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#193

I think -- no, I am sure -- that I have uncovered the hoax of the gumball machine. Anybody who has ever bought a gumball from a machine understands well this phenomenon: the machine is piled to the brim with red, blue, green, and purple gumballs. The pretty colors attract your attention, so you part with a quarter, and the machine rattles around, and out pops...white. Gumball machines only ever dispense white and yellow gumballs, scientifically the least flavorful of all colors. Clearly the gumball machine has, inside the outer container and hidden by the outer layer of primary color colored gumballs, an inner container with only white and yellow gumballs in it. The colorful gumballs stay where they are, which explains why the machines always appear to be full. When you plug a quarter into the thing, your purchase is dispensed from the inner container. It's just as well. The colored gumballs have been there since the sixties and probably don't taste very good anymore.