A Crane Reaction : Manuel Santos of Costa Mesa Claws His Way to the Cartoon-Doll Top

First I went for the creature on top of John Lennon. There was a whirring sound as the three heavily chromed prongs of the claw moved over the prey.

“More. . .more. . .a little more. OK, drop it!” commanded Manuel (Manny) Santos, and I pushed the red button that sent the claw spiraling down--down to ensnare the fuzzy alligator and lift it off the ex-Beatle, who was now in the open. “OK, now go in for the kill,” Santos said.

I was playing Rainbow Crane, and it wasn’t pretty.

They’re just about everywhere, in arcades, bowling alleys and finer restaurants, and chances are Santos has played them all. You’ve seen them, these glass bins full of stuffed toys, with a few expensive character dolls thrown in as a lure to customers. Maybe you’ve put a couple of dollars in one--it’s 50 cents a try--and walked away empty-handed, educated in the capriciousness of the crane.

Santos prefers to call the game Rainbow Claw, and that does have a menacing comic book charm: “Yes, Rainbow Claw, we obey. Please not to be using death grip on us, Rainbow Claw, please.”

To hear Santos talk, the game practically is sentient, with moods and whims. “It tries to antagonize you, to tease you. It changes from day to day, like it’s really sensitive right now.”

Under his tutelage, I had been doing pretty well, snatching a baby Tasmanian Devil and the gator with only a few tries. And let me tell you, it’s quite a feeling of accomplishment when for a mere dollar or two you can get a stuffed doll you don’t want.

Once I’d started going for the harder stuff like the Lennon doll, though, I quickly lost $9, and that’s $9 I’m going to be very hard-pressed justifying on an expense voucher.

At his peak, Santos, a 33-year-old handyman, was spending $25 to $30 a day playing. Now, he just directed me, refusing to touch the controls himself. See, this is Santos’ Rainbow Crane swan song.

In his small Costa Mesa home, the guest bedroom is filled with his winnings. A long glass case displays his character dolls, those that will fit in it. He might have 100 of them, each with a retail value from $12 to $40, not to mention the plastic lawn bags he has crammed with the cheaper stuffed toys or the scores he’s given away.

“I get kind of possessed,” he admits.

He has all four Beatles, Batman, Robin, Superman, Lucy and Ricky, Waldo, the Three Stooges, Gilligan, the Skipper too, Dagwood, Krusty the Clown, the Wolfman, the Blues Brothers, Wayne and Garth, Freddy Krueger and dozens of others. He has multiples of several of them, such as his six Tin Woodsmen from the Wizard of Oz. The easiest snags, he says, are Star Trek, the Next Generation dolls.

“Those are like taking candy,” he says. “The claw seems to wrap better around those bodies.” Unlike friends who had been trying for months, Santos even snagged the Holy Grail of Rainbow Crane, a Homey the Clown doll for a mere $1.50 effort.

“So where’s the challenge?” he asked, beginning to sing “The Thrill is Gone.”

*

Longtime Fixations readers might recollect this isn’t Santos’ first visit with us. We talked with him in 1992 about his collection of scales. He had amassed a bunch of vintage weighing devices: doctor’s baby scales, gold scales, lab scales and sundry.

This time, experienced Fixations hand that he is, he had a prepared statement, so when we sat in his kitchen, it was with several stapled sheets of paper in front of him.

He prompted, “You’re supposed to ask me, ‘How long has it been?’ ”

How long has it been, Manny? “It’s been around two years, and I’m still buying scales here and there,” he read, continuing onto his recent interest: “Dolls for a guy doesn’t sound good, but these are not ordinary dolls. These are creator cartoon dolls.”

He explained how he’d chanced to meet two local “masters” of Rainbow Crane, Richie Schneeweis and his dad, Everett, and how they got him interested in the game. He watched them play carefully, he said, and started playing himself.

Santos read on, delving into the Zen of Rainbow Crane.

“I needed to know what is the secret of this game. Two and a half years later I found it, and believe me it was expensive. You learn which toys you can get, and the different ways to pick up the toys to get them out of this machine. . . . You have to be precise in your coordination on getting the claw to the area where you are aiming at. Therefore you have to have good judgment, accuracy and eye coordination to drop the claw to your destination. My suggestion is to not play the claw when impaired by drugs or alcohol.

