I was at the mall last night getting dragged to see Valentines Day (girlfriends choice). We were sitting on a bench waiting to let us in when i noticed one of those vending machines where you can win a handheld or an iphone. I've hung out at the mall a ton growing up and have never seen anyone win anything so i would never bother playing but that didnt stop a bunch of teenagers from trying. I was explaining to my girlfriend that the machines are a rip off and its practilly impossible to win when the kids won a new psp. I guess I was proved wrong. Has anyone ever seen anyone win on those things or have won  themselves?

I saw somebody win 2 or 3 teddy bears that were stuck together.

Oh, and Amy Wong won the keys to the "Planet Express" ship on Futurama, once.

I saw a pack of kids huddled around one when I was there Christmas shopping, over the holidays. There were five of them, rotating out every few plays. They had probably spent about fifteen bucks, and one of them finally won a DSI, but I have tried them a number of times, and can't seem to get lucky. BTW: it's the one where you have to stack the little blue lights on top of each other, I don't know if that's the one your talking about or not?

I was thinking of the one with the robotic claw!

The kids were playing 3 different ones. The first was the stacking blue lights, then their was one with tons of lights and you had to hit the button on the right light. Th one they finally won on was a new one to me. Basicly the machine had a blade and it went side to side and if you hit the button at the right time it cut a rope holding the different handhelds.

They are rigged so you lose, however the odds exist so that someone does win (but not too often so they lose money) so that people like you (who saw the person win) would step up and try yourself.

I've seen people win lots of things though, as I always go down to wildwood NJ and they have tons of those machines on the boardwalk.

That would be stacker, which is the most common one. (There's also a red variant of it.) Obviously, I've seen it, but I don't play it, because I know how it works. It's easy to get to the small prize, which usually costs about what a play costs. But nobody ever goes for those, because they see how close they are to the big prizes! This is where the profit comes in. The game speeds up, and uses "user delay" for an excuse to have blocks miss. And sure enough, by the time you get to the last row, you have one block. There seems to be a dispute on the actual odds of the game letting you have the win (unless you're grossly offtimed), but it seems to be about 1 in 200.

As for the claw, you can't get big prizes from them really, either. The claws are usually set up in a triangular grip, which is poor for grabbing thin, narrow boxes. Larger boxes (like a Wii) could in theory be picked up, but even empty, they're usually heavy enough to fall right out. Those claws are set to maybe be able to hold on to a comic book for weight or something, as I've seen someone land one near perfectly, and it didn't even try to pick up the box.