Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for September 20, 2015

So, Alice is a sucker for the old quarter trinket machines, heh?Petey is surely correct!

As will be the case for most of the rest of this month, Richard posted a blog entry for this strip alone.

By the time they get to Vegas, Alice will have what no other gumball machine connoisseur has – A SYSTEM!!

As a kid I was practically always more satisfied with the plastic capsule than with whatever cheap crap was inside it.

I remember those machines! I had to save my money for them, but I didn’t rely on just one quarter. I would take 5 quarters and increase my odds of getting something good. Once I got a miniature see-through, marble-like “superball”. Another good one was a miniature deck of playing cards. I still have them after 40 years! :D

It took me much longer than it should have to realize I could never get any of the things I saw – only what was buried at the bottom.

A good life lesson, Alice. Thanks again mabrndt – interesting.

One time, I found a broken gumball machine. Got a near-complete set of the Marvel mini-books.

And, can you win plastic whistles in Vegas?

Believe it or not, back in the non-PC days, one of the little trinket/toys in those things was a working miniature all-plastic Stiletto Knife…

Now, don’t jump all over ChessPirate, Gauntsy. Look up this on Google: Boys suspended for tiny G. I. Joe guns. Now, some would consider anything that fulls under that rubric to be “PC.”

Thanks, mabrndt.I grew up during a Golden Age (for me, anyhow; WWII was raging – pure horror for many people). As I’ve recounted elsewhere, when we lived in Pittsburgh, every day my mom would give me a penny, and I’d go to the candy store on the other side of the streetcar tracks and buy a maple-leaf-shaped lump of maple-sugar candy, along with a tiny prize. I remember a c. 1" pair of scissors that would make snipping motions; a black and a white Scottie mounted on magnets that would repel or attract; and a tiny horseshoe-shaped magnet with a tiny metal bar to pick up. I left Pittsburgh before my ninth birthday, which makes those toys over 71 years old – if they exist anywhere.

One of the “gumball” machines that I remember had actual WWII and Korean War-era military insignae — mostly Private, Corporal, Technician or Sergeant’s stripes; but if you were lucky you could get an actual brass or silver “U.S.” or Branch-of-Service insignia (Infantry, Artillery, Tank Corps, etc) or Battalion crest for 25 cents.