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FeedLobsters and a carnival game
Let’s say you woke up today craving lobster. What kind of voodoo could turn your hankering to reality with just $2 in your wallet?
No voodoo at all. For a measly two bucks, you can enlist the help of an old-fashioned carnival game to snag yourself a live lobster.
It’s called the Lobster Zone. This update on the claw game reimagines the container full of plush toys as a watertight tank of eight to 10 live lobsters.
Manufactured since 2001 by the Florida-based company of the same name, the Lobster Zone found homes in the sister restaurants Adobe Gilas, inside the Easton mall, and the campus-area destination Ugly Tuna Saloona.
According to the Lobster Zone’s hyperbole-rich website, “The lobster machine is perhaps the most exciting development to hit the vending machine industry in the last 20 years.”
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals characteristically disagrees. “When you take lobsters and confine them in small tanks, make a game of their capture and the end result is that they are going to be boiled alive, that is cruelty, plain and simple,” says spokesperson Lindsay Rajt.
She probably wouldn’t have been happy watching a guy at Ugly Tuna recently try to nab a lobster by the claw or leg only to smack it against the container wall and lose it, prompting the insertion of another two bucks. The crowd cheered, though, when he did make a victorious grab (for well under market value).
Some would argue that many lobsters find themselves on a dinner plate via the act of capture, anyway, so why not add a carnival element to the process? “It’s an incredibly small machine, they receive no food whatsoever and the claw can injure the animals,” Rajt says.
Although management for both Ugly Tuna and Adobe Gilas declined comment, and no one from the Lobster Zone acknowledged queries, the company’s website again responds on its behalf, claiming that, due to the machine’s filtration system, “The lobsters are very content with the nutrients in the water” and the claw itself won’t harm the lobsters.
Certainly an arcade-game-of-death element adds a grotesque flavor to any meal, which may, for some players, be the allure. But at $2 a pop can these games possibly generate enough revenue to make them worth the fuss of preparing a lobster dinner and tolerating PETA’s ire?
If the machine takes in $500 per week, it can earn the venue $500 per month, based on figures posted on the Lobster Zone website. This assumes each enterprise can attract about 35 players per day.
“Smart business owners have been removing these machines from their establishments left and right,” Rajt says. “We’ve written to Ugly Tuna twice. We’re hopeful they will respond to us.”
And if they don’t?
“When letters and polite appeals do not work, we’ll post online action alerts,” Rajt says. “Some of our members have even picketed outside these restaurants.”
So if a crowd does gather, you’ll be able to tell the gamers from the picketers by the wad of singles and the lobster bibs.
