The Taiwanese sure know how to make food entertaining
If you want to market something in Taiwan the easiest way to do it seems to be to make a cutesy game out of it. If you can market something to the 18-30 female demographic with cartoon characters and way too many colors you’re probably going to be an overnight millionaire. Case in point, a few months ago I was walking down the street when I ran into a skill tester game filled with condoms.
Skill testers are traditionally the domain of children and occasionally boyfriends trying to win something for their girlfriends. Condoms don’t really fit either of these bills. Yet there it was, a condom machine covered in rainbow decals in the middle of the street enticing anyone wanting a bit of fun to try and win some condoms.
‘daddy, daddy I won a condom!’
‘uh…what?’
Despite skill tester games being everywhere in Taiwan, at the time I thought there was absolutely no way I was ever going to find anything stranger then condoms as a prize.
Turns out I was wrong…
The other week I came across another skill tester machine. This one was even more bizarre then the condom prize one.
What you’re looking at there ladies and gentlemen is bread. Actual bread that you can eat, sitting in a skill tester machine.
Apart from the buns, it wasn’t even special bread… just literally slices of freaking bread that you can try to pickup with the claw… and then if you win, share with your girlfriend and then go home and have wild crazy sex because you won her something so meaningful.
Ok seriously, I have no idea who the target demographic here is! Is it kids and if so why would they want to win slices of bread? The homeless?! Well they don’t have any money! Adults?!
‘aww a slice of bread, your so sweet!’
Presumably someone comes once a day and empties it out and then restocks it with fresh bread the next day. At least I hope this is what happens. Judging from the amount of bread in there I don’t think much bread gets awarded in prizes. I wonder what they do with all the daily excess bread?
Mind you at $10 or $20 TWD a pop you’d only need a few people to have a shot to cover the cost of stocking the machine with bread. So if they get 5 or 6 people playing over a 24 hour period they’ve already turned a profit. Why anyone would want to win air stale bread that’s been sweating under lights all day though is beyond me.
Slices of bread that get absolutely mauled by the skill claw even if you do win are quite possibly the most unsatisfying prize ever conceived. I want to meet the person who comes up with slices of bread as a prize.
Complete genius, or some guy with no imagination who decided to use whatever was lying around as a prize?
Taiwan continues to amaze me with it’s absolute randomness. Slices of bread in a skill tester machine, who’d have thought!
May 19th, 2010 at 11:33 pm anon(Quote)
Lol wat?
May 25th, 2010 at 7:55 am Frank(Quote)
lmao what a strange country. You should write a book.
May 25th, 2010 at 6:29 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Maybe one day. Let’s give it a few decades of life experience in Taiwan and see what happens
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