Adam and I were boulevarding around Sydney, or maybe elsewhere, when we came upon a strange vending machine. It was a very tall box – ten feet or so – with a small keyboard and no screen. There was a dial to the right of the keyboard that had a few settings, but none were labeled. A tiny sign had been taped on and said it would print posters of anything the purchaser wanted. It was in the lobby of some building, alongside other more mundane machines. No-one seemed interested in it; we were.
The cost was $0.75. We fed it a dollar coin. It didn’t give change.
Since there was no screen at all it was unusual to use. We put money in and typed ‘Doctor Who’. Nothing happened for a while, then it printed out a poster which came out a slot at the very bottom near the floor. The poster was massive – about the right size to hang on a door. And it was amazing. I seem to recall a montage of heroes and villans done in a woodcut style. Absolutely not what we expected. More money went in.
‘Tardis’ got us a disturbing picture of the Tardis with a screaming face carved into the front panel and a ring (like Saturn) around the light.
I typed ‘Jon Pertwee’ and got something resembling a 1960s bond poster with Pertwee in leather on his bike, babe in arms. It was amazing.
Adam printed out more Doctor Who stuff, including using the same term twice and getting two different posters that seemed to be in a series. He tried the dial, using the same term three times with the dial set differently each time. The posters were different, but we couldn’t work out what the dial did, if anything.
We then switched to fantasy monsters (dragons, beholders, demons) and collected armloads of giant, unique, incredible door posters. I vividly remember a poster depicting a dark tangled forest in astonishing detail with monsters very well hidden behind almost every tree. The poster was printed in such a way that the setting sun seemed to glow like an actual light source. We were baffled.
I inspected the posters very closely and found no copyrights or trade marks at all. The machine itself had nothing written on it. It was a complete mystery.
I forget how things ended. I don’t remember leaving; we just kept printing posters over and over. It was addictive. I wish it was real.
But it wasn’t of course. It was just the dream I had last night.
That was a tops idea of mine to try repeating a request. I’m so dream-smart 🙂
How exciting were posters back when we were teenagers? There was never enough wall to go around.