A vintage carnival love tester for Daiya's summer tour, with a brass handle, a hidden camera and a staff remote. Squeeze it to find out how much you love cheese.
You grab the brass handle and squeeze. The bulbs race up the scale, hesitate, and stop: Cheese Louise! The hidden camera has already caught your face, and out comes the print: your face at that exact second, branded, with an offer to redeem. Then a staffer taps a remote in their pocket, the cabinet starts to shake, and fog pours out. Cheesequake. Your friends want a turn. So do you.
Daiya's Dairy-Free Dairy Tour was a food truck handing out samples, 96 event days in 15 markets from February to the end of August. Free pizza draws a crowd. The ask was something that made people stay, play and talk about it.
A vintage carnival love tester, cheese style. Grab the brass handle and squeeze. The bulbs race up the scale like a cheese thermometer, hesitate, and stop on one of seven levels. A hidden camera catches your face at that exact second, and you walk away with the photo, branded, with an offer on it.
Seven levels, each one printed on the front of the machine, from "Nacho Day, Is It?" at the bottom to Melt Master at the top. When the bulbs stop, a voice calls out your level with a line to match. The bottom gets sympathy: "Cheddar luck next time. We still believe in you." Further up, it's "Legendairy!"
Every line was written to be repeated to a friend.
Concept to shipped in four weeks, built hand in hand with our fabrication partners. The handle, the bulbs, the sound, the printer and the cameras, all run by a pair of Raspberry Pis hidden in a cabinet that looks like it only has lights. Then months of small updates while it toured.
The first sketch had a touchscreen on the side for sending your photo. The finished machine has no screen anywhere.
The staff carried a hidden remote with five override modes. Cheesy Overload: the bulbs flicker wildly, the cabinet shakes and smoke pours out. Cheese Disco Party: disco lights and funky cheese music. Cheesequake: the lights drop, a strobe, a boom, and fog blasts upward. Dairy-Free Royalty: a trumpet fanfare, gold light and a crown. Holy Cheesus: a soft golden glow, a choir, and fog rolling out like a cloud.
A good operator could play the machine like an instrument.
It rode with the truck from stop to stop, city to city, next to the free pizza. By the end of August, nearly 5,000 people had grabbed the brass handle to find out how much they love cheese.
People came back to beat their friends.
The real sound from the machine. Squeeze harder to climb the scale, or hit the remote like the staff did.
We worked on this project before founding TinyRobot.
