It seems that you can find just about anything these days in a vending machine, soda, chips, a copy of the Rosetta Stone Language Series on CD, a charger for your iPhone, mashed potatoes... Mashed potatoes?
As reported by our sister paper at the New York Village Voice, among various other media sites, mashed potatoes are a popular mainstay amongst Singapore 7-Elevens. So alongside your cherry slushy, you can get a side of the tuberous crop mashed and covered in home style gravy. Yummy. If the traditional Thanksgiving side plopping out of a vending machine isn't weird enough for you, the world was also recently shock and awed by a Minnesota dive bar that has a vending machine stocked with pregnancy tests. Assumingly the idea behind this little piece of genius is to stop yourself from drinking in the event that you might give your unborn fetus fetal alcohol syndrome. Pee on the little white stick and find out if you can have that fifth margarita or not. Ladies, if you are taking a pregnancy test in the bathroom of a bar in Minnesota you have many more problems than just a potential baby.
These items may seem odd coming out of a dispenser, but they are actual rather tame. We dug around the interwebs and found some pretty random vending machine items.
7. Umbrellas
When you think of Russia, rain is not the first thing to come to mind, maybe snow or vodka or those funny hats. Nevertheless, if you are running around the streets of Moscow and the sky opens up on you, just find an umbrella vending machine and you are good to go. Now if there was only something to do about Putin.
6. Live Crabs
Apparently in China and Japan you can buy live Shanghai hairy crabs from your local vending machine. The crabs hibernate due to the machine's temperature and then you pop your cash in and out comes a live crab. What you do with your recent purchase is up to you, but may I suggest putting it down the back of someone's shirt? It will be worth every exchanged dollar.
5. Underwear
We've all taken a walk of shame in one capacity or another and there is nothing worse than walking in your shame for an entire day! You can clean up to some extent, but the underwear situation is the worst. In Japan, girls never have to fear having that not so fresh feeling as they can just pick up a pair of unmentionables at their corner vending machine. Problem solved, now go out there and sleep over someone's house on a weeknight.
