Obsessively Cataloging Video Game "Pop" Culture
Sully had to infiltrate Fear Tech’s campus armed with a toilet paper launcher in Disney Infinity 1.0’s Monsters University playset to find this vending machine. Along with a variety of scary snacks, it also dispenses cans of Blort and Primordial Ooze.
Cartoon Week
Disney Dreamlight Valley’s “Eye on the Prize” quest has players gather red and blue sodas from these vending machines in the Monsters, Inc. Realm. [Source]
There’s also an out-of-service soda machine stocked with green sodas. Collecting all three colors unlocks Mike Wazowski. [Source]
I’m watching you, Wazowski…
Cartoon Week
Whoa, check it out, Beavis! Uh-huh-huh.
High school sucks, but these drink and snack machines in the hallway kick ass!
These minimalist vending machines pop up in Beavis & Butt-Head for the Sega Game Gear.
Cartoon Week
Beavis picks his nose in front of a soda pop machine in a November 1998 prototype of Beavis and Butt-Head Do Hollywood, an unreleased game for the PlayStation 1! Also known as Beavis and Butt-Head in Hollywood, the game was previewed at E3 in 1998 and showed up in various gaming magazines before disappearing like Daria Morgendorffer after she transferred to Lawndale High School.
What I played of the leaked build was pretty janky and incomplete, but at least the development team took care of the important stuff first. Namely, implementing a soda machine.
You can read more about Beavis and Butt-Head Do Hollywood at the Hidden Palace and the Lost Media Wiki.
Cartoon Week
Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension – 2D Yourself is a 2011 Flash game that lets you create a cartoon avatar and wander around Danville completing missions. Eventually, you encounter this vending machine, which transforms into a robot when you interact with it.
I wonder if this guy knows Dispensor…
Cartoon Week
Mobile city-builder The Simpsons: Tapped Out features this Scammer & Z-Dog vending machine, originally seen in the Season 16 episode “The Heartbroke Kid.” In addition to being filled with sugary drinks and snacks, the machine cycles through a few different visuals featuring the duo. It’s like Scammer always says, “Don’t flava-hate, participate!”
Here’s another look at the vending machine in the build menu, sandwiched between some, uh, questionable options. Springfield zoning remains extremely permissive.
Oh, and there’s also a vending machine outside Tapped Out’s truck stop diner!
The Simpsons: Tapped Out went offline in 2025, but I was still able to grab these screenshots thanks to Project Springfield, an incredible private server and preservation project keeping this game alive.
Cartoon Week
Little Kitty, Big City is an adorable game about a lost cat exploring the neighborhood, causing trouble, making friends, and investigating every soda machine along the way.
Gears of War: E-Day is set 15 years before the original game, and I guess there were a lot of soda machines around when the Locust Horde arrived. Thankfully, battle-hardened screenshot scavenger doc is here to catalog them all, starting with the Premium Fizzy Originals Soda Pop machine seen above.
And here’s another Fizzy Originals model…
What do you mean, “Let’s hope there’s not more”? Let’s hope there are lots more!
Next up is this brightly lit ice cold drinks vending machine, but it seems to have a little… red on it.
Here’s a less bloody version.
Coming up next is this cold drinks machine, along with a snack machine that, if you ask me, looks more like a cigarette vending machine. Maybe it sells candy cigarettes. For snacking.
What’s cooler than being cool? Ice cold — just like this ice cold beverages machine!
Finally, we have this cold drinks machine. All these soda machines might explain why the soldier guys in Gears of War look so aggressively hydrated.
And, to close things out, here’s a closer look at that vending machine’s offerings.
It looks like we have orange, cranberry, ginger ale and ginger beer, and something called Bone Skull. Sounds delicious!
Thanks for the amazing work on this one, doc!
Dash through corridors, dispatching enemies and chugging cans of Boomer Soda, in Mullet MadJack!
Halo Infinite and Mountain Dew reunited in 2023 to launch the Critical Dewpoint map, celebrating the return of Halo 3’s Game Fuel Citrus Cherry. The map includes this vending machine that dispenses 2007-flavored nostalgia in power-up form.