There are many myths about what happened to that gumball machine. Some say it was sold to another store where it continued to stay on all day and all night and the problem was never fixed and gumballs were sometimes found in dusty corners. And others tell stories of a tool shop opening in the village where the couple finally bought a screwdriver. There is even a story that the gumball machine finally found it wasn’t a gumball machine after all and it was actually an ATM which explains the stuck gumballs. As I say, there are many stories.

The real end to the story may never be known and as far as I know there are no definitive endings. However, my favourite ending is this one…

After many months trying to run the self maintenance routine a bizarre set of circumstances led to the machine being switched off. This was something that it hadn’t experienced since it was installed in the shop. Over the next few hours the machine found, much to its surprise, that things began to change. It began to realise that to clear the block all it needed to do all this time was to switch itself off, power down and stop the flow of gumballs even for just a few hours. The machine now realized that by powering down it could reset its various counters, cool down its mechanism, and, in time, all the blockages would clear themselves.

Now, every time the machine gets blocked, the machine simply turns itself to off and all the stuck, rainbow coloured gumballs squeeze gently through the mechanism, rest silently at the little metal door and wait to delight the next lucky customer who cares to buy a rainbow coloured gumball.

Anyway, that’s just my favourite ending…after all it was only a story.