Boy gets trapped inside arcade claw machine (yes, inside)
Commentary: A boy in Titusville, Florida, really, really needs a toy from one of those maddening machines. Firefighters have to come to the rescue.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
As one clever Facebooker commented, How many quarters did it take to get him out?
How many times have you been in an arcade or at the state fair and tried to pick up a toy with a claw?
Those machines seem to have been around since frustration was invented.
You try; you try. You pick up a little teddy, but as you maneuver it toward the exit, it falls from the claw.
On Wednesday, a little boy in Titusville, Florida, decided there might be a more reliable way to get a toy: Get into the machine.
"He climbed through a small door in the machine and crawled his way up," Greg Sutton, battalion chief of the Titusville Fire and Emergency Services, told me.
The boy is called Mason, and very soon it was clear he was trapped inside.
As the Fire and Emergency Services described on Facebook, one of its own lieutenants happened to be there, off duty, and spotted Mason inside the machine.
He and another firefighter managed to unjar Mason "with minimal damage to the machine."
I wondered, though, whether Mason was happy among the toys.
"By the look on his face, I'm certain he wanted out," Sutton told me.
But how did Mason feel once he was liberated?
"When I spoke to him after I arrived, he appeared more embarrassed than anything. It was a lot of attention, and for a moment I'm sure he didn't know how he was getting out," said Sutton.
Soon, though, Mason, his mom and friends were back to eating dinner, Sutton told me. And the hashtag #hewantedthattoy was born.
Thankfully, technology has begun to embrace the old-style games in order to give them a modern aspect.
The UK's Liberty Games, for example, created an internet-connected version of the arcade claw, in which you can operate a real claw via your browser. Other gaming developers have tried their own takes too.
But you're a real gamer. Gamers want to win. So did Mason get a stuffed animal?
He most certainly did, I'm told.
Often times we say to ourselves that you never know what the next shift will bring. The unexpected ways we get to help...
Posted by Titusville Fire and Emergency Services on Wednesday, February 7, 2018
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