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Friday, February 10, 2012

Westdale Mall Machine

Recently I traveled across town to the bad mall.  They had a claw machine to review.
2600 Edgewood Road Southwest, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404
The fun thing about this blog is that I get to take extra risks to do it.  This time I went wild and went for the side of the machine that has miniature basketballs.  Normally I'd think sphere doesn't get picked up by the claw, but what if you got it perfectly around it? Wouldn't the sphere hold better?

Play it safe with the stuffed animals, or go for the glory of the balls?
Now obviously this was going to be a challenge.  But the game was 50 cents a play so not a rip off that way, and it had decent stuff.  NBA and College themed basketballs.  Not a bad officially licensed merchandise.  Or what I assume was officially licensed.  The problem though is that to get down low enough to get that perfect grip around the basketball you need some serious force behind the claw to wedge it's way between the other balls.  Spheres are good for stacking surprisingly.  This makes it tough to get the claw in.  So my review on this machine won't come with a number because I don't think that's fair.  Instead it will come with this warning.  When trying for a ball, especially a rubber one and not a squishy one.  Make sure there is enough squishy stuff around it so the claw can caress it's way underneath.  This should allow it to get that optimal grip position.  But unless it has that, you won't be able to break the rubbery surface to get the sweet prize inside.

This trip to the mall also had an old lady mall walker wandering around and she talked to me, which distracted me quite a bit.  Can't you see I'm busy here lady.  But I'm a nice guy so I talked back and she said how she has never seen anyone win one of those damned machines.  Oh how I wanted to win and rub it in her face.  See totally a nice guy.  But sadly dear readers, I wasn't able to pull off a win this time.

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