“Get what you need, not what you don’t want. . . . You don’t just go in there and take ‘em, take ‘em, take ‘em. I have met people who just go in there and are hogs with no consideration for others. I’m different. I like to share. The game actually is for kids, but adults have more money so they play it more.”

He offered further ruminations on the game, how through it “everybody’s creativity is allowed to blossom in such a positive way”--It’s New Age Rainbow Claw!--and then he got to the farewell speech.

Though he was glad to get the dolls and the “chance to see what Rainbow Crane is all about,” he said, “Now, it’s immensely taking over me. It becomes a gambling fever. I have won the game in my mind, heart and wisdom. I need to stop playing this game, because it is becoming a part of me, and now I need to let it go. I need to move on to a new hobby. I am not saying that the game is good or bad. I have completed what I wanted to get out of this machine.

“You also must remember the kids like to pay the claw too. It is especially magical to young children, so when they see a stuffed animal that looks to easy to get out and you don’t particularly want it, leave it alone. Maybe a youngster will get the chance to win and really make their day.

“That’s it,” he said, putting down his notes. Maybe it’s not quite up to Lou Gehrig’s tearful retirement, but there it is. He says he’s now going to apply himself to filling out his Popeye the Sailor collection.

He said that since backing off from the game a few months ago he’s occasionally played a dollar or two but doesn’t want to risk starting up again. Even feeling he’s achieved all there is to achieve with a chrome claw, he said, “Sometimes I see things I want, but I have to swear it off. Because if I don’t it’ll start all over again, and I don’t need another two years of what I had.”

As others have noticed, money is neither so plentiful nor goes so far these days, and he can’t afford a $30-a-day Rainbow Crane habit. He hasn’t kept count, but he says that even putting that much into the machines he got more out of it, considering the retail cost of the dolls he won.

Couldn’t he apply all the skill he developed playing the game to something more profitable, like surgery or deep sea exploration?

“No way,” he said, explaining that working the claw is an imprecise form of precision. “When the claw drops, it might have a spin, so you can never be that accurate.”

Though Santos was unwilling to play the game, he was more than willing to get me hooked on it. At the Ma Barker’s restaurant near his home, he introduced me to the claw. Sometimes a waitress would come by to watch, and we’d make the smallest of small talk.

Lustily working the crane, as Santos offered advice on how to snag Cookie Monster by the arm, I asked the waitress, “Hard to believe we’re adults, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

*

Playing Rainbow Crane, it soon becomes evident that the claw isn’t designed for the player’s benefit. If it was my kind of claw, it would grip the dolls like a vise and perhaps even inject them with something. Instead, it is this thing that spins and flops around like a squid, only rarely gripping the intended toy.

But Santos has his methods: Your best bet is to aim for areas that the claw can entirely close around, such as under-arms, he says. Sometimes you can get it to grab a head, but the doll will often vibrate free as the claw is transporting it to the exit chute. He does find, though, that Mickey Mouse heads travel well, so well that he’s retrieved about 60 of them.

Sometimes he’s even been able to get two dolls on one try, snaring one and knocking another into the chute on the way. The best dolls, such as those from the Wizard of Oz series, are another story. They typically are pushed up against one of the glass walls.

Pointing to a Scarecrow in this machine’s left rear corner, he suggested, “To get it you’d have to clear the area, because anything pressed up against that glass won’t come out because it’s shoved in there, held in by the other dolls. So you have to move them out to get him loose. (This is why Santos has lawn bags full of unwanted stuffed toys.) Once you’ve done that, then this claw will fall on his head and lean him forward like this, then you grab him from the back of the neck.”

Like you would a kitten?

“Right.”

I didn’t even try for that, exhausting my dollars on the Lennon doll (a tough prospect because he’s wrapped in plastic and has a slick backplate) and then anything else I thought I might redeem myself on. I left with my alligator and purple Tasmanian Devilette, thinking black thoughts about Rainbow Crane.

Yet even as we were getting into our cars, Santos was still shouting advice.

“Just remember, always go for the smaller part of the doll. John Lennons and things wrapped like that, always go for the head. And Mickey. Otherwise, don’t ever go for the head. Remember, the more the claw can close, the better your chance.

“And, hey, maybe I’ll call you in two years with my Popeye collection.”

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