Ever since our local Round 1 arcade opened, shuttered almost immediately for two years thanks to Corona-tan, and reopened, I have been a frequent visitor.  Mostly, I play rhythm games.  Sometimes, I bowl!

Sometimes, I drag along my wife or some friends, and that’s where this all started.

See, one of my college friends is a bit of a crane game nerd.  She spends a lot of time watching YouTube crane game videos and our trips to Round 1 usually end up with her husband carrying around a massive armload of plushies.  Apparently she has a sort of large net suspended from their bedroom ceiling where all of them wind up, but I haven’t seen this to confirm it.  I can only imagine that it’s a sort of very cuddly Sword of Damocles thing.

Anyway, the last time we got together was to celebrate me getting slightly older, so she  won a stuffed cat for me from a crane game as a birthday gift.  It has a high place of honor in my office, because you’re never too old to appreciate a plushie I guess.

That’s where it could have ended.  But, there was a game full of these little green octopus things that she fell in love with and that eluded even her practiced skills and I threw some credits into it as well, hoping to return the favor.

I did not do well.

Nonetheless, it actually made me start looking at the crane games instead of walking past them on the way to the rhythm games section.  And one day, they had a little chibi-style Yor figurine in one of the machines, and it was a mix of adorable and badass that made me actually decide to sink some money in.

Nobody was more surprised than I was when it eventually dropped into the chute.  I didn’t even have to spend that much money on the effort!

A couple of weeks later, I noticed that they had added crane games with Anya and Loid.

These did not come as easily.  I wound up spending nearly fifty dollars completing the family.

Since then, though, it’s become something of a weekend ritual.  Go to Round 1, play some rhythm games, walk down the crane game aisle on the way out, throw a few credits at anything that looks cute and is on top of the pile of prizes in a way that looks doable.

Cinnamoroll dropped into the slot after only two attempts!  My wife covets him.  He is on a shelf out of her reach.

I finally got the damn green octopus thing that eluded us for so many attempts.  This will be gifted to my friend who started the whole thing, to add to her net of plushies.  Maybe it be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and deluges them in soft bouncy mayhem.

I’m not actually well versed on  Sanrio lore.  Naturally I own a few small items emblazoned with their most famous cat, and  I understand that Kuromi is some sort of evil version of one of their other characters.  This also landed in the chute after only one attempt so obviously it was meant to be.

The most recent additions are this sleeping shark plush and a cat wearing a Round 1 cheerleader costume.  The shark really isn’t my sort of thing but it was perched on top of the prize pile in a way that suggested it would come home with virtually no effort, and this turned out to be the case.

At first I thought it was a surprisingly dark sort of toy because I was under the impression that sharks can’t sleep and that they die if they stop moving, but apparently some sharks can and do sleep, for at least a few minutes at a time.

The cat took rather more effort but it was cute.  My wife has claimed it for the moment, but we’re both pretty sure that our actual cat will likely steal it and drag it off to be clawed into submission.  He has a history of doing this to small stuffed toys.

Not pictured here, of course, are the MANY assorted prizes that refused to come out of their machines, some of which I spent depressing amounts of money on.  I need to get a little better about recognizing when something is just not meant to be!

Also, this is a bit of a dumb hobby to pick up when I am actually trying to reduce the amount of assorted junk in my life.  Most of these are destined to wind up in a donation box at the local thrift store at some point, and with any luck they will go on to put a smile on someone else’s face.

Until then, I am enjoying having a shelf of trophies that gradually grows larger.