Fun Fair and how to win prizes

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We’re so fortunate in our little town in the SW of England to have a Fun Fair.

I had seen the posters for a couple weeks and had a little anticipation - especially about the dinosaurs (more in a bit).

I find them attractive for two things: Rides where you are positive you are about to die, and target games, either played against groups or just you.

Against a group I usually do fairly well - esp. if guns (BB’s or water pistols) are involved. I’ve won my wife a few trophy stuffed animals.

With the latter I know they are fixed. A guy I knew (years ago at a church fair) was running the “basketball” shoot and showed how the ball was a bit bigger, and the net a bit smaller that you either had to be really lucky to plop the ball on the net (a slow motion “swish”) or pick up the ball and stuff it in by hand.

Alas, no multi-player games here. There is a short-rifle cork shooter where you try and knock candy off. The top prize is a box of Maltesers. I’m going to pay £1.20 (about $1.60) for a chance to win a candy I don’t like? So pass.

The “win a stuffed bear” booth was unmanned at the time yet I know the gist: knock a can off, win a prize, knock all three down and win a BIG prize. Yet these were not soup cans. They were large, heavy (I would even say stainless) steel cans that you might ship plutonium in. Tough! Yet I grew up in a country where we play baseball and throw the ball and football where we throw the ball.

So what kind of ball is thrown? It could be a softball yet it literally squished in my hand. A Spalding or tennis ball would be much, much better. Nolan Ryan might have been able to knock some cans around. I am supposed to throw 100MPH strikes at leaden cans to even look good losing at this game?

As it was unmanned I was tempted to take a few balls and fill them with rocks - yet that’s cheating a fixed game. Is there any method I might use to win a stuffed bear here?

Also on the poster was a bit about “Talk to dinosaurs” which I highly anticipated. I wrote a bit (with pictures!) on my web site:

https://www.marckx.tech/articles/funfair

2

Just go buy a stuffed bear. You can’t beat that.
It might be a Toss the softish ball in the Can. But they’ll have something inside it. If your ball gets a direct hit it will easily bounce out. That’s a no-win.

3

When I was a student and a bit of a cricketer (would-be-fast-bowler, so I had a fair throw on me) I had a go at a coconut shy at a fair (short explanation - throw a small wooden ball at a coconut on a stand, if you knock it off you win the coconut. Yeah, I know, simple pleasures.)

I nailed the coconut perfectly with my “fastball” and it just - just barely - toppled off the stand. The ball, however, ricocheted straight back over my head - and straight over the fairground stall behind me (!)

So, ah , good luck in your fairground endeavor. And BTW the coconut split when it hit the floor, so I walked home with a dripping coconut.

j

4

I hope you aren’t in Midsomer. We all know what happens to people who go to fairgrounds there.

5

I wouldn’t say that they are fixed, just extremely difficult to win at, and mostly for the reasons you state.

A friend comes from a family that owned a carnival, and we’ve discussed this kind of thing. Yes, the basketball is overinflated and the hoop is a little smaller, but the ball will go through the hoop. Spot-the-Spot is beatable, as the operator will gladly demonstrate, but he does it all day, every day, and you don’t. You might get lucky, though, and some people do. The “knock the milk bottles off the stand” can easily be rigged so the player loses, but it can also be made easier so the player wins. Every ring toss game is beatable, but you have to be extremely lucky. And so on. In fact, as he says, every game is beatable, but you either need a great deal of skill you likely don’t have, or luck, or some of both.

And even when you win a prize, the carnival likely makes money. He used to get his prizes from a wholesaler who sold them on an economy of scale. For example, it would sell a single teddy bear for $10, or it would sell a lot of 500 bears for $1 each. So you pay $5 at the basketball game, get lucky with you first toss, and win a teddy bear. Well done! And the carnival just made $4.

I don’t mean to sound cynical. Fairs are fun, and if you want to play some games, go right ahead. But if you do, know what you’re getting yourself into.

6

I know the “knock the milk bottles off the stand” can be rigged to where the likelihood of winning is slim to none. I reckon it’s just a slight adjustment of the top bottle forward just so much.

