Childhood stuff #2 - Feed Big Bertha

99% of my childhood holidays were spent in Ingoldmells, with the odd trip to Skegness thrown in. One of my fondest memories is trawling the amusement arcades with my Dad, while my Mum did her best to win a kettle at the tele bingo. We had a few regular machines, our favourites being the ones that spat out tickets which you could then redeem for amazing prizes such as these.

Of all the ticket spitting machines, there was one ticket spitting machine to rule them all -

Ignoring the obvious resemblance to me these days, the main thing to be said about Big Bertha was that she loved balls. Hang on, I thought we were stopping with the comparisons to me? Anyway.

When the game started, her stomach would balloon up and she would shout "I'm hungry hungry hungry!" with a near climactic fervour. The object was to throw plastic balls into her mouth until she was no longer hungry. We were ace at this game, frequently winning up to FIVE whole tickets. Big Bertha is the main reason why I had such an enviable collection of plastic spiders, erasers shaped like hot dogs and weird rubber fingernails as I was growing up.