Here's the story about those damn cut-the-string machines I repeat every time I see one of these.
There used to be one on my local dying mall. Noticing this, and being the
cleverdick that I am, I came by one day with a powerful laser and cheesed it by slicing the string in half right through the glass.I subsequently found out that the iPad box that was dangling from the string was, in fact, empty. No "call this number and use this coupon to redeem your prize." Just, empty. Too bad about your fifty cents, kid. Get fucked.
Do you know, I don't feel bad in the slightest about cheating that damn machine.
The vast majority of those machines are very rigged, with a configurable winrate. I'm guessing that machine was set to just never pay out the large prize.
That wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. For what it's worth, it wasn't even part of an arcade. Just standing forlornly by itself in the center of the concourse of a largely empty section of the mall. I know these things are typically privately operated and not part of the mall itself or whatever establishment they're in. There may or may not have been a bank of gumball machines behind it, I don't remember.
Anyway, that mall got bulldozed a couple of years ago and given the state it was in, I wouldn't be surprised if that machine were still in it at the time. And good riddance.
Last time I was at an arcade and I saw someone win one legitimately, they had to take the box to the owner of the place to get the actual prize from the back room. I don't who ran that machine but you'd have to bring it them. But like the other guy said, they're rigged as fuck and have a set win rate that only happens after so many attempts, so if you did try and bring it, they'd check the machine, see that it shouldn't have paid out and would know you cheated immediately. So you would've been screwed either way.
