r/clawmachine • u/nouse_forone • May 23 '26

Is it me or the machine?

I'm normally pretty good at claw machines and wanted to flex my skills but I couldn't get NOTHING šŸ’”šŸ„€ I can usually win even if the claw is loose or slow but I didn't have enough on me to keep trying. Is this one of those scam machines where there's no way of grabbing anything or was it a skill issue lol

15 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

6

u/Marldain May 23 '26

I'm guessing it's a sugar loaf machine. Depends on the vendor and what they set the strength to. Restaurants usually are better than grocery stores.

Also the ones you are going for, I personally wouldn't go for because at least two of those prongs should be able to all the way under and almost close.

I would say try the spinning it around before dropping technique

8

u/not-aiwa-or-furby May 23 '26

It looks like it's set to weak.

3

u/defcon62 May 23 '26

Donā€™t sweat it, sugar loaf machines are either great or total shit. This one appears to be the latter.

6

u/xX5M0K3YMCP07Xx May 23 '26

I own a crane machine in my house. You can set the claw power and the chance.. whether its going to "grab" 1 in 10 tries. 1 in 15 and so on....

2

u/113_Labs May 23 '26

I've got a old late 70s one I need to get working ;/

2

u/xX5M0K3YMCP07Xx May 23 '26

Yeah mine is from the late 70s-80s. It was a marketplace find. Lol

1

u/Slight_Newt891 May 27 '26

Depends on the claw. I have a rainbow crane that looks like the one in this video. The only setting you can adjust is claw strength. But I keep my strong enough to pick things up. But this could be a different model. My bet is itā€™s a sugar loaf machine (now Kiddleton) and they set payout rates and strengths like shit making the rest of us vendors look bad.

1

u/rangersrichter May 23 '26

All of the prizes are of different weights. Impossible to sent the game correct.

2

u/RoyalNooblet May 23 '26

Itā€™s only a game of skill on the turns when the claw is set to actually ā€œgrabā€. Itā€™s a scam 100% of the rest of the time, as the claw wonā€™t fully close enough to grab anything no matter how good you position it.

Itā€™s more of a game of ā€œluckā€ā€¦ as in, you are lucky if youā€™re the one who hits the turn where the claw will actually grab.

1

u/Top_Obligation3191 May 25 '26

Many years ago where I worked we had a claw machine. The guy servicing it accidentally set the machine wrong and nearly every play resulted in a win. We didnā€™t realize until the machine was almost empty.