Little Green Men Invade Vegas

Take a look around you. Virtually every consumer product you see had some designer decide what it was going to look like.

As I gaze out over the vast landscape of crap that clutters my desk, I realize that on my computer printer, somebody had to decide where the buttons would be placed, how they would be labeled, and how the printer would be shaped. The dead batteries in front of me had to be a uniform shape, but somebody got paid lots of money to create the logo. (I really should throw those dead batteries away.) The pens, the digital camera, the telephone, all had designers. Have you ever noticed how many CD cases have little notchy things on the top and bottom edges? If you're normal, you probably haven't noticed, but take a look. Those notches are not natural occurrences. Some person out there somewhere at some point in time said, "Hmmm... I think we should make our CD cases with little notchy things."

As I was making my way through the flashy labyrinth of slot machines in Vegas a couple of weeks back, it struck me that there are people out there whose job is to design new machines. Every machine has a theme, a name.

The designers' goal in creating new machines is not to be honest. They give their machines names like "Lucky Sevens" or "Big Money." They never call them, "Lose it All!" or "Bye Bye Retirement Savings!"

Fair enough. That's marketing. But as I navigated the cacaphonic sea of lights and electronic bells and spinning cherries, I found myself baffled by the array of truly idiotic themes on some of these machines.

Take for example, "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve." Who came up with that? Did a slot machine designer call up Mr. Clark and say, "Hey Dick, how'd you feel if we named a slot machine after you?" Or did Dick Clark's agent leap out of bed in the middle of the night and scream, "Eureka! We'll put his image on slot machines!"

Kenny Rogers had his own machine too. It was named "The Gambler," after his big hit song in the 1970s. That, I was thinking, isn't good marketing. The lyrics start to stick in people's heads as they insert their money.

You gotta know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run....

A machine called "True Romance" featured a trashy-romance-novel-style picture of a sultry woman and a tightly chiseled man in a "She was overcome with desire for his throbbing manhood" kind of a pose. I also spotted one lonely example of shameless product placement -- a machine simply called "Tabasco."  It featured the Tabasco Sauce logo, and some hot peppers. 

Things got weirder. One machine was called "The Chicken Game." Another, called "It's a Blast," showed a drawing of a trembling sheep in the cross hairs of a rifle, about to get blasted into oblivion. I walked past machines called "Hot Hot Penny" and "Big Money Cheese Caper," thinking, "Who the hell comes up with these?"

There was a game called, "The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys." There was "Little Green Men," and a sequel, called "Little Green Men Family Reunion," which I suppose was for people to try to win back the money the Little Green Men had stolen in the first game. There was "Denver Duck and the Quest for the Golden Egg," and my personal favorite, "Lucky Larry's Lobstermania."

Who is Larry? I will never know, but what we must remember is that Larry, not you, is the lucky one. Statistically, he's the one who gets your money.

Comments

[Jen]

Don't forget the Ms. Little Green Men ~ the little green men with gender issues. :-D