Was it society getting fatter, or more of a general attitude towards fat shaming?
The last time I remember seeing a Guess Your Weight booths/attraction was at Knott’s Berry Farm in the late 90s and it was basically “If the person is outside of a 10 pound margin for your weight you win a prize” which must have been very easy back when the average weight of men was 150 pounds. Though also I can see them getting rid of them for offending customers if they also thought they were much lighter than they looked.
I don’t see why the average weight would make it easier; the issue was always the range.
I think they may have been gradually killed by a shift toward greater fat shaming, which occured before the more recent attempts to shift away from it. I don’t remember when I last saw one, but I do remember seeing them at fairs. I think people likely to be embarrassed about their weight just skipped those.
The last time I saw one was at Six Flags in Irving, Texas circa 1989. While I can’t be absolutely sure what killed them, I’ve got to think that being incredibly lame had something to do with it. At least with the ring toss, darts, target shooting, or other games there’s some fun to be had. The guess your weight booth is just boring.
Since a “Guess Your Weight” challenger could only lose once (twice if it’s weight or age), it wasn’t conducive to persuading the mark to pay for multiple attempts to beat the “game.” Might as well use that stretch of the midway for something that permits more tries and makes more money for the attendant/proprietor (such as “pop balloons with a BB gun” or “throw a softball into a milk can”).
It just wasn’t fun, for kids or for adults. You didn’t do anything.
Winning a prize is supposed to make you feel like you accomplished something. (Even if it was just picking up a plastic ducky floating in a barrel, and receiving the prize written on the underside, which my 5 year old thought was exciting.)
Also, I think it has to do with a change in social customs: touching.
Touching, or just being close to, a stranger used to be okay. Today, you can get arrested for it.
People are much more aware of (and afraid of) “personal space” today, compared to, say, 30 years ago. Back then, teachers could touch students. If you saw a child in a public space crying, looking for his mother, you could hold their hand, etc.
And the guy who ran the guess-your-weight booth would take your hand and say “step up here and stand on the star”, as a way to add interest and grab attention. Then he would look you over, up and down, to make his guess.
Today, that is all considered an invasion of privacy. It just makes you feel uncomfortable.
I could swear I’ve seen a “guess your age or weight” booth at Cedar Point in recent years, say 5 or 10 years ago. But they may have been amended to just “guess your age” booths, for all I remember.
They were never about correctly guessing someone’s weight. People paid a couple dollars to have their weight guessed, and if the guesser was wrong they won a prize worth 25 cents. The booth guesser could be wrong 100% of the time, and the booth would still be raking in money. In fact, it was probably better if they guessed wrong, because the rube would walk away feeling like a winner, instead of having been fleeced out of a couple bucks.
I thought it was a wager thing where you pay $2, and if the guesser guesses wrong, you get your money back AND some sort of additional prize, but if the guesser guesses right, they pocket your $2.
But that makes more sense now. Easy way to rake in money. If so, yes, every guesser should flatter their guest by deliberately guessing 15 pounds too low.
On the other hand, the “guess your birth month” option offered at the same booths had an “acceptable margin” of ± 2 months (i.e., the house won in 5 out of 12 months). So even if the prizes cost less than the wager, the house obviously still wants the odds to be as stacked in their favor as possible.
