Arcade Prizes

My little sister is turning seven. She came home from the bowling alley today and it triggered a quick thought I wanted to share. She ran up to me to show me the two different hats she got for 200 tickets at the arcade. I look at the hat and am thinking "This thing is scrap cloth and worth literally 1 cent". So I say to her, "Rylie these hats are pieces of shit!", nah just kidding. She was proud of them so I told her how cool they were. Then I start thinking how arcade prizes are pretty much a reflection of grown men hustling children one quarter at a time.

As a kid you look around and see all these things on the prize wall. You believe a TV or 10 foot basketball hoop is only one ticket jackpot away, but the beauty is that you also are content with settling for a plastic piece of junk as a consolation prize. The conso prizes are the go-to items that the arcade offers. They cost a realistic amount (one sessions worth) of tickets and most kids can find atleast something they like in there. Things like the finger traps, plastic paratroopers, wrist bands, bouncy balls, whoopee cushions, hack sacks, yoyos, etc all fell into that category. The prizes drive the kids choices and you can tell because they play the games where you win tickets over the games that are just fun. Its like hmm should we play the game with top of the line graphics where you rescue soldiers from terrorists on the new 32 bit system? Nah instead lets play the game where you roll your tokens down a lane that looks like a bowling alley and have them try to nick a pin so you can win tickets and ultimately a friggin finger puzzle. A whole room of games with guns and cars but kids choose the game where you try to stop the moving LED light at a certain spot but it coincidentally always lands right next to where you needed it to. Its all about the tickets and we all fell into the same trap as little munchkins. The markup on the prizes at arcades makes the movie theater prices seem like the flea market. And speaking of fleas, most people who work at bowling alley arcades have them.

Ill finish this post off with a little story of redemption. Not just for myself, but for the millions of young children out there who were taken advantage of in the corner of the back room in the recreation center. Wait that didn't sound right, forget the previous sentence. You read my post the other day about being a dennis the menace growing up right? Well at the local rec center (click that link its perfect and the actual arcade in the story) when I was 10 years old I came across something akin to a golden ticket from Wonka. The guy working there came over to refill the tickets in that bowling game machine I referenced earlier (actual game pictured about 4 lines up). Too bad he left the key in the machine after he loaded it with stacks of tickets. I nabbed it and bounced immediately. The next day I went back and grabbed a quick thousand tickets in about 3 seconds and bought a ton of toys. For a whole year I had that machine on lock. Eventually I lost the key, but I had an incredible run with tickets for a long time. I loved those mini basketballs with NCAA colors on them so I decided to get every single team and decorate my room with them. The robbery was a rush and then having access to all those shitty toys was a dream scenario for a 10 yr old. It was like the kid version of being a bank robber. Score one for the good guys.

If you ever run into me later on in life and I am managing an arcade at a bowling alley, make sure you punch me in the eye and steal a toaster that costs 12,000 tickets.

-JT "bonafide hustla" Wolfe