The countryside honor system is still present in certain parts of the US (sometimes it's even present in suburban neighborhoods!), it doesn't blow my mind. (I also have living memory of how good things used to be in various places, too.) Similarly, there are still many places where a vending machine will remain unmolested. What did surprise me once while visiting Tokyo was that in several game centers the extra prizes to restock the claw/UFO machines are often just stored... on top of the machine in a bag or basket. Sure, most Japanese are too short to reach and steal them, but foreigners frequent those places too, and yet people behave.
Did you know there's an anime where the main character dies and gets reincarnated into a fantasy world as a vending machine? https://myanimelist.net/anime/52619/Jidou_Hanbaiki_ni_Umarek... I got a handful of episodes in while it was airing, I'm now reminded to go back and finish the season maybe next month, but it was quite a bit more charming and interesting than I gave it credit for from the premise. Indeed, there is a lot of love for vending machines.
My favorite vending machine anecdote comes from HN several years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15412395 The pictures from the submitted post are worth revisiting too, if they were put up today people would think they were AI generated: https://web.archive.org/web/20171004222639/http://www.spoon-...
Did you know there's an anime where the main character dies and gets reincarnated into a fantasy world as a vending machine? https://myanimelist.net/anime/52619/Jidou_Hanbaiki_ni_Umarek... I got a handful of episodes in while it was airing, I'm now reminded to go back and finish the season maybe next month, but it was quite a bit more charming and interesting than I gave it credit for from the premise. Indeed, there is a lot of love for vending machines.