines.

Pretty sure I got it from EB/Gamestop/whatever it was called back then. They were handing out promo stuff for 989 Studios right before they went under.

They tended to be wind-up toys, stuff of higher quality and with moving parts, whereas the general egg tended to be something simple, like a rubber finger puppet or ball.

Cool man, been planning on taking a pic for FB because people didn't believe me.

Tempted to try to go score a few more robots...

I got bored this afternoon, so I took a quick adVENDture around the city.



Obligatory unopened capsule porn

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Decapsuled goods

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First up was a 25 cent surprise at the dollar store:



The first thing that occurred to me with these balls was that they explode like a fuckin' grenade when you squeeze them with any force at all.
It took me 10 minutes and a cut knuckle to finally get all six of the balls apart -- Whoever distributes these should face child abuse charges.
However, the elephant ring rocks and frankly made the experience overall a plus.

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I forget what this was called, build a buddy or something? Either way it cost a full Loonie.



Initially I was going to pass on this, but the premise seemed kind of cool so I splurged.
There was no "egg", the body was hidden inside of the head.
Was hoping for the Jets, got the Red Wings. At least his head makes for a good stash spot.

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After the dollar store, I hit up a few laudromats and malls, but I didn't see anything except a busted pinball machine.
Toys R Us had a 25c surprise, so I dropped in a few bucks. Here's what that haul got me:



I think the fact that I got nine of these dogtags and only one of them is a double is pretty WTF-worthy.
#swag

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Hello Kitty "erasers" which just feel like plastic to me. I'm pretty sure manufacturers can label any old chunk of rubber as an eraser. The containers double as coin holders (they have slots in the top) so expect to see me carrying around my change in a Hello-Kitty themed plastic egg.

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Last but not least, from a "Zombie Planet" $1 machine: Dead Zone Dave.



Initially I blew a buck on this guy to show how lame the average $1 prize is up around these parts.
However I quickly changed my tune when I saw that it can stand up on its own, 10/10 for proper center of gravity over the feet. DZD gets a spot on my desk.

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Almost forgot, the Toys R Us vending box spat out a Pokemon screen cleaner as well:



ñññññññññññññññññ

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed ! Nothing particularly old school, nor particularly interesting. Next trip, I guess I need to visit more of the older, run down joints around town.

I dug Out My Minatures Box and these are the things i suspect came from 5 cent gumball machines.

Entertaining write up, thanks for posting.
Dead zone dave is pretty cool. I'll have to look that series up and see if any of the others are neat. In any case $1 seems a bit steep. I'll bite on a $.50, but I've passed up some questionable $.75er's.
The Hello Kitty things are ok. Of course Hello Kitty isn't very cool, but little colorful collectables are.
Seem's like the Toys r Us machine is running a BS racket. Why would children want Harley crap in the first place?
Usually QSM's are awesome, as who doesn't like a nice surprise? Apparently they are also an awesome way for a dishonest butthole to dump off useless crap unto sad children. 
The pokemon thing is interesting in that it's a cell phone accesory. Kind of odd to have items for cellphones in vending machines, seems like mixed demographics. I 'm sure it's to do with the fact pokemon is Japanese and vending and phones are crazy in Japan.
The elephant ring is def. the top notch score in this scenario.

Glad someone else caught the bug!

Who will the next brave soul be to go on an adVENDture????

Who didn't like toy soldiers? Especially small ones? Check.
Trolls are classic.
Mini coke is neat. 
The ring with the cowboy looks like it has potential.
Camel? Sure, why not?
The dinosaur is cool.
Best for Last, the Buddha. If I found a machine that spit out deities... I'd be droppin' mad change up in that beeautch, yo.

You need to go on an adVENDture an post some authentic verified VGA vends!
I suspect... suspect shmeckt! The item's are cool though
Thanks for sharing

I have a bunch of thoe football helms somewhere from when I was a kid. (somewhere in storage, or maybe they are gone)

I also have on of those space vehicles somehwere op posted, I probably cant find it though. 

