7: A vending machine for everything
Dispensing happiness at the touch of a button
In November 2020, I stumbled across the ‘world’s first Norwegian Salmon ATM’ opposite Muddy Murphy’s Irish Pub on Claymore Road. The proximity of the pub and the stumbling may or may not have been related. To make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I took a picture.
Buying salmon from an ATM is normal for Singapore, where there’s a vending machine for everything. But growing up in 1980s England, vending machines were very different. They were mostly found in pub toilets selling condoms to optimistic boozers. It was a suitably seedy setting: freezing, neon-lit, white-tiled rooms with long metal troughs along one wall. Opposite, next to the broken sinks, were the wonkily mounted condom machines.
As teenagers, my friends and I would read the smutty names with boggle-eyed disbelief: Strawberry Crush, Chocolate Climax, Banana Manforce. The machines were entirely mechanical, with a sort-of tray thingy at the bottom that would unlock after you inserted a pound coin. If nobody was around, we would test the rumour that you could get free packets by shoving the thingy in and out as rapidly as possible. Our understanding of sex itself was much the same.
These days, vending machines come with touchscreens, cashless payment and the power rating to keep salmon frozen in a tropical climate - but Singapore’s most common vending machine is the relatively lo-tech canned-drinks dispenser. These pop up anywhere that is sheltered and near a power source, which is almost everywhere. I walk past the one pictured below on my way to the MRT station every weekday.
Alongside international brands such as Sprite and Coca-Cola are local options like Pokka Soursop and Yeo’s Grass Jelly. This is also normal for Singapore, where exotic flavours are commonplace - as witness Creamy One, the durian-flavoured condom. The name is a reference to a particular type of durian, in case you were wondering.
If canned drinks aren’t your fancy, then how about freshly squeezed orange juice? For two dollars (GBP1.20, USD1.50), the Mousetrap-like machinery inside an iJooz will squeeze four chilled Australian oranges in front of your very eyes and serve them in a sealed cup (the juice, not your eyes). Other machines offer hot food, from the BoBo Pop which vends fishballs with cheese dip, to the Magic Cotton Candy machine.
Elsewhere, Singaporean vending machines really do sell everything: books, toys, groceries, fresh salad and of course frozen fish. For the ultimate gimmick, however, nothing beats the 15-level luxury car vending machine at Autobahn Motors, apparently aimed at billionaires so impetuous that Norwegian salmon on demand is nowhere near extravagant enough.
At the other end of the scale, one charitable Singaporean family set up a vending machine offering free drinks to delivery drivers in March this year. Since then, they’ve dispensed almost 2,000 free drinks to thirsty workers, although it’s not all good news. In a rare example of unscrupulousness, some locals have been taking advantage of the freebies, forcing the family
‘to make the system maybe try to discern whether the person is a delivery worker, for instance, so that the machine does not just dispense drinks to everyone.’
Knowing Singapore, it won’t be long before facial-recognition cameras are verifying your identity against a national database before dispensing a drink - much like the passport-free borders that are coming next year. In the meantime, the population can be trusted not to abuse vending machines. The fact that they remain on the streets undamaged is testament to that.
Even so, the Norwegian salmon ATM opposite Muddy Murphy’s Irish Pub has now disappeared. Perhaps the energy cost was unsustainable. Perhaps it was carried off by the same unscrupulous locals helping themselves to free drinks. Or perhaps, like durian-flavoured latex, the novelty simply wore off.
But at least I know I wasn’t hallucinating.
I remember seeing a vending machine selling hot toasted sandwiches somewhere in the Singapore CBD. Talk about novelty.