It’s only open 1800 - 2100 - even on a Friday (dunno about Sat & Sun) - yet last night I meant (but forgot) to be one of the last riders on the swing-tower - 3 chips for £3.60 (unless you get 20 for £20). And unless the maltesers come with a holographic portrait of the queen (i.e. £10) the cork shoot is right out. Too bad the knock-the-cans booth was unmanned - I’d have liked to see someone actually hit a can head on. I mean, talk about the “deadball era of baseball” at least Ty Cobb hit home runs. Squish-ball.

So I doubt I’ll talk to the (chained up!) dinosaurs with Popeye’s right limbs unless they have a PhD in Palaeontology. I’ll just hold out for a top seat on the swing ride and hope for a fleeting moment of terror for fun.

7

No, it’s that one or two of the bottles has a heavy lead insert. Put the heavy bottle on the top, and you can knock it off, while the two lighter bottles roll around on the stand. Put the heavy bottle on the bottom, and you can knock all three off the stand. Something like that anyway. Thanks, Carnival Buddy, for explaining this. His advice? Don’t play it. If you look like a Major League pitcher, he’ll gaff (i.e. rig) it; if you’re a cute kid, he won’t. The kid’s happy, his parents are happy, kid gets a prize that costs the carnival less than the cost to play, and kid and family spread the word all up and down the midway about how easy that game is to beat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Bring on more Major League wannabes, and you’re raking in the cash.

Do you have Skee-Ball games at your Fun Fair? That’s where I have the most success.

8

A point made in a classic documentary about a poor black sharecropper’s son.

9

Yeah, the booths are set up to make money, no matter what. And they are typically extremely hard to win, but usually not impossible. The people running the booths have often showed me and my kids the ‘trick’ to winning after we’ve lost. Even when you know the trick, it still takes skill / luck though usually.

For example, there’s a game where you try to shoot a red star out of a paper target with a gun that rapid-fires hundreds of BBs. Very fun, and I almost shot out the red completely once- just a couple shreds of red remained when my BBs ran out. The guy was impressed, and told me “instead of trying to clear out all the red, shoot an outline around the star”. D’OH!

10

Where I live, they tell you that such cut-outs aren’t allowed. :angry:

11

Well, that’s just rude!

12

When the local carnival is running, we always make jokes about it. We are extra alert because “the carnies are in town”.

For real, sometimes!

13

Trust in your seatbelts and maybe double up you own belt.

There was a ride my wife and I went on St. Petersburg. A handle, even a foot rail. You’re sitting in a quarter-open eggshell along with others on the carousel. Once it got going that thing flipped in 360’s, 720’s, was already spinning on its own axis and of course rotating on the carousel.

So many times I was slipping to the edge fighting the forces at play with both arms and legs. If I slip out the next egg-car will hit me and the next. And this is Russia where safety is a word yet paramount sounds like a movie company.

The closest I can compare it to is the 360 gimbals in astronaut training movies. Except they are probably pretty well secured at least.

I was a bit wombly and warbly for 20 minutes yet my wife went to the bathroom and got sick, and had vertigo for a few days.

Still, I seek adventure yet the only way I’d get my wife to ride in something like Disney’s Mad Tea Cup Part is if I promised to not spin it and un-spin it if it got going.

14

To update: my wife and I walked through the Fun Fair. She’s admonishing me about ragging on the fair that it’s a boring town (indeed) and this provides some “fun” (debatable).

The can toss was staffed by a woman who tried to get me to have a go, yet again I picked up and squeezed the soft ball-shaped objects that one was supposed to knock down WWII ration cans with. I just said, “Uhh yeah no” and moved onto the rifle-cork where the guy definitely plinked a box of maltesers with a cork that moved about as much as a WWII ration can. But ooh, they now also had qnother booth with some (empty) 500 and 700 ml bottles of booze (JD, Souther Comfort, vodka, gin, etc…) yet the target was tilted back 45 ° What are we shooting with here, corks? “Yes”. “Pass”.

I mean, somebody’s got to win occasionally. I once rode a bus where a guy in the back was dealing 3-card monte. $5. Loser. Loser. Loser. Then a big guy (protection likely) would put £10 down and wow Winner! So it’s not fixed after all.