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Fact-or-Fake Friday: Get It Yourself!

May 2, 2014

What follows are three weird news stories. Two of them are true…and one of them isn’t. We made it up. Can you guess which one is the phony? (The answer is at the end of the post.)

A.

In 2014, Colorado became the first state where marijuana may be purchased by adults for recreational use. Dozens of marijuana dispensaries have since opened and many fortunes, but it might soon be even easier to get the drug in Colorado. In April, a dispensary unveiled the world’s first marijuana vending machine. It’s still mostly just a novelty for now, and it can’t be used without an attendant nearby—the makers are still trying to figure out how to make the machine verify a customer’s age.

B.

Spectre Entertainment is one of the country’s biggest distributors of fireworks, running hundreds of tents and stands in the buildup to the Fourth of July. Each year they sell millions worth of fireworks, but this year their reach may stretch even farther. This June, Spectre will test-market a fireworks vending machines in three Ohio towns. Here’s how it works: the customer swipes their credit card and a video-touch screen guides the purchase of sparklers, “Piccolo Petes,” “Ground Flowers,” and other small fireworks. Two safety measures are in place: ID scanners to ensure that the customer is over 18, and the machines are lined with steel to protect against theft and accidental fires.

C.

Problem: You need caviar for your fancy, millionaires-only party, but your driver got you to the caviar store five minutes after it closed. Solution: a caviar vending machine. Beverly Hills Caviar has placed a self-service caviar kiosk in front of its store. It’s stocked with as much as $50,000 worth of inventory of caviar (which are the richly flavored, black-colored eggs of a sturgeon), kept fresh with moisture, oxygen, and temperature tightly controlled. The machine accepts only $100 bills.

Want more of the patently untrue? Check out Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)