My daughter always has outrageous costume ideas, and starts planning usually a year in advance. Well, this year she had decided to be one of those arcade claw machines and of course, her wish is my command! She has chosen some interesting characters, but I had a feeling we were in for some hard work and late nights on this one – I was right! But it was worth every second, every fingertip burned off by the hot glue gun, and every sleepless night.
Naming the machine was easy – since her name starts with K, the whole name worked out great – “Kara’s Krazy Klaw!”
We started by finding a huge Styrofoam cup box (we got ours at Sonic) and I cut out the front and side windows. I was going to cover them with plastic, but realized she still need to breathe (LOL) so we left them open. We spray painted the box green (her choice) and went from there!
I found battery-powered LED Christmas lights at Wal-Mart and was planning on drilling holes in ping pong balls to put over them for the front of the costume. However, I couldn’t find any ping pong balls at a decent price and we ended up using plastic eyeballs! They worked great (and only cost a buck!) – we just drilled holes through the eyeball part and hot glued them to the lights, once the lights were securely attached (once again, with hot glue) to the large box. I also attached a small pocket, made of craft foam, to the inside of the box so she could carry her battery pack.
The inside and top of the large box was covered in aluminum foil for a mirror effect, with a touch light at the top and the claw itself was made of cardboard. I cut the “claw” shapes, covered them in foil and hot glued them to the toilet paper roll/spray paint can lid holder I had also covered in foil. The “cord” for the claw was made of 2 pipe cleaners.
The small box on the front with the joystick on it was actually a napkin box – my parents’ anniversary was coming up and I had ordered special napkins for their party. Good thing I remembered to take the napkins out of the box before I cut the bottom out and glued it on! LOL The joystick is just a piece of blue craft foam, rolled up, with a small red dot and yellow dot of foam on top for the button, then hot glued to the box. People were actually trying to “play” her since the joystick was somewhat movable! She just laughed and told them she didn’t work for free – she needed money!
For the money slot, I spray painted a piece of cardboard black, then made the red and yellow coin slots and the yellow dollar flap out of foam. The dollar hanging out of the slot looks so real! It’s actually a copy of a dollar bill I found online and cut in half. The “prize door” is just a piece of yellow foam that says “Lift for prize” and there is a foam smiley face under it when you lift it up.
She had the panda bear stocking hat, so decided she would be the big prize, and we situated some of her stuffed animals around her. To help her hold everything up, I got some industrial strength Velcro and fashioned some straps made out of a reflective silver car windshield shade that I had used for her brother’s costume.
The best part of the whole thing was when we showed up at the community Halloween contest – everyone is always waiting for her – and she flipped the switch and lit up! Everyone “oohed” and “ahhed” and was totally impressed! We have so much fun every year!!
Related costumes:
Claw Machine Costume – Clawing my Way to the Top 
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Interactive Arcade Game Couples Costume 
Cool DIY White Claw Machine Costume 
Coolest Homemade Kid in a Claw Machine Halloween Costume Idea 
