Shop Till It Drops

Ando Japando writes "There's an article on NYTimes.com about a new vending machine in the US. Unlike the typical machine, this one is 18 ft wide and takes up 200 square ft. Of course, the convenience stores are not sure if this machine is a boon or a boo, but many people like it because it doesn't take up a lot of space. It'd be really cool to see these all over the place. Others complain about the lack of human interaction and perceive it as dehumanizing. That may be true, but at least it's not a live bait vending machine."

Comments

This may be new in the USA

[overshoot]

but something very much like it is quite common in Japan. The last time I was there, there was a beast of a machine that sold everything from fast food to condoms in the lobby.

Re:This may be new in the USA

[macshit]

Yeah, Japan's the place for this sort of thing.

Besides the ones you often hear about (porn, etc), some wierd ones I've seen in japan include:

• A machine selling cookies & other snacks -- not the usual little packs, but huge family-sized boxes; the delivery-door was about 15" x 15"!
• A machine selling full-sized bottles of Whisky (all japanese brands though)

... and my favorite:

• A machine selling potted plants -- fairly large, leafy ones (like a foot high), complete with a big clay flowerpot. It looked like it had a fairly elaborate mechanism to deliver the plants to a little door (well actually a pretty big door) without harming them.

The wierd thing is that all of the above were not in obvious `specialty' locations (e.g., near a nursery for the plants), but just in front of fairly average train stations, or just on the street in the middle of nowhere!

I do not understand...

Here's a picture of it

[Lumpish Scholar]

The NYT article didn't include a picture, but this page on the Shop 2000 web site does.