Clawing Your Way to the Prize

See You At The Clawcade

The Big One in Fitchburg Mass

There’s a Claw Machine near the back end of the arcade at the Great Wolf Lodge in Fitchburg that I particularly like. The machine is called The Big One. The machine is adorned with images of Sumo Wrestlers. (You know, big.) The graphics scream at you that you can win a BIG prize, namely a gigantic vinyl beach ball - in this case with the Great Wolf Lodge logo.

The prize door is emblazoned with the word Elaut. Turns out, that’s the Belgium-based company that makes these machines.

Anyway, Little Bean gave this one a try and failed pretty badly at it. She has a knack of winning rubber duckies or little squishies from smaller claw machines.

Technically, the arcade at Great Wolf Lodge ought to be called a Clawcade because it’s filled mostly with Claw Machines or similar games where you need to direct some device to go get a prize for you, whether that be giant beach balls, tiny duckies or a roll of tickets that you can turn in to spend even more money.

Make no mistake, by the way, claw machines are every bit a game of chance as slot machines. In fact, several states like California and New Jersey demand that operators register them as such. One funny thing I discovered is that the claw strength on the machines can be manipulated based on electrical current - in some cases, remotely.

Maybe an operator sees a kid at one of the machines and decides that kid is going home with a prize. Boom, instant winner.

My wife, somehow, is generally able to defy these odds, and often comes home with large stuffed prizes, much to the amusement of Little Bean. My theory is that operators see her at a machine and decide she’s cute so they turn up the claw action. I know I would!

These things aren’t new either. They’ve been around as hand cranked Claw Digger machines since the 1890s. The first patent for one happened in 1927 and was called the Erie Digger, designed after the machines that dug the Erie Canal in New York.

The Erie Digger from 1927

Since then, they can be found all around the world, not just in truck stops on the thruway. There’s an arcade in Tokyo that holds the world record for claw machines, a whopping 477 under one roof.

Personally, I can’t recall a single time that I actually won something at a claw machine. Maybe as a kid and I forgot. But Little Bean keeps trying though.

At The Big One she even commented that the prize door was big enough for her to crawl into. She was right of course and not the first to think of it. Kids getting stuck inside the machines are SO SO common that both ABC and AP did stories on the phenomenon. And YouTube has hundred of videos of kids swimming around inside them. The temptation is real!

How about you? What’s your favorite claw machine prize? Just don’t crawl up in one, ok?