Vintage Vending #15: Pom Poms!

The first sentence is always hardest, unless you kill it with bullshit like this.

Today on Vintage Vending, meet the Pom Poms! Six adorably fuzzy beasts from God knows where, ready to offer us love and companionship! Their feet are stickers!

We’ll see more of them in a bit. First, we gotta get through the other stuff. The company behind this set evidently felt that Pom Poms were too exquisite to be guaranteed prizes, and thus, you were just as likely to win plastic whistles or tiny skateboard keychains.

Taiwan, why do you toy with me?

These charms are neat, even if the identities of those sorts of robots always stumps me. Robotechalion Gundam something or another? You tell me.

Take special note of the one standing next to the motorcycle. I love how he eliminates the nuisance of carrying a shield by having a right hand that actually IS a shield. Not to be outdone, the fellow above him turned one of his hands into a giant boulder. But he doesn’t seem entirely acclimated, yet.

Cheap junky rings are vending machine classics, but these are the worst kind. It’s just a flatworm-shaped piece of tin, easily bendable and possibly breakable.

We say this of bad jewelry even when it isn’t true, but in this case, it is: These rings will stain your fingers. I’ve endured too many flatworm-shaped rings to forget that.

The stain won’t be gold, or copper, or anything else that might seem appropriate for a ring of that color. It’ll be some gross mossy green. A green that makes fingers look like they’ve been cursed by Rosska, troll shaman of the forestlands.

I’ve always been a sucker for “cricket clackers,” or whatever these are called.

If you’ve never seen one in action, they can be made to “jump” by pushing down on what I suppose could be considered the cricket’s ass. If you hit it just right, it’ll fly several feet away. Then you’ll leave it wherever it lands, and only remember it after a foolhardy barefoot adventure in the middle of the night.

EDIT: Okay, so maybe that’s a grasshopper. I don’t care.

This is the fifteenth edition of Vintage Vending, but I feel like we’ve already seen sixty different pairs of goofy monster teeth. This example is too small to wear unless you’re three-years-old, which is cruel, since only a gifted three-year-old could handle these without choking.

It looks rather akin to disembodied cow udders, and the thought of cow udder teeth thrills me to pieces. If only my mouth was five times smaller! Maybe Rosska can help with that, after I win his trust with fealty and gooseberries.

Besides everything I’ve already mentioned, there were other “lesser” prizes, like a cowboy riding a horse, and a fake mustache small enough to inadvertently become a Hitler disguise. Forget that junk, because any kid who spent their quarters at this machine was only after one thing.

A Pom Pom.

I’ve been habitually breaking my vow to leave these teaser cards intact, and Pom Poms are not going to help me stop that. I refuse to be separated from Pom Poms by a paper-thin sheet of plastic. It’s time to set these fuckers free.

Let me think, here.

I guess one of the Pom Poms is a witch, and another is a drowsy child. The rest are members of an old lady bridge club. If you can look at these Pom Poms and not name one of them “Edna,” you’re a f-r-e-a-k.

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a great dinner tonight.

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