#520 – Aim

It’s interesting how deceptive carnival games can be. They are probably the sort of thing that are fairly easy if you had time to practice. When you only try them out once a year any insights you had from the previous attempt will have faded enough that you have to start all over again.

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33 thoughts on “#520 – Aim”

  1. PsychoDuck says:

    I got so darn close to winning one of these one time. The object was to use a BB gun to shoot a piece of paper until all traces of the star image on the paper were gone. I left a minuscule portion of one of the star’s points 🙁

    I betcha if I had one or two more tries, I could’ve won…

    The Duck Has Spoken.

  2. angusgangus says:

    I always go to those ‘every player a winner’ games- you get a string of beads, or a thumb tack, or some other lame prize, but at least you walk away with something.

  3. nick says:

    When I was about 12 I lined up for one of these carnival games. You had to push on this large button (kinda like a TNT plunger from the cartoons), and that would make a mechanical arm throw a tennis ball through a hoop and then return back to the arm. Basically you had to get the force and rhythm just right to get the ball to keep going through the hoop. Each time you got it through the hoop, a toy monkey would climb up a pole a little bit. There were about 10 people all lined up together and whoever got to the top first would win a prize.

    As they were waiting for the 10 places to fill up, they let you practise, but disabled the monkey-climbing part of it. They eventually got it all ready, and the guy yelled out “Everyone hands off!”, but I didn’t hear, and kept on practising. By the time he said “3..2..1.. go!” mine was already half way up the pole and I won!

    Awesome.

  4. Rachel says:

    My dad works with a guy who’s writing his memoirs about his days as a carny. Everynow and then Dad will come home with some funny story and a random tip about how carnival games are usually rigged and how to beat them.
    It makes me wish I could go to the state fair this year..

  5. Just Ryan says:

    I think the best one I saw (at least for the carnival/amusement park) was the Quarter on a plate game. Whoever thought that up was a genious…I wasted many a quarter trying to win the huge stuffed animal prize.

  6. insertnamehere says:

    Biff’s lucky softball comes with it’s own instructions.
    1) pick up ball
    2) load into laser sighted cannon
    3) fire!
    4) run from the owner of whatever it is you just fired the cannon at.

  7. SEA says:

    Wow, that IS a lucky softball o_o

    Don’t try those that much, too busy buying some snacks =p

  8. LazerWulf says:

    Carnival Week?

  9. Pottery says:

    It’s only so he doesn’t end up taking out the main circus tent behind this stall in the proper Biffish way.

  10. MaskedMan says:

    I’ve never been particullarly good at carneval games. One of my brothers, though, is an absolute wizard at them – We’d feed him money, tokens, or tickets, as appropriate, and he’d win us anything we wanted.

    I *do* home it’s carneval week! The trouble Biff could get into at a sideshow lot…

  11. Gobbledegook says:

    I prefer the dart games where you have to pop balloons. This is because it relies on a skill that is relatively easy to enhance:
    A particle board, thumbtacks, and some balloons will run you around $10 and then you can practice all you want. If you go for the “El cheapo” darts as well, you’ll basically be practicing with the same stuff they’ll hand you.
    10 minutes a day and the carnies will learn to hide the good stuff when they see you coming. My niece absolutely loves going to carnivals with me… she always walks away with a stuffed animal that is bigger than her.

  12. Benjamin Buckley says:

    For a second, I thought the big softball was just really close up.

  13. Seraphine says:

    carnival games have a tacky reputation.
    that’s what makes them attractive.
    it’s like hanging with bad guys; you
    pay for the experience. it’s gravy if
    you walk away with the teddy bear.

  14. speearr says:

    Hahaha! A ROFL one today’s one is. I’m surprised they let him use it last year….

  15. Gato says:

    For some reason, I have ridiculous luck at carnival games. I’m always winning some huge stuffed animal.

  16. AdmiralChaos says:

    i remember watching a guy at the carnival once, he was playing the game that biff is. he obviously had a really strong arm, and when he hit the bottles with that softball, all but one flew off…the one that was remaining was at a 45 degree angle, obviously having been cemented to the table. the guy running the booth almost lost his head ^_^

  17. no name says:

    Whoa I thought the lucky softball was just really close up. lol.

    @ PsychoDuck – What amusement park do you go to? I know it’s a long shot that it’s the same one as me but I’ve played the same exact game.

