The existence of a TombStone pizza vending machine is being interpreted by some as a sign that the end is near.
Doomsday prognostications aside, at least people who like Pizza Hut now have something to look down on.
The End Is Near [She Eats via Buzzfeed]
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my work boredom is such that, were i to encounter this automaton of horror right now, i would totally hit it up for a plain cheese emergency-raft-shaped pizza.
@claudrophenia: Took the words right out of my would be cheese pizza filled mouth
@claudrophenia: heretic! Square is the One True pizza shape! burn the nonbeliever!
Old Forge Style FTW!
So what? This thing heats up frozen pizza for you.
Probably better than some of the delivery I get.
They have one of these in the local hospital’s cafeteria.
I like it! Well, not really..lactose intolerance sort of limits my pizza eating, but still though…a vending machine that dispenses pizza.
Wonder how much they are…and where
@arras: Funny, I prefer to think of it as limiting my pizza digestion somewhat.
Although store-brand lactase does seem to help a bit …
I haven’t eaten a Tombstone pizza in a while, and I do hit the Pizza Hut buffet about once a week or so, so I may be an outlier on this, but I wouldn’t mind this option. Frozen pizza might suck, but it sucks less than some other options.
Hopefully the serving you get has under 1000 calories …
Apocolypse never tasted so cheesy.
I’d like to see a chicken-wing vending machine, complete with an internal deep fryer and everything.
@Michael Belisle: I’m assuming your proposed machine would also dispense Grape Drank?
@Michael Belisle: Well we’re almost there. Here’s a flickr image of a Tyson machine
[www.flickr.com]
@Michael Belisle: They make frozen french fry vending machines that fry the potatoes on the spot. Wouldn’t be too big of a stretch to make a chicken wing vending machine.
My college had a “Ori-da” french fry vending machine. During my first summer there, my classmates and I would spend our breaks hanging out around/looking at the machine which was always out of service. One day the machine WAS in service. We gathered around it like the apes in 2001. I bought a “cup-o-fries”, and we all had some. They were thinner fries, which usually cuts down the taste, but they weren’t that bad. After that day, we ignored the machine, and sat on the opposite side of the atrium. Shortly thereafter, the machine broke again, and when I came back the next summer, was gone.
@Git Em SteveDave is starlost: Please do tell… how did this mythical fry machine work? Could it have handled deep-fried chicken wings?
@Michael Belisle: Wow!
@Michael Belisle: Arrrg… “htm” needs an “l”: [www.patatachef.com]
@Michael Belisle: I do not know. This was way back in 1997. I’m guessing it stored them, then cooked them. They weren’t anything to write home about, but the were enough to blog about.
@Git Em SteveDave is starlost: No problem, Google told me the answer: the Ore-Ida model used a convection oven. I’m far more impressed by the fully-automated, self-contained frying machine.
@Git Em SteveDave is starlost: I believe my dad may be responsible for that one. Years ago, he worked for/ran a company (basically it was him and a couple other guys) that invented a vending machine that made french fries.
@bonzombiekitty: Doubtful – The St. James-Assinaboia Civic center in Winnipeg had a full service automatic french-frying vending machine in service beside the canteen, next to the automagical skate sharpening machine. In between the 2 hockey rinks.
The machine was on it’s last legs in the late 80′s/early 90′s – was incredibly well used, and was supposedly there since the 70′s. Surprisingly, this is one of my earliest childhood memories… I don’t remember playing hockey at the age of 4, but I remember watching the fry machine when I was too young to play.
@klc: Musta been a new version of the fry machine then. This was way back in the late 80s, IIRC.
Damn it. They stole my idea. How did they get that out of my brain?
Seriously I thought of a variation of this machine in college. Mine made personal pizzas and hot pockets. Those late nights (this thing is due in the morning and I put it off for 3 months) would have been greatly improved.
I’d be fearful of putting my coin into such a beast, lest I be granted some obtuse wish to be young again … ala Tom Hanks in “Big.”
