an industry devoid of technological change?

When was the last time you plunked a quarter into a machine for a bubble gum ball? Today, my daughter dropped three of her own hard earned quarters into a candy-turned-trinket machine, and watched in horror as it gave her nothing for her money. We've all been through this experience - feeling stupid for being shocked, beating on the glass, shaking it like a fool, trying to jam our entire forearm up the machine's iron orifice to see if we can "unstuck" it, and finally asking for our money back only to be told to call the vending company (not the store in which it is installed). Well, it was quite a similar experience for my daughter. Lucky for her, the Wal-Mart representative was nice enough to refund her the 75 cents, and I counseled her in the ways of the vending machine. Hopefully she has learned her lesson, but I doubt it. After all, I had been ripped off countless times by vending machines as a child and still managed to lose money while in college buying snacks from the student lounge vending machines.

This got me thinking about vending machine technology. Sure, I've seen some fancy looking pop machines, but how much has the technology *really* changed? This has got the be the only industry where they are still using similar (if not the same) technology as twenty or thirty (or more?) years ago. I could use the cliche analogy and state that we can send a man to the moon, but we can't get a simple machine to drop a gum ball consistently. I guess I'm in the wrong business. I want to be able to still use old decrepit technology and not have to worry about ripping people off or upgrading. I want to be able to charge children 75 cents for a 2 cent plastic trinket.

Maybe I'm not giving the vending machine industry enough credit. After all, they sure managed to adapt the machines to take in more quarters at the same time ($0.75 for a rubber bouncing ball?).