"Food is pipping hot."
June 12, 2019 8:11 AM   Subscribe

Dancing Bacons is a youtuber actively documenting the street foods of Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. One of their obsessions is the world of vending machines. So enjoy their footage of a salmon vending machine, cotton candy vending machine, Probably World 1st Ice Cream Fun-Vending Machine, pizza, cake, popiah, coconut, hot cheese snacks, water, gelato, and magic Coke vending machines.

The only audio is ambient sound. There is no dialogue or narration. Text captions provide the names of the food and their prices (including USD conversions), and occasional comments about what's going on or the food quality.

There's also a self-serve ramen kiosk at a Seven Eleven, a vending machine cafe, futuristic diner with no waiters, and the Singapore SMART Supermarket which seems mostly like a very nicely-appointed but normally-operating grocery but (if you watch through to the end) you can see large shelves of purchases jockeying for position to deliver food orders to customers. They maintain a complete playlist of their food vending machine videos.

If you prefer less automation in your vicarious dining experiences, they also have a playlist of videos of night markets and bazaars in Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, also with commentary in the captions.
posted by ardgedee (16 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Back when I lived in Tokyo, the preponderance of vending machines everywhere was so fascinating to me. I definitely tried a lot of snacks that I might have been too shy to try to order or pick up in a store via vending machines.
posted by xingcat at 8:49 AM on June 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


While it's possible I'm out of touch, people here in Singapore don't really buy things (besides drinks) from vending machines all that much. A lot less than Tokyo, definitely. Most of the non-drink vending machines tend to be more gimmicky in nature.
posted by destrius at 9:05 AM on June 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


This video just isn't complete without smell-o-vision.
posted by destrius at 9:09 AM on June 12, 2019


I am absolutely taken by the concept of the frozen salmon atm. I just. What.
posted by halcyonday at 9:14 AM on June 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


Street food YouTube is a thing. Check out Soon Films, which specialize in Korean street food (among other things).
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:23 AM on June 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


Peaceful and relaxing - surprisingly upbeat/positive, I would have expected more snark and commentary. (Some of those frozen entree's looked worse than airline meals used to be)

Now have this on in the background.
posted by jkaczor at 9:23 AM on June 12, 2019


At first glance I totally expected a sizzling hot salmon fillet to come out of that thing
posted by oulipian at 9:31 AM on June 12, 2019 [4 favorites]


On further thought. If that salmon atm was a) near me and b) released sliced sashimi, I'd be like Cat from Red Dwarf and the food dispenser.

So it is probably best that such a thing does not exist (or at least not near me) as I would basically empty it in one go.

I found myself hypnotised by the candyfloss machine and quite taken by the cake machine as well...
posted by halcyonday at 9:43 AM on June 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


Pffft.. When I was a lad if you wanted fish you had to catch it yourself.. after buying your nightcrawlers or leeches from the Vend-a-Bait machine.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:32 PM on June 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


I am absolutely taken by the concept of the frozen salmon atm. I just. What.

I mean, it would be way more exciting if it dispensed a flopping live one that you would have wrestle home on public transit.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:28 PM on June 12, 2019 [7 favorites]


I’m totally on board with the hot cheese snacks one.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:33 PM on June 12, 2019


Jiggly cakes. I am obsessed.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:20 PM on June 12, 2019


Fishing for ice cream!
posted by Oyéah at 7:32 PM on June 12, 2019


All the food/toy/haul videos I've ever seen from Japan, Korea, China and now Singapore, Taiwan and Malasia have the same basic structure: silently show the source of the item (or the stand or the store or the source of the item). Display the packaging, from all sides. Unwrap the package, removing all the tiny and perhaps irrelevant bits. Silently display each and every bit, from all sides: the plastic spoon. The wrapped chopsticks. The plastic soy sauce packet. The packet of unnamable green goo. The noodles. The other noodles. The bowl.

It's oddly soothing, but it's also weird. Are the videos silent to make them more readily marketable? Or is it just a convention?
posted by jrochest at 2:00 AM on June 13, 2019


It’s convention among East Asian food youtubers. Personally I much prefer it to the American/Australian/British format of the youtuber shoving their face in the camera and excitedly overexplaining and mis-narrating what I would clearly be able to see happening if they’d just get the hell out of the way.

And it’s not silent, because there’s all those ambient sounds. That’s the point, to both see and hear what you would if you were there. Sometimes it’s called ASMR (and there are definitely some youtubers that play that angle) but really it’s just documenting the sights and sounds.
posted by ardgedee at 3:05 AM on June 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


i enjoy that these are mostly Singaporean, so I can continue to judge them from across the Strait of Tebrau.
posted by cendawanita at 9:00 AM on June 13, 2019 [1 favorite]


« Older There Are Layers Here   |   Your timeline may vary, of course. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments