What's the most wild thing you've seen in a vending machine?

In Zürich (I think) 30 years ago there was a big hall with supermarket items in a vending machine (think cornflakes, etc). I was told it was a 24-hr supermarket. I have never been back so I have no idea if it is still there, but it seemed like a good idea to me.

Lavandula

Not really that wild, but many years ago I was in a big aircraft hanger in Madrid, and saw cans of beer in a vending machine.

There is a 24 hour farm shop near me (in England) which sells milk, milkshakes, ice cream, cheese, butter, eggs, Cartmel sticky toffee puddings, Cartmel sticky chocolate puddings, and various locally produced cakes all from vending machines.
The milk, shakes and ice cream are from their own cows, the other products from local artisan producers.
They change the flavours of the milkshakes every week.
That is how it can be 24 hour- they can be doing other things on the farm (or sleeping!) but still be available at customer convenience in an area where a lot of people are on 3 shift working.
The cakes are by a company called 'Cakes by Gina'. In return Gina sells the farm's milk products in her two bakehouses/cafes/ attached shops.

In Amsterdam, FEBO has vending machines that sell all the fried things - croquettes, fries, etc.

There is a 24 hour farm shop near me (in England) which sells milk,
milkshakes, ice cream, cheese, butter, eggs, Cartmel sticky toffee
puddings, Cartmel sticky chocolate puddings, and various locally
produced cakes all from vending machine

^OMG I need this (though my waistline maybe does not)

A raccoon.

Disposable plastic swim trunks. At a motel in the US.

Underwear. Men's and women's. Vending machine in Tokyo.

In Yutz in northern Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France, close to the borders with both Luxembourg and Germany, we came across a drive-up fresh baguette vending machine in a car park. You put in your money (this was BC - before covid and the mass migration to cards), pushed a start button, and waited. A fair amount of time as the machine baked a baguette and inserted it in a paper bag and then dispensed it. It was hot. Half an hour later it had cooled and mostly disappeared. Yes, crumbs in the car.

On our first trip to Amsterdam our hotel had a vending machine with condoms and beer.

In Iceland there is one that has flower arrangements, nice ones!

No one has even mentioned Japan yet, the king of vending machine sales!

@Claudia: Was it a live raccoon that managed to get itself stuck inside a vending machine, or was it the offering in slot C5? I really need more information! :D

Cars. At Carvana.

Bitterballen at nuclear temperatures from FEBO are a godsend at 2am in Amsterdam.

In France: Wine in kid's size folded cartons. At one of the hwy petro stations. Very convenient for le picnic!

One of the strangest (could only be Japan) was the one:

https://www.thetravel.com/weird-things-we-can-actually-buy-in-japans-vending-machines/

Number 21: Honour-system Umbrellas

[snip]
The climate in Japan can be a bit hit or miss with humidity climbing in the summer months so it's good to always be prepared. DyDo, a popular beverage company has decided to do a goodwill gesture by offering the people of Japan honour system-style umbrellas for rent along with their refreshing beverages.

It seems like a totally foreign concept to most of us from America, and a costly experiment since there is no purchase required. All that DyDo asks is that customers return the umbrella once they are finished with them!

This initiative focused on caring for fellow samaritans has been such a hit that they have extended the rental umbrella concept to 500 vending machines nationwide.

Two years ago as we walked down a side street in an Austrian town we came upon a vending machine that sold wine. We always scratch our heads when we see a cigarette machine or now wine vending machine that are accessible to kids at all hours.

There are entire websites and Youtube videos devoted to Japanese vending machines. IIRC, there is even a roadside rest area where someone gathered up current and classic machines and people go out of their way to visit and partake.

And apparently it's quite common in Switzerland for people to put our honor tables or kiosks with homemade or home grown goods, and a small box for payment.

@ Teresa….

Alive. Fritos seemed to be of interest to it.

I haven't seen it, but info about a vending machine in Rome that bakes and sells you a pizza hit the news a few years ago.

Don't know about the Swiss machines but the Japanese machines that sold alcohol/tobacco in the sites I saw all needed ID for them.

Another one of those sites devoted to weird Japanese machines that may be of interest to Travelors:

https://japanagram.me/2024/07/01/the-weird-things-you-can-buy-in-japanese-vending-machines/

[snip]
And if you’re on a budget, this one turns a favorite salaryman hack into a piece of cake by sparing you a visit to the scalper shop. It spits out the cut-rate bullet train tickets that train company employees receive in bulk as part of their compensation (and are not supposed to be resold, even though it’s an open secret that everyone does). If your departure point and destination match the ones available that day, you just hit the jackpot!

The “Mr. Go” pizza machine in Rome that acraven referred to above was mentioned by her in this Travel Forum post more than four years ago: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/report-on-the-pizza-vending-machine-in-rome

On a Rome trip a couple of years ago, my husband made a long pilgrimage across the city to its location, just for the novelty of it. I didn't bother. After finally reaching the machine’s location, it was out of order, so no pizza-made-in-front-of-you-by-machine that night.

On another Italy trip, in Bologna, there were a couple of vending machines set into an exterior wall, along the sidewalk outside a bar. I didn’t inspect either too closely, but one seemed to be dispensing cigarettes, and the other marijuana. As with the alcohol vending machines mentioned above, I don’t know that any kind of I.D. or age check was built into the process.

