An Open Letter to HEB's Claw Machine

Dear Claw Machine,

I think it's time we talked about your relationship with my daughter. In fact, I think it's time we talked about your relationship with all children under six in this town. Half of them are desperately in love with you, and the other half don't shop at your grocery store because their parents know you're here.

Let's talk about your past, Claw Machine. Your story - the one behind your cheery facade. It's dark, isn't it, Claw Machine? Years spent in a seedy joint on some Devil's Island somewhere, a boardwalk or a carnival scene. You robbed kids of the coins they eagerly dropped in your coin slot in a quest for sawdust-stuffed dogs or cheap costume jewelry, each puffed up with false confidence that if they maneuvered your loosely dangling claw into just the right position, you'd pluck the toy of their dreams out of the pile and drop it in the chute. You sat patiently, took their money, and gingerly nibbled at your treasure behind the glass, dispensing a toy just often enough to keep your legend alive.

You see, I can tell that your claw was deliberately designed not to pick things up. It is the weakest, clumsiest, most enervated claw in the known universe. The lobster and the fiddler crab would not fight you, but laugh at you, if they encountered you on the ocean floor. But that apparent shortcoming was your secret source of power, an adaptation invented not by natural selection, but by disaffected office drones.

Those were dark days for you, weren't they, Claw Machine? Sure, you got by. But all those sad faces, that ceaseless hoarding under hot lights. It gnawed at you. And so you vowed that someday things would be different.

Suddenly, opportunity knocked. A chance to spend the rest of your days making kids happy instead of making them sad. You got polished up, paneled in smiles, and filled with plastic balls, each containing a single sticker. You got new hardware to accept cashier-dispensed coupons instead of coins, and your system reprogrammed to allow every child as many tries as they needed in order to win a ball. You turned it around. You now serve up hundreds of those prized stickers a day. You are the highlight of almost every young child's trip to our local grocery store. You are loved. You give. Everyone wins.

Except us. The parents. Did you notice us, Claw Machine? You see, when you got outfitted to make everyone a winner, they forgot to upgrade one thing: Your claw.

Thanks to the infuriating impotence of your claw, it usually takes a good ten tries to get a prize. Occasionally, it takes twenty tries. Each attempt takes ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. You reach and miss, and return to your home base. You venture out again, reach, grasp, and drop, as convincing as a boxer throwing a match. And so on. Giving up is not an option, not for a child and, once we've watched you bumble miserably for minutes on end, not for a parent, either. We assist, grimly; we may even take over to stoke a child's flagging interest. The line grows behind us; stares from irritated parents with their own antsy children ramp up the pressure. We speculate about strategy, yet all strategies fail. Finally, through sheer, dumb luck, you manage to bungle your way to depositing a bauble in the chute, and we are finally released.

A mother or father who just finished a grueling shopping trip with toddler in tow might wait three, five, ten minutes while other children, and then theirs, attempt to get your silly claw to lock on one of those tiny plastic bubbles. And the entire experience is defined by the ill fortune you were designed to deliver, a session in purgatory generously delivered again and again.

Have mercy on us, Claw Machine. Show a little follow-through. Get the claw fixed. Replace the spring, add a magnet, a scoop, an override, whatever it takes. Deliver us from our children's love.