Grails



White Whale:

I Remember This one from childhood vividly.

Herb glossed over the one truly WTF-worthy item... Nazi propaganda spread from Japan via 5 cent surprise machines?



"I visited the 5 cent surprise machine, and all I got were these lousy sig runes"

You guys are lucky to still have 25 cent machines. They are all 50 cents or more here, and most of the "toy" ones are now 75 cents. Worst part is they are not even full of toys. There is one that was just refilled with spongebob figures, but if you actually look 99% of the eggs have a sticker inside! So few actually have a little figure

If you get enough interest, I'd gladly go in on this as well, for a set.  Have a USA address as well...

Holy shit, my wife would kill for these! She is a huge HK collector. I will have to get some pics of her stuff up here one day lol. I will have to pay attention for some of these.

Haha, I guess the name Herbalist wasn't just a random choice then, eh? Not a word I see often outside of a few very specific forums

Haha, I buy some of these thigns on a whim sometimes. The movie theater near me has really detailed Disney ones. I have yet to see one that I want, but if they had some stuff in there from Ghibli or Nintendo I'd pay the $1 to get a few.

I buy one of these whenever I have quarters in my change from the store. We had a lot of really funny "gangster dogs" or something. Just different breeds of dogs with cigars and gold chains and shit. I dunno, seemed really funny at the time.

My favorite was a bag of random gem stones, it came with a little paper that told you what mystical power each gemstone in the bag had. I bought a ton of those, thought it was too neat to pass up.

Edit: I always get the monkeys and domos too lol

I used to have a ton of these. When I was a kid I used to get one everytime I went to the hardware store with my dad. This was at least twice a week (proabably still is), he's always building something.

Went to a couple places today specifically looking for vending machines. I didn't find anything interesting enough to buy, most of the machines I saw were $1 each and were full of mummies made of what looked like yarn. I did find one machine with the old sticky slappers.

Neatest thing of interest I found was a grocery store that could be considered little Mexico, inside of the grocery store there was a jewelry section and a section for cowboy boots. (This store had the most interesting vending toys).

What's another $20 lol. When I get paid, this weekend I'll make another trip and buy a bunch of them and go from there  

Whoa, yeah, I hadn't notcied it was an SS logo... I wasn;t sure what it was... Is that really an SS logo???? Ha!

It's all part of the hunt. You never know where a cool machine might turn up! Don't give up hope yet...

I'll keep an eye out for them stateside. Go on an adVENDture dude! You never know what you might find!

Sounds just like me. If I have quartres on the way out of a store I just try to see if I can find anything silly to buy with them. That's what led to all of this I guess.
Homey Dogs sound stupid enough to be worth buying for a laugh!
Mystical Gemstones sound gnarly! 
I'm not sure where the monkeys came from, but I'd like to know so I can try for a 'see no evil' and 'speak no evil' if they exist. I think they came from a QSM (Quarter Suprise Machine; my own lingo )
I found the domo's for sale on eBay. There are 8 to a set. I'm not that into it... Rather have generic unlicensed crap, really.
But, there is a godzilla domo in that series thats pretty cool. The rest are sort of meh.

Sounds like you MUST have some crap laying around your house to post some pics!

Also, sounds like you have vending in yer blood! 
Go on an adVENDture with like $5 and post your haul for us to vicariously Oooo and Ahhh over!

As for the name, I'm just into Botany in general. Of course theres certain plants I find a lot cooler then others.

You tease. Tits, I mean Pics or GTFO! haha
At least you found a sticky slapper machine. I'd pump a buck or 2 into that rig.
Glad you got the vending bug!

You might as well go on a full-on adVENDture!!!!
I'm not into Pac-Man or anything, but I still might be interseted in a couple. 

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To all:

Who will the next brave adVENDturer be??????????????