The Beginning of the "Plastic Age"
Back in the 1940s and '50s, vendors poured plastic prizes into gum machines
as an added incentive for children to buy gum.
You never knew what you were going to get.
You might just get gum, or you might get lucky and get one of those cool
plastic trinkets along with the gum.
If you were really lucky, you would get two or three charms instead of
gum. (Who cared about the gum, anyway!)
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Prizes Rise to the Top
I have one of the instruction cards that came with a wholesale package
of prizes from the '50s.
It advises vendors to empty most of the contents of the bag of prizes into
the bottom part of the gum machine before filling the rest of the machine
with gumballs. The prizes
tend to ride up to the top with each turn of the coin vending device.
Now don't you think that would be to the advantage of the vendor?
Of course it would -- the manufacturer wanted to sell more prizes!
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Accurate Vending Measures Implemented
Somewhere along the line, manufacturers helped the vendors by putting the
prizes in little capsules the size of gumballs.
These were usually very small prizes such as plastic gems and small charms.
With that innovation, the customer would only get one gumball or one prize.
It doesn't seem to be an idea that lasted long, because there aren't a
lot of those little capsules around these days.
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I'll Take the Prize!
An even better idea was to make the machines fit the prizes.
Everyone remembers the nickel capsules that came with larger prizes.
Everything you can imagine came in those capsules.
The larger gumballs were mixed with the capsules, but eventually the prizes
were more of a draw than the gum.
Just try to buy a gumball in the grocery store machine these days -- I'll
bet you will have to look hard to find gum (if you find any at all).
The toys now are neat -- but hardly the buy, at 25 cents to $1, that the
nickel prizes were when I was a kid.
If given the choice between the gum and the prize, I'll take the prize
any day!
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Nickel Carnival
In the early '70s, I remember going with my family to the annual Rattle
Snake Hunt in Waynoka, Oklahoma.
There was a big carnival trailer that had rows of vending machines on all
four sides. I was in heaven.
I plugged at least two dollars worth of nickels into those machines to
get the trinkets they had inside.
I never could understand why my mom and dad were upset with me for spending
all of my money on plastic "junk" rather than candy and rides.
For a kid who grew up in a multicolored plastic world, those little bits
of polystyrene held more value than currency.
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Injection Molding Changed the
World
For the most part, early gum machine prizes from the late '40s through
the '60s were injection molded polystyrene, the hard, brittle plastic that
has been used to make everything from Dairy Queen spoons to styrofoam packing
material. Injection molding
was put into use in the '40s and revolutionized the world of manufacturing,
and society as a whole.
It was an efficient way to mass produce anything, especially the miniature
works of art, very cheaply.
The process uses heated (not completely melted) beads or pellets of plastic
which are "injected" into cold molds.
That meant that the item could be quickly ejected and the mold reused right
away.
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Money Doesn't Grow on Trees,
But Plastic Prizes Do
Plastic prizes literaly come on "trees," which consist of the plastic left
in the channels through which the plastic beads are pushed into the mold
chambers. Sometimes, at
the begining of the day when the molds are too cold, the beads won't completely
fill the cavity of the mold before they cool, so that is why you sometimes
see wierd, deformed shapes or partially molded prizes.
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Lightweight Metal
Some prize makers went another step and used a process called vacuum
plating to coat the prizes in a metal alloy that gave them the look
of copper, bronze, gold, nickel, or silver.
That is why prizes like the alphabet watches and the alphabet rings seem
to be so light -- they are not metal all the way through.
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Plastic Bends to Meet the Task
Another type of plastic used more recently is polyethylene, the type of
flexible plastic used for convenience store drink cups and green army men.
This became popular in the late '50s and '60s and was used in pop beads
and one of my favorite sets, Magic Letters, which can flex to make a necklace
or a bracelet when you connect them together.
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