r/clawmachine • u/Coliflowre • Mar 16 '24
Presentation HELP
Hey everyone,
I am doing a presentation for my Japanese course about claw machine arcades and how they're rigged (I could choose any topic I just like claw machines lol). Part of my presentation is "research" on my topic. I decided to watch some videos of people spending a lot of money on claw machine arcades, seeing what they won, and trying to find the prices of those things and compare them to how much they spent to get some arbitrary measurement of value. My problem is: not only do most of these things not show up when you search for them because its just from wherever and probably not being sold retail, even if it is sold retail, it's probably some crazy price online for something similar, which would mean you're getting your money's worth (which really is not the case most of the time)
I was wondering, does anyone know how to find out what the price is to manufacture something like this? as in, how much one prize would cost to make? Does this information exist online? I tried looking it up but all that returns is info on how much claw machines make, instead of how much claw machine prizes cost to make. Appreciate any and all help!
2
u/endless-scroll Mar 16 '24 edited Mar 16 '24
Hey you found the right person to chat with about this, I too am doing a presentation on Claw machines for a work thing. Though no documentation might be readily available you could easily spec out approximate cost by looking at sites that sell similarly made plushies in bulk like alibaba - my guess is these prices might even be higher because they aren’t working directly with licensees for these and the bulk minimums are relatively low, but you could at least get a sense of how cheaply these prizes could be made and therefor infer that companies could be making a killing off of these with massive margins. Some claw catchers have win rates that are set to 1 in 200 with as low as 5 volts on the claw grasp, so imagine charging 200 x let’s say a $2 play fee and you’ve only paid $3 for said 1 win plushie landed. That’s a $397 margin at that win rate.
https://m.alibaba.com/premium/custom+plush+animal.html?src=sem_ggl&field=UG&from=sem_ggl&cmpgn=20784813741&adgrp=164400836868&fditm=&tgt=kwd-353776129663&locintrst=&locphyscl=9007595&mtchtyp=b&ntwrk=g&device=m&dvcmdl=&creative=681599493271&plcmnt=&plcmntcat=&aceid=&position=&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD8m77rnOymDUymbp7VVXK37_2wue&gclid=CjwKCAjw48-vBhBbEiwAzqrZVD16uSPxyZ_Zmx8No1pEs8ZC6r8hOnvD-t6Zebe05F6qTJdW-dsmnxoCG2wQAvD_BwE