Lego

I was waiting with the kids to catch a flight yesterday. Kids are not equipped to be especially good at waiting, particularly in airports, so we had a walk around the terminal. Now this was Adelaide domestic airport and it isn't particularly big or elaborate. You still get to walk on the tarmac at Adelaide which is kinda fun (and the plane empties quickly because half the people go out the backdoor).

Our stroll around the terminal took all of two or three minutes but we did find a new vending machine we hadn't seen before tucked in behind the men's toilets. It sold lego. About a dozen different small boxes of lego sat on a little shelf at the back of the machine marked A1 or B3 etc. to show you what was available and a grid of boxes sat horizontally in front of this. It looked like a robot arm was designed to pick these up and drop them in the pickup slot.

The kids were mildly interested but I thought the vending machine looked cool and wanted to get something. A quick trip back to where my wife was waiting and we managed to whinge enough to extract $8 (I was broke) to buy the cheapest little lego car. Back to the machine and in goes the money. We punch in A1 and the arm extends out beautifully, picks up a box by suction I think and drops it in the collection slot. It was great!

Trouble for the vending company is for our $8 the robotic arm picked B3, a $16 lego car, and dumped it in the collection slot. Lovely!

(The downside was I spent the next 15 minutes trying to get the thing together! Two small bits were hidden inside a rubber wheel and I didn't see them! It's not my fault I took so long!)