I’ve seen vending machines for ice creme, french fires, coffee, cigarettes, cold meals, etc. This isn’t new.
Also
[www.wonderpizzausa.com]
I think I have seen it in the Salt Lake City Airport near the baggage claim.
I wanted to use it just to see how bad it was, but it was broken.
Adam
I’d try it. Once.
Maybe more if it tasted gooooooood
I remember once pizza hut was selling these long frenchbread type pizzas at the local theater (I guess it was a test run thing)…. and it was soooooo goooooood, but they stopped it.
HOLY SHIT THAT IS AWESOME!! I may just drive 4 hours to Houston just to get one and eat it. And then say I got sick from vending machine pizza.
SWEET!
TombStone… Hmmm.
I should hate this.
But wow…just wow…this looks amazing
BTW, the other day i was thinking about that old commercial (i think it was visa) that ran during the Super Bowl 10 years or more ago.
It featured a guy who kept getting his dollar rejected by a vending machine, only to realize the vending machine had a CC slot in it. the tag line was something about how the future is now I think it was shot in a big field/desert…anyone remember this commercial?
More importantly, where are our card swiping soda machines?
@wattznext: Card swiping in this case means a soda machine that can read my CC…NOT a soda machine that will steal my CC…THAT would be a sign of the apocalypse!
@wattznext: They exist. I saw a Coke branded one at the local Bingo Hall.
@wattznext: There is a snack machine here at work that takes debit/credit cards, actually, and I’ve seen them elsewhere. They work fine.
@wattznext: Got one where I work. All the machines on Drexel’s campus (at least when I went there) had them as well (and they’d recognize the school IDs as well)
@brainwav: Darn, when did Drexel get vending machines that took the Dragon Card? I wish they did that when I went there
@bonzombiekitty: I went there from 02 to 07… I think they started taking them in late 05 or 06…
Of course, I could be wrong about the Dragoncard part, but I’m fairly certain they do/did.
@wattznext: cc soda machines are all over the place, try DC Childrens Hospital’s ER waiting room. I never thought I’d ever put a credit card in something like that but after 2 hours waiting with no water and no cash while there with my 3-year-old daughter (and the fountains were all of very questionable cleanliness), I caved and bought her a water.
Didn’t see the brat vending machine at the National Zoo, though.
If these were on my city’s streets, there would be lines ten people deep in front of them every Saturday night after last call.
And I would be among those queued, because at that point it would sound like the most awesome thing in the history of ever.
hopefully you can hack this machine!!!!
So, a dinner and a movie date by going to a Tombstone Pizza vending machine and a Redbox or Best Buy vending machine: trashy or trachiq?
@pirate_eggie: Reminds me of Chili’s and the new “BIG MOUTH BURGER!” That movie (Idiocracy) was pretty horrible, but the concept behind it was terrifyingly true to life.
There’s a kosher vending machine at the ballpark. You can get knishes, pizza, onion rings, or a veggie ‘patty’.
I thought the photo was a Photoshop parody from Fark or Worth 1000.
I could go for a pizza right now. Then I remember I live in Atlanta and they don’t have pizza here yet. I further remember that I am not going to be home until Christmas and I get further depressed that it will be months before I get to have pizza.
Yes, they have “pizza like substance” here, but it isn’t pizza.
So does it spit it out already cooked? If so, I want one on my campus.
You know, a steak vending machine might be a good idea. Maybe with grilled onions, a baked ‘tater, mushrooms, and a hot fudge sundae.
Too bad the automats are gone (I think).
@MyPetFly: It’s not Horn & Hardarts, but there’s one in the East Village:
[www.bamnfood.com]
@MercuryPDX:
Wow! Did you notice the mac and cheese thing? The last item, I swear I thought it said “disposable chicken nuggets” at first.
