I grew up playing these...took me a while to finally win but around age 10 I got like autistic good at them and could win like 50% of the time. People would watch me grab like 3 things in a row like "WTF at this kid" and I would just give them to people cause I didn't want them, just liked playing.

Which reminds me of a funny story....when I was like 20. I was hanging out with 3 other guys, we were at the theater and we had just watched the Simpsons movie. Well, they had one of these claw machines there and there was a fairly large Homer Simpson doll in it and we were all like "well we have to try to get it."

So....we end up spending like $5 on this claw machine. We kept taking turns trying and slowly dragged him towards the opening. We started standing on the sides so we could see better to direct the person with the claw. At one point the one guy walks away to call his girlfriend and we finally get it while he's on the phone and we all are like "YEAH!" when it finally falls....so you have to imagine his girlfriend on the other end just hears 3 grown men simultaneously yell in celebration, and she's like "what was that?" and he's like "um...they just won a doll" and he just has the most "WTF why am I friends with these people" look on his face.