The OP mentioned being baffled about “English Winegums,” and I had no idea about them either, so did a Google search. From Wikipedia, it turns out that, “Wine gums are a classic, firm, and chewy British confectionery invented by Charles Gordon Maynard in 1909. Despite their name, they contain no alcohol and are generally fruit-flavored with natural colors, often featuring shapes named after wines like port, sherry, and burgundy. Maynards Bassetts is the premier brand, readily found throughout the UK. Candy.

On the other hand, if you swish some Claret around in your mouth for 10 minutes or so, I imagine you’ll develop wine gums.

In Parma, I saw a vending machine selling triangular blocks of fresh parmesan cheese.

I also saw one of the pizza vending machines referenced above, but it was at a train station in Amboise (where they also had a baguette vending machine).

Scotch whisky flavored condoms, in the men’s room of an Edinburgh pub.

Wine gums are still a very popular sweet in the UK, sold in every supermarket and anywhere that sells sweets. They are firm, slightly chewy, fruit gum sweets.

The British seem to like a fruit gum because there are lots of variations.
Sports Mix, also made by Maynard’s, very similar to wine gums but with more exotic flavours ( including apricot and pineapple apparently) and in the shape of sports equipment.
Midget Gems, similar to wine gums but much smaller and harder. A favourite of mine as long as the black ones are fruit flavoured and not aniseed. You don’t know until you try one.
Rountree’s Fruit Gums, small round fruit gums that are so hard they can break your teeth. Sold in rolls but when I was a kid it was the height of sophistication to get them in a box at the cinema.

Then there are also cola bottles, fizzy bottles, jelly milk bottles, cherry lips, York fruits, Percy pigs…… We have many flaws as a country but boy are we good at cheap confectionery!

Mini bottles of champagne. Boston

You won't believe - a used condom.
And one time a snake in Texas as well.

CBD products in a vending machine in Florence…almost next door to a car rental business.

Ah the raccoon jogged my memory. We had a squirrel in the vending machine at the college where I was dean. Our very helpful custodial staff managed to secure it in a large trash can and released it outside. I received several squirrel-themed retirement gifts, including a large bag of peanuts.

Flipflops (sandals) in a vending machine in Hawaii

I don’t know that any kind of I.D. or age check was built into the process.

You must tap a chipped Italian ID card to get cigarettes and "cigarettes" , but not for condoms and "lubing".

Two years ago as we walked down a side street in an Austrian town we came upon a vending machine that sold wine.

These are somewhat common in rural areas of the German wine regions, both a single winery looking for sales, and in one town, wine from different producers in the area.

One very handy vending machine I found, can't remember the country, but many of the pharmacies had one for after hour sales of common items.

You can get alcoholic winegums, by Haribo who also make gummi bears, in almost any supermarket in Germany.

Beer vending machines used to be much more common, same with cigarette machines.

Pizza and baguette vending machines are rather common in small towns on back roads. I also know a couple that dispense honey from the local hives.

Clothes washing and drying can also be found in rural parking lots, usually next to a market.

Japan will sell you stuff you never, ever, thought of buying, let alone from a vending machine.

But is FEBO really the most wild thing though? Seems to me to be a continuation on the good ol' Automats that were at one time, many decades ago, pretty common here in the US.

I do remember cigarette vending machines everywhere and I do remember the beer vending machine at the bowling alley we got dragged to as kids.

But is FEBO really the most wild thing though?

I didn't mean to suggest FEBO was wild.

That said, FEBO at Leidseplein can be pretty wild on a Friday night. Leidseplein is one of the few places in Amsterdam where actual Dutch people go out to get hammered and eat fast food.

Cigarette vending machines (fag machines in British English) were always a last resort. When you're stuck in the club / pub paying the same price or more as 20 and then only getting 17 or 18 in a vending machine sized packet is your only option. They've been illegal in the UK since 2011 Google tells me.

edited to add (off topic): Whenever anyone describes something as wild it always makes me think of the Gerald The Gorilla sketch from 80's British comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News. "Wild? I was absolutely livid!"

Not on Youtube, so here it is in a Reddit thread -

https://www.reddit.com/r/BritishTV/comments/1ntclqf/gerald_the_gorilla/

Disposable plastic swim trunks. At a motel in the US.

I was traveling with a bantam hockey back in the late 60s, and a older brother of a player bought disposable swim trunks from the hotel vending machine. They disintegrated in the pool, and he ended up "streaking" across the pool deck to his towel.

Art-o-mat repurposed cigarette vending machine dispensing original art at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

While driving through the Groene Hart region of South Holland, we stopped at [Melktap De Hoef].1 There was an egg vending machine and a self-serve soft-ice vending machine that used fresh milk. Best ice cream, ever!

an egg vending machine

Raw eggs? I’m guessing it wasn’t like a lot of machines around here stocked with chips, pretzels, and candy, where a rotating coil spins the products forward, and the item at the front of the coil then gravity drops it up to four feet into a hard metal bin at the bottom. That would be yolky.

What if a machine had live hens, and with the push offs button, one if them dropped a fresh egg onto a soft surface?

The Munich Airport. Let's just call them insertable personal pleasure devices. This was 15-20 years ago, but Google seems to think they're still there.

… Or cooked eggs, fried, scrambled, or poached, while U wait?

Maybe there could even be an be an omelet-making vending machine.

Or how about a machine with a raccoon inside that’s trained to make omelets? Coonlets???

"Maybe there could even be an be an omelet-making vending machine."

They have you covered:

https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/omelet-vending-machine.html

Several others that I won't link to.

Dead insects in display cases. Where? Tokyo, of course.