@MyPetFly: Yes. It’s a Mac and Cheese Croquette. Last place I saw those was in a TGIF Commercial. There’s a few different recipes online:
[southernfood.about.com]
[www.grouprecipes.com]
@MercuryPDX:
I just made homemade mac and cheese (for the first time) this weekend. I’ll have to try the croquets. A little extra fat in my diet won’t hurt.
@snoop-blog:
“it’ll make a turd.”
My new mantra. Thank you!
@MyPetFly: Nah, automats are still around in some places. The Amsterdam central station still has some small ones for hot greasy food that probably really shouldn’t be eaten but tastes way too good!
If this is a harbinger of the apocalypse, I welcome it. What’s the problem? How much is a pizza? More than $2 would be very disappointing… but not horrifying.
@HFC: I’d be surprised if it was less than $5 (particularly in airport locations)
I do love that while the article takes a dig @ Pizza Hut (perhaps a well deserved one, I wouldn’t know) the ad column on the left has a Domino’s link at the very top. Domino’s is pizza? I tried it once and I honestly don’t understand how they could become such a huge corporation, are there really that many wasted college students in North America?
This is so much more appetizing than those roundabout vending machine that has apples, yogurt, sad looking sandwiches (almost typed sadwiches, which I think would work), dinty moore beef stew and other lunch items… They also served pizza, but not warmed up for you. It’s sad that that machine makes me want chewy pizza.
I don’t see any problems here!
They were even nice enough to put a Red Bull machine next to it so you could get a refreshing beverage. Now, where is the Jager machine?
People who eat healthy take it to such moral extremes nowadays. Criticizing this machine and its food is no less asinine than the Victorians criticizing exposed table legs back in the 1800s. Times change, but there will always be controlling dogmatists inflicting their narrow view of what’s right and wrong on the rest of the world.
@GMFish:
“…Victorians criticizing exposed table legs…”
I can see where they were coming from. It’s a bit risque if you ask me. ; )
Finally a vending machine that takes stoners seriously…
The problem with people freaking out and calling it a sign of the apocalypse is that these people seem to think that people would simply give up on all other food and just start going to a vending machine to get a pizza.
Until the pizza man stops delivering, that’s not gonna happen. Lazy beats Vending Machine any day of the week.
@Troy F.: What if I had one of these machines in my home? So long pizza man!
Please tell me this has a little convection oven inside it… nothing to me is less palatable than microwaved pizza. Except maybe excrement. And even then, microwaved excrement would still somehow taste worse.
@Applekid:
oo lazy to bake a frozen pizza? TombStone’s Deep Dish vending machine drops pies from a freezer into a jet impingement oven that uses blasts of 450-degree air to cook them in just 90 seconds.
[www.wired.com]
@MercuryPDX: Woah, there’s a fresh sushi machine on that page. I’d be blown away if Sushi didn’t trigger my gag reflex.
@Michael Belisle: Yeah, that scares me too. The pizza is at least frozen. I can’t see how sushi would keep for very long in there.
@MercuryPDX: I recall seeing a Craigslist ad that wanted people to hawk frozen sushi on TV.
@MercuryPDX: Thank you, Wired is blocked at work yet this site is not.
Much to my shagrin since I could at least stay out of trouble if I wasted time on Wired.
Does anyone know how much the pizza costs? I think it a great concept. You know that you are just getting a nuked frozen pizza, so you can’t complain if the quality isn’t fantastic.
There is actually a useful version of this out there from a company called Kosher Vending Industries which allows for those who want to keep Kosher in places where there they don’t. They have sold some to hospitals and at a couple of Thruway rest stops. It isn’t a bad idea if applied right, like in the Kosher case.
@Triborough:
Does it refuse to vend from sundown on Friday through sundown on Saturday??? :^)
@emis: Actually it doesn’t.
I’m waiting for the cobb salad vending machine.
