Squishmallows

So the story for Squishmallows will actually begin, because we like to have a little context, we like to go back to history when we can, by the Panama Canal in the late 19th century, and the steam shovels that were used to build it.

So by 1924, the Erie Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut produced the first mass market version of the Erie Digger, which is a glass box filled with candy, operated by a hand crank, I have pictures of it, I'm gonna put them in the supplementals, it's so cute, and a mechanical arm.

This is essentially the first claw machine.

Mm.

It required no electricity.

Operators lit candles inside the glass box after dark.

Lee Moss, who ran Erie Manufacturing, fought the federal government to get crane games reclassified as, uh, amusement devices rather than gambling devices, because they were trying to regulate it as like a, basically you would, I mean, a slot machine.

'Cause it is a gamble to try to get something from a claw machine.

Someone's putting all their money into the Erie Digger?

[laughs] For real.

Just, I need four, I need-

I'm bankrupt.

What does it run on? Pennies?

Yeah, it probably ran on pennies.

I-

I spent so much time at claw machines, so much money at claw machines.

They are kryptonite for kids.

I honestly...

I'm sure this isn't right, but I don't remember ever doing a claw machine.

You've never done a claw machine?

Well, that's why I'm saying I doubt that's true, but I don't remember ever doing a claw machine.

Certainly I've never won anything from a claw machine.

Well, they're quite rigged in that you...

Well, you know, the old joke.

And very-