Claw Machines are Rigged! [Video]

One of the biggest annoyances growing up was trying to win a stuffed animal from the claw machine and walking out empty-handed. Okay, let's be real... it's still an annoyance as an adult. You spent a whole 50¢ to a dollar (or more depending on how tenacious you felt), put all your strength and ability in aiming the claw exactly where you wanted it only to be disappointed when the claw fails you. Even worse, when it picks up the toy and then drops it.

Turns out, it's not you... it's the CLAW! A writer from Vox did some digging into instruction booklets for different manufacturers of these machines, and found out that the claw is programmed to grab tightly only a part of the time. And what does it come down to? Yep, you guessed it: MONEY! Everything always comes down to money.

The video states:

"Simply input the coin value, the average value of the merchandise and the profit level. The machine will automatically calculate when to send full strength to the claw."

So all in all the machine is programmed ahead of time. According to Vox, the owner of the machine can input their desired profit and adjust the claw strength to limit the number of times people win. The owner can also "fix" the dropping skill. Remember when I said that it especially sucks when the claw grabs your prize and then drops it? Yeah, that's controlled too.

The video does a much better job breaking things down. You can watch it below.

And this whole time I thought I was a bad ass for winning those Care Bears at Dave & Busters.