What's the strangest / quirkiest vending machine you've seen?

MSE_James

I was at a suburban railway station yesterday that had a vending machine selling frozen ready meals: 



These days I know it's fairly common in rural areas for farms to have vending machines for dairy products and fresh fruit/veg.    I've even seen a vending machine for farm-fresh milk in quite an urban shopping centre.

20 years ago a convenience store near where I lived at the time installed a hot pizza vending machine which was only the second in the UK at the time and caused quite a stir.

Last year I was very impressed by some of the vending machines at Paris Austerlitz station which sold some very nice fresh snacks of a much higher standard than you would find anywhere on the UK railway network.

What unusual vending machines have you seen on your travels? Have you tried them? Did they work well?

DullGreyGuy

Local shopping centre has a candy floss machine where you choose a shape/colour pattern and it makes it on a stick to that... not really extensive travels though

Seen a few hotels with a champagne mini bottles, in one case next to it was a machine with adult toys, lube and protection. 

Didnt see it personally, but a friend did show a video of a hot pizza vending machine which cooked/warmed it to order 

MSE_James

That reminds me of the other one I was going to mention - a hotel near me that has engagement rings in a vending machine 

Emmia

The Netherlands has hot snack food vending machines in stations and in larger cities.

2childmum2

My son lived in Munich for a while and there were sausage vending machines there. And also cigarette machines on a number of street corners near where he lived

molerat

Many years ago I saw a soft drink can vending machine, all the usual suspects, Coke, Fanta ....... Strongbow !! In an open place where kids had access

Eldi_Dos

Apparantly there are 10 tola bar vending machines in Dubai, suppose its one up on garage flowers.

Mnoee

I've only seen 'normal' vending machines with slightly strange items in - hotels with toothpaste and toothbrushes, earphones, things like that.

Clearly I'm staying in more budget places than the folks seeing champagne and engagement rings! 

Rosa_Damascena

DullGreyGuy said:

Local shopping centre has a candy floss machine where you choose a shape/colour pattern and it makes it on a stick to that... not really extensive travels though

Seen a few hotels with a champagne mini bottles, in one case next to it was a machine with adult toys, lube and protection. 

Didnt see it personally, but a friend did show a video of a hot pizza vending machine which cooked/warmed it to order 

  - not such a DullGreyGuy perhaps?

Heard about the pizza vending machine though, there's one at a petrol station mid-Essex.

marcia_

 In Liverpool city centre there was a vending machine with false eyelashes and fake nails! 

Must be really difficult for drunk students to put them on in the middle of town. 

AlexMac

Really boring, but as a kid, 65 years ago, we'd use the milk machine late at night to share a pinta as a drink on the way home from the Boy Scout meetings in Brixton South London.  If we were really flush, we'd buy sixpennoth' (2.5p) of chips (from a human, not a machine). 

The only place that sells milk from a machine now is the wholesome, organic, free-range unpasturised trendoid farm shop near my mate's in Wiltshire.

Oh and completely off the topic, it reminds me that in those days, I, as a boy scouts was allowed to wear a knife in public if in uniform!  Walk around Brixton now with a six inch blade on your belt and they'd hopefully bang you up?