My first vending machine, a used Northwestern Model 49, provided a steady income during my high school years. I did not realize at the time that the Model 49 introduced many bulk vending features common in today's machines.

A Gumball Empire

In the late 1960s, I was inspired by Harvey Guetzloe's gum machine business as reported in the The Star Money Maker and was tempted by advertisements in Popular Science from Rake and Parkway promising easy money from vending machines. The Rake and Parkway catalogs explained the business and showed drawings of men in bed dreaming of dollar signs.

I saved up for one of Parkway's lowest cost used machines, the Northwestern Model 49, and enough gumballs and charms to fill it. The machine arrived about two weeks later. I spent an afternoon cleaning rust, dirt, and loose paint out of it. Then I learned how to adjust the merchandise wheel to reliably vend a single ball of gum with the occasional charm.

At the bus stop the next morning, I told my friends about my new gumball machine. That afternoon the neighborhood kids lined up with their pennies to buy gum and try for charms. I was in business.

Those kids came back for gum day after day and soon I sold enough gum to recoup the cost of the machine. Eventually I bought a stand and then another, newer gumball vendor. My gumball empire was growing.

Problems With Earlier Bulk Vending Machines

Prior to the Northwestern Model 49, nut and gumball vendors were commonly assembled in layers:

• The base also served as a coin tray
• The body included an integral coin acceptor and product wheel mechanism
• The globe contained the gumballs or nuts
• The cap or lid covered the globe
• The rod extended upward from the base through the other parts to the lid
• The lock screwed onto the rod to tighten the lid onto the globe and body

The globe and body had to be removed to collect coins and to replace merchandise. This could be a messy operation as product spilled out of the machine. In his book Adventures with Vending Machines and Rack Merchandising, Ray Burkett lists this as a common reason why locations do not want machines. Burkett offered this pitch in response:

Markets, restaurants, bars, etc., where operators get in the way while servicing: "You fellows clutter up the place and get in the way."

Pitch: "For most of my bulk and/or charm machines, I merely exchange globes. On novelty, capsule, or nut, I exchange and set a different unit. That way, the new merchandise setups stimulate business. ..."

Northwestern Model 49 Is Easy to Service

Compared with earlier bulk vendors, the Northwestern Model 49 reduced service times and improved merchandise handling when it was introduced in 1949. A turn of the key unlocks the front door, which swings open to expose the cash box, the coin mechanism, and the removable merchandise globe. A small handle helps the operator lift the cash box out of the machine to collect the coins within.

Another handle pulls forward to unlatch the merchandise globe. The globe lifts off as a unit with an attached stainless steel merchandise wheel and housing. An operator could replace an empty globe with a another globe that was cleaned and filled at the operator's facility. This was such an innovation that notices were printed on the globes to advise the public:

DELICIOUS · FRESH · WHOLESOME · PURE

This globe has been cleaned, sterilized, and filled fresh merchandise ... delivered as a sealed unit

A quarter turn unscrews the metal housing from the glass globe as a lid unscrews a jar of jelly. The rubber gasket, spring brush housing, and merchandise wheel lift out of the housing. Two screws on the merchandise wheel hold a fan-like adjuster, which rotates to controls the size of the wedge shaped merchandise pockets. The merchandise wheel includes calibration marks to aid operators preparing multiple machines to vend the same amount of candy or nuts.