  18. trevor says:

    How’s he gonna pick that up?

  19. PsychoDuck says:

    @ no name: It was the Exhibition in downtown Toronto. Yep, I agree that it’s doubtful to be the same one 😀

    The Duck Has Spoken.

  20. Viola Fan says:

    Hah, funny coincidence, I actually won a teddy bear at one of those games today 🙂 It was whack-a-mole and I won against my friends… My first time winning at these!

    Though I’m sure I would’ve won that big stuffed Shadow the hedgehog if I had Biff’s ball for another of those games…

  21. the Scarf says:

    I was just at the Rose Festival in Portland the other day! The trick on those bottle ones is to aim right between the ones on the bottom row. If they go, everything else goes!

    otherwise, I’m terrible at them…

  22. Zaffa says:

    I was playing a basketball game once- You know the one where there’s the big long net?
    Anyways, I threw the ball, it ricocheted off of the rim and hit the stallkeeper in the face. Needless to say, I wasn’t allowed to try again.
    And first post I’ve made here FTW.

  23. Chezetoats says:

    I want that softball!

  24. FWTrump says:

    The only carnival game that I tend to feel I am garanteed to win, is the one where the guy has to guess my age. I swear, even with a beard, most people think I am at least three to four years younger than I really am. And it always gets coupled with the comment, “You are really going to enjoy having such a youthful look when you are far older.” I guess I really playing that game in the hope that there would be someone who can finally guess correctly about me, but in the end…. A cheap stuffed animal as compensation…

  25. Sir Bob says:

    I was at Six Flags: Great Adventure and played ring toss- you get a bucket of rings for 5 bucks. On the third toss I managed to ring it. As it turns out, this was a game where just one win gets you the biggest prize available (as opposed to what the usually do where you need to win like, thirty times). So I won a giant stuffed dog, which was totally awesome. What was totally un-awesome was carrying it around with me for the remaining four hours of the trip.

  26. Josher says:

    I remember a cartoon show in a rural community that would not have been out of place in the Music Man. One episode had the upstanding oldest son become obsessed with a carnival game (which Biff is playing) and spent all of his money on it. Of course, the man who ran the game had a peg that slipped into the bottom of one the milk bottles whenever somebody played. The kid should have brought a second one to surprise the guy, or develop telekinetic powers.

  27. Oreo says:

    I went to a carnival a few weeks back, and played pretty much all the prize-every-time games. I won, among other things, an obscene amount of Superman collectible stickers, a pin that has handcuffs and the words “USE ME” in huge red letters (Yeah, I don’t know either.) and a pair of kitty ears and a feather boa. Much fun.

  28. Qmarx says:

    Actually, the games are intentionally set up to use non-standard or very inaccurate tools. Olympic class shooters can’t win those carnival shooting games, Olympic class basketball players can’t consistently throw those balls through the hoops. It’s virtually all luck.

  29. Squeegy says:

    I can win any claw game, and my Dad once won me a giant stuffed tiger at a carnival.

  30. marr965 says:

    I once won a toy dolphin. The idea of the game was to squirt water into a weird plastic clown face, and the first person to fill it up won. I was seven at the time (I think), and I won because I lined up the water gun before hand. Every else was going all over the place, over correcting.

  31. Zero says:

    I always won the “guess your weight” games. I guess no one expects someone to weigh half of the recommended weight for their height and age and still be alive.

  32. ThunderBunny says:

    I went to carnival once and played the game as pictured above, except that I wanted to win a bunny for my aunt who was dying of cancer at the time. I said to myself, “These things are usually rigged, so it’s not about accuracy, so much as it is about force.” I thought about how the physics of a trebuchet works (one of the most efficient machines ever designed), and concentrated on doing the same with my arm, more than I did aiming; in fact, I closed my eyes while threw. The first ball made a very loud “whap” sound in the back of the display. It took five more balls (three tries for a couple dollars at that time), but I did it! 🙂

  33. YukiSnowflake says:

    i never play the carnival games, but at aton towers, they have those toy grabber things, you know, left, up, grabs toy, drops it kind of thing?
    well, it was 30p a try to win MP3’S AND 4’S, and the grabber didnt even shut enough to TOUCH the mp4 case, or anything else in it for that matter.
    also, i was walking down rhyl and looking at the beachside arcades for tourists, and there were toys of MICHAEL JACKSON looking… err…. dead.

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