Cool to see the old claw machines that actually pick things up! They used to have around 20 in the back and they'd be filled with fingerpuppets, erasers, bouncy balls, little plastic insects, men, whatever... You'd almost ALWAYS get something, just little trinkets but you could fill half a gallon ziploc bag for a few bucks. Sometimes there was a pen sticking straight up out of the pebbles or other harder to grab item that was worth a certain number of tickets if you redeemed it at the counter. It was fun going down the row or turning a corner and you'd see one with toys you hadn't seen yet. The machines were already decades old when I went there 30 and 40 years ago. I imagine they aren't ten cents anymore now that they added the card reader or whatever that LED thing is. Played the pokerino and skee ball too! It was awesome going to this place in the off season on weekends, used to skatebaord up and down the boardwalk for many blocks just dropping into random stores, Funland and Marty's were my favorite arcades. Everytime I see a Walking Dead cabinet or Raw Thrills Supercars it makes me appreciate just what an insane deal it is to play pinball and these games for a reasonable daily admission fee (not that I begrudge Marty's for making their business model work on the boardwalk). In fact, I remember Marty's generally had great prices on all their games in the 90's, mostly 25 or 50 cents when a dollar was creeping in as the norm.
Cool to see the old claw machines that actually pick things up! They used to have around 20 in the back and they'd be filled with fingerpuppets, erasers, bouncy balls, little plastic insects, men, whatever... You'd almost ALWAYS get something, just little trinkets but you could fill half a gallon ziploc bag for a few bucks. Sometimes there was a pen sticking straight up out of the pebbles or other harder to grab item that was worth a certain number of tickets if you redeemed it at the counter. It was fun going down the row or turning a corner and you'd see one with toys you hadn't seen yet. The machines were already decades old when I went there 30 and 40 years ago. I imagine they aren't ten cents anymore now that they added the card reader or whatever that LED thing is. Played the pokerino and skee ball too! It was awesome going to this place in the off season on weekends, used to skatebaord up and down the boardwalk for many blocks just dropping into random stores, Funland and Marty's were my favorite arcades.
Everytime I see a Walking Dead cabinet or Raw Thrills Supercars it makes me appreciate just what an insane deal it is to play pinball and these games for a reasonable daily admission fee (not that I begrudge Marty's for making their business model work on the boardwalk). In fact, I remember Marty's generally had great prices on all their games in the 90's, mostly 25 or 50 cents when a dollar was creeping in as the norm.
Heaven
Considering you went to North Carolina, did you ever film the arcade at the Tweetsie Railroad?