I’ve always been pretty bad at them and convinced myself it was either impossible or largely based on luck. But I do hear about people who can win consistently. If you’re one of those people, can you share the secret?
My understanding (sorry, no cite) is that there is an adjustment that the owners of the game can make to change the strength of the grip, making it easier or harder to grab the prize. Having a best technique would still help I suppose, but if the game is set to make grabbing a prize difficult, your skills may not be enough to overcome the settings.
I also heard (sorry no cite!) that every so often the machine grabs “hard” on a rotating setting. So if you watch it long enough you could see that every 10 goes (say) wins a prize.
The only time I’ve been able to win is when the bin is overstuffed and the hand pushes/drags something into the chute vs. picks something up.
My daughter does rather well with these. According to her, the secret is to find an item balanced just right near the chute and use the crane to drag or knock it in. You usually can’t really pick anything up, and you can’t be successful with any item in the machine.
Depends on the machine. If the stuff isn’t too heavy and it actually “grabs”, then aim, estimate the physics of it all, and then hand your kid a couple of new stuffed animals. 
My sister is a legend with these machines, so there must be some kind of skillset involved, although I think a lot of it is in the selection of target machine and item.
This is part of it, but usually the claw is adjusted so it can lift any item in the bin, but just so, such that if it swings or bumps anything, it will fall out of the claw.
I have about a 75% success rate with them (not stellar, but better than some) and my technique is this:
- Go for items that are accessible, not the items you want. Desirable items are placed close to the edges, just out of the claw’s reach, wedged in such a fashion to take more pull than the claw exerts, or positioned in some other fashion to make them difficult to get
- Go for items that are ‘squishy’: the softer the item, the more likely the claws will grab
- Go for items with loops or hooks: If you can get the claw positioned correctly, it will go through the loop or hook in such a way that the item will be speared and held more securely
- Stop moving the claw while you still have time on the timer: If your timer runs to zero, you probably won’t get anything. If you can get it into position and still have 5-10 seconds on the clock, that gives the claw time to settle down, so that when it drops, most of the motion is vertical, with little side to side motion to knock it off alignment
- Don’t push the button to make it plunge: Let the timer run to zero and automatically drop. This is for a couple of purposes. First, it gives the claw the maximum amount of time to settle down and secondly, it removes the chance of you accidentally bumping the joystick as you press the button, causing the claw to jump
This is my understanding of the game, too–that it actually “grabs” every X number of turns, and it really doesn’t matter what you do.
This first Google site seems to corroborate that:
(Parenthetical mine.)
Pretty much all the skill cranes I’ve seen have been of the “slot machine” chance variety, so far as I can tell.
Actually, here’s a good YouTube run-down of the different types of skill cranes.
ETA: So, the answer is, yes, there is some skilled involved, but if you’re playing variable strength claws (which is most of what I’ve seen), luck is the main factor.
The one time I wanted something form one of these, it took a few dollars (dollar a try) to win. The claw would land and flop sideways, then it wold close slowly on the way up as it straightened out. plopping down drectly over the toy means it would flop sideways, not grabbing it but lying across it. The trick IIRC was to be slightly off center of the toy. As the claw descends, one tine/claw would slide somewhat under the toy by sliding of the adjacent prize as the claw tipped over on its side. If it slid well under, then the toy would still be in grasp and sort of “pulled along” when the claws raised and began to close. shape helps - grabbing around the bulbous head of a plush toy is easier than trying to get a smooth shape.
yeah, it semed the claw did not reach the very edge where the “good stuff” was.
This is my experience, although I don’t think I’m above 50%. I may not have encountered the variety of machine with the ‘X times grab’. I wonder if these would be legal in all states with their various gambling laws that govern things like pinball machines and carnival games.
But your item number 1, go for the accessible items is the most important thing. Something fairly symetrical where the center of the claw can land squarely on the center of the item without interference from protrusions and other nearby items has a very good chance of getting lifted.
If that is your success rate, that is indeed stellar, by any metric.
When I was about 10, I made a study of these things and got pretty good at it. I spent about $2 to win 6 prizes, IIRC, at 25c a play.
-
The most important thing is to recognize what is grabbable. These are things with round heads or arms that are sitting mostly vertical that are NOT OBSTRUCTED by anything. If a dog leg or dolphin flipper or anything like that is caught under another animal, you’re screwed. Things near the top of a full container are better because of the timing of the grasper- the claw will be halfway up before it closes, making things on the bottom ungrabbable.
-
Aim a little off-center from the highest point. The claw clasps on the way up, not the way down. You want the tines to do the grabbing, not the central hub. Which side to ‘shade’ the claw to depends on the shape of the object, its orientation, and most importantly, the rotation of the claw as it comes down. You want to grab with two tines on the heavy side (I think that’s right), so that the weight lays evenly on the claw arms.
-
You need a clear path to the chute. You’ll often lose things on the way to the chute from bumping into other things. With no clear path, you can’t get anything. Luckily, if something is blocking you in, then that thing is likely grabbable itself, so target that first.
The hardest are the steam shovel games at carnivals.
http://www.jamesroller.com/eshop/products/E%20full%20r.jpg
My dad warned me never to go for the higher dollar prizes. It was rigged so they wouldn’t easily fit through the shoot. You could win the cheaper stuff and that’s what drew in other people to play.
My dad was terrific on those things. When my mother was a kindergarten teacher, she’d take laundry baskets full of stuffed animals and such he’d won to hand out to the kids. According to him, the biggest thing is to look the machines over to find one where the contents have been stirred up enough to make it possible to actually grab anything solidly enough to win. Especially in the ones containing stuffed animals, they load them in such a way that most of the stuff can’t be grabbed.
One personal story: I was at a pizza place/bar one night in my youth getting trashed. They had just such a machine there and a fellow of about my age was pumping quarters into it like crazy with no success. He was obsessed with the idea of impressing his date by winning her a prize. I was pretty well lit and getting ready to leave and dropped the only quarter in my pocket in the machine on a whim. I was seeing two or three claws at this point and decided to concentrate on the middle one. In one of those moments of drunk, shit-ass luck I pulled out a little kewpie doll thingy that probably wasn’t actually worth a quarter. The other fellow lost his mind and announced he was going to give me an ass-whooping. I offered him the kewpie doll thingy, but that only seemed to increase his anger. His date’s disapproval of his actions, plus his realization that there wasn’t a friendly eye on him in the whole place, cooled his jets, though.
It’s my rate, but it would be a lot lower if I played every time I looked at one of the machines (I like to play them if I’m at a store waiting on someone). There are a lot of times I’ll look, decide there’s no real chance of getting anything, and so pass without even trying.
I don’t really even want the gewgaws, I just like the challenge, so I’ll give them to passersby or leave them in the drop slot as a surprise for some kid who happens to look.
It seems to me that the claws will only lock if they can close all the way; otherwise they simply slide off the item you’re trying to lift. Does this match anyone else’s experience?