Coca-Cola unplugged.
We all know that Japan is the land of vending machines, with automated retail terminals selling everything from hot sauce to potential marriages. They’re also sources of technological innovation as ways of serving their communities with foot-operated controls during the COVID-19 pandemic and machines that absorb CO2 from the surrounding air much like a tree does.
This thriving vending machine industry in Japan can be traced back to Expo ’70 in Osaka Japan. Vending machines existed in Japan for decades prior but were generally considered a novelty and hadn’t yet caught on with the general public.
▼ Replica of a postal vending machine that existed in Japan in the early 1900s
Image: Wikipedia/Momotarou2012
Interest in the machines started to pick up in the late ’60s after the modern 100-yen and 50-yen coins went into circulation, but it was the drink machines developed by Fuji Electric for the Expo that…
