50 Vending Machines That Were Designed For Some Very Specific Things (New Pics)

There’s nothing quite like sneaking out to a vending machine for a cheeky snack during a break. Whether you’re finishing up your extracurriculars at school, doing research late at night at university, or burning the midnight oil at the office, there is something mundanely magical about feeding bits of metal into a robot that spits out food. It feels like something that you’d find in an old sci-fi novel.

Vending machines are incredibly cool and convenient inventions that still blow our minds every time we start thinking about how weirdly retrofuturistic a concept they are. However, they have become so ubiquitous in our lives that many of us barely ever notice them anymore. Fortunately, it’s possible to change that in a heartbeat—all you need is a uniquely-designed machine that sells something unexpected! There are far more interesting things than just candy bars and cans of soda for sale, after all.

Our team at Bored Panda has collected photos of some of the coolest, most unusual, and downright bizarre vending machines from around the globe. We’d love to share them with you, so scroll down and upvote your fave pics, dear Pandas. [Ting, Whrrrrrr, Clunk.] When you’ve enjoyed this list to the fullest, check out Bored Panda’s previous collection of awesome vending machines right over here.

Bored Panda was interested to learn about customer convenience, automation, and the importance of the 'human factor,' so we got in touch with Matt Johnson, Ph.D., the host of the Neuroscience of Branding blog and the Human Nature blog. Johnson is a professor of consumer psychology at Hult International Business School and Harvard University, and the author of 'Branding that Means Business.' Read on for his insights about the trade-off that vending machines provide consumers, and why human interactions while buying things are still important to us, no matter how much we might love convenience.