A gumball machine at home is a decorative object that happens to dispense
sweets, and the two roles pull against each other. It looks best full; it
works best turned over regularly. Reconciling that is most of what owning one
involves.
(For the gum itself — how filled gumballs work and why the shell matters —
we wrote about that separately.)
Get the size right before anything else
Gumball machines are built around a standard ball diameter, and the globe and
the mechanism assume it. Buy gum that is too small and it jams by letting two
through at once; too large and it will not turn at all.
The common sizes are around one inch and around half an inch, and machines are
usually built for one or the other. Check the machine before you buy the gum,
not after — this is the single most common frustration with the format.
Full looks better, and full is the problem
A globe that is only a third full looks abandoned. A full globe looks like the
thing you bought it for. So people fill it and leave it.
The difficulty is that gum hardens as its plasticisers migrate out, and a
globe is a large volume of air around a small amount of surface. Gum sitting
in a display globe for six months is noticeably harder than gum from a sealed
tub.
The workable compromise:
Fill it, but treat the contents as decorative after a few months. Empty
and refill rather than topping up.
Keep the refill tub sealed and use the globe as the display, not the
store.
Rotate rather than accumulate. A machine emptied and refilled twice a
year is a working machine. One filled once is an ornament with old gum in
it.
Where to put it
Not in sunlight. Ultraviolet fades the shells unevenly and the side facing
the window will be visibly paler within months. It also warms the globe, which
softens the gum inside and can fuse the lowest layer.
Not in a kitchen. Humidity is the enemy of the candy shell — it goes tacky
and then the gumballs stick together, which jams the mechanism.
A hallway, a landing, an office. Dry, stable temperature, out of direct
sun. Somewhere people pass rather than somewhere people cook.
Cleaning it
Glass globe off, warm water, dry completely before refilling. Any residual
moisture will do exactly what humidity does.
Do not put the globe in a dishwasher — old machines often have painted or
transferred lettering and heat lifts it. Vintage mechanisms with metal parts
should be wiped rather than soaked.
If you inherited one
Two practical checks before you use it:
Does the mechanism turn cleanly and dispense one at a time? A machine
that dispenses two or none needs adjusting to the ball size before you fill
it with anything.
- Is the glass safety glass? Older globes may not be. If it will be at
Then fill it with something you would actually eat. The most common fate of a
home gumball machine is to be filled once with whatever fitted, and to sit
there for a decade — which is a shame, because the point of the object is that
it does something.
Featured Products in This Article
Taste the snacks discussed above, shipped fast directly from our NY warehouse!
