If you are a certain age and had a penchant for touristy destinations as a youngster, then you should probably be well aware of the Mold-A-Rama machines. But for some bizarre reason, I had never heard of them until recently.
Family vacays to the Alamo and whatever crappy Florida beach we ended up at in '84 should have sculpted me into a hardcore Mold-A-Rama-Maniac but they were totally off my radar until their recent return to fashion alongside my precious penny smashers at various roadside destinations.
All that preamble leads me to today's topic: "Hey, the Oklahoma City Zoo has a Mold-A-Rama machine!!"
Actually, they have several. And actually, they seem to be called Mold-A-Matics now. Above is a look at the beauty I had stumbled upon. If you're like me (or like I used to be) and you're not particularly familiar with the Magic Souvenir Maker, here's a rundown by the Chicago Tribune.
The tl;dr version is that it's a vending machine of sorts that squishes a plastic souvenir for you as you watch. The one I found makes a blue hippo.
I knew they were making a comeback but didn't expect to see one anytime soon, so when I spotted this magnificent beast I immediately thought, "Hey, I can crap out a blog entry about this, can't I?" and couldn't cram in my credit card fast enough.
Three dollars later I had my very own hippo. And while I'm not exactly sure where it is now, I'll always have the memories of carrying it around in my park during the rest of my trip to the zoo.
And if I see another Mold-A-Whatever at another Oklahoma attraction, odds are I won't think of it as losing three dollars, I'll see it as gaining a new member of my plastic menagerie.