I think it’s bad ass! I don’t see why there is any reason to bitch about this. If your elitist taste buds are too good for tombstone, than don’t buy one. Personally I’ll eat totinos, cuz lets face it, I have no shame. To quote the not so famous words of my Dad, “it’ll make a turd.”. Food is only an obstacle to me. The quicker and easier I can get my hunger out of the way, the more time I have to do something else.
@snoop-blog: Totinos!!! My favorite frozen pizza! You can get five of them for five bucks, too! My local Target has stopped carrying them for some reason, so it’s harder for me to get them now, but worth the extra trip.
I love this vending machine. I wish we had one at work. Sometimes I don’t bring my lunch, thinking I’ll go out and get something, but then the weather is bad or I’m busy and I don’t want to leave. A pizza vending machine would be PERFECT, and much better than a skimpy bag of chips or the dreaded Extra Large Honey Bun for lunch.
Anyone else remember the commercials? “What would you like on your tombstone?”
I don’t get what’s wrong with this machine, it beats the pizza hut/taco bell pizzas. I’d eat it.
Marketing is a funny thing: although “Tombstone” probably ranks right up there with “stupid names you should not put on a food product” it certainly is memorable.
I must acquire such a machine for my school. holy crap.
“Welcome to Carl’s Jr…would you like to try our new BIGASS FRIES (reverb)?!”
It makes me sad when parts of Idiocracy start to come true…
A pizza vending machine is a harbringer of the apocalypse? And the ones in Japan that have been around for years that sell soiled women’s panties aren’t?
@bilge: You can get ANYTHING out of a vending machine in Japan.
ANYTHING.
Honestly? The tombstone pizza is a much healthier choice than the cheese danish in the traditional vending machine. They’re both bad but at least it’s a bit better?
@deadspork: You are very correct. Rice vending machine…yay…
At the National Zoo in Washington, DC, they now have a Johnsonville Brat machine, that sells brats, oversized hotdogs, or kielbasa. The sausage is cooked, put into a waiting warmed bun and dispensed from a little window. All for the fairly reasonable (for a tourist attraction food vendor) price of $3. Cash and major Credit Cards accepted.
pic here
Big deal.
In Japan, you can get almost anything out of a vending machine – from women’s panties, to ramen soup, to beer.
the wide-angle pic shows the Barf-Bag vending machine to the left of it.
Harbinger of the Apocalypse, or Hamburger of The Apocolypse? Mmmmmmm, sacrilicious……
Oh, god, that’s DISGUSTING!
And I would get a pizza from one if I saw one in the wilds!
yes but a tombstone pizza from the vending machine is much better than what is currently being offered in vending machines. Where the peperoni is brown, not red.
Adding to the above list, the Johnsonville Brat vending machine at the National Zoo.
And I did see a few brats bugging their parents to get them one.
That would’ve been great in the barracks in Germany. Right next to the beer machine. Of course there was a pizza place right outside the front gates. (Patton Barracks for anyone that knows)
We had one of these in our hospital’s vending machine area for a few years. They recently removed it, probably due to low sales. It mostly sold non-pizza items, grilled cheese sandwiches and hot dogs and stuff. It basically contained frozen foods that were then heated for several minutes and dropped down to be received by the customer. I vaguely remember eating something from this machine – a pizza, maybe? – and it was terrible. It also took about 7 minutes to get your food.
Do these come in Red Baron? And where can I get one if they do?
Mmmm, I love Tombstone pizza, but I wouldn’t want one out of a machine. There’s no way to put it back in if it doesn’t get cooked all the way. And microwaving pizza sucks. When I have leftovers, I use the toaster oven.
@HogwartsAlum: That particular Tombstone machine uses ovens much like the local convenience store here does. They blast really really hot air at the food to cook it fast and evenly.
@Ajh:
Oh, okay, like a convection oven? That’s not too bad. If I see one I might try it.
I remember seeing something like that from Tombstone pizzas a few years ago on a Food Network show (I think Unwrapped.) I thought that they were already out somewhere although I never saw them.