Geronimo

There is something inherently fascinating about the vending machines where things fall down after you select them. Like candy bars or gum, after the strange circular springs (which look like dough hooks) rotate and advance them and they fall into the ingeniously designed chamber that prevents you from reaching your hand up to pluck them from their resting places. There was an episode of The Critic where guns did that.

I purchased an individually sized, overpriced bag of potato chips in this manner today to eat with my lunch. (It was a chicken sandwich with swiss cheese, mayonnaise and honey mustard, if you're curious. It was average.) Some of the chips were smashed when I ate them, and that is really unfortunate. Is there anything less desirable, chipwise, than broken pieces? No.

This isn't revolutionary news, I'm aware, because chips are frequently broken at the bottom. However, I also noticed that the potato chips are on the top level of the vending machine. What a disastrous placement of such a fragile food! Especially when there are heartier things in there, like Snickers and granola bars small tubes of Pringles. I want to share with you a design to help minimize the tragedy of chip breakage in vending machine falls. Observe:

I can't say for certain that the chips weren't broken before the fall, but really, I don't want to take that chance, either. Hopefully, together we can keep other chips from suffering a similar fate. The gum can go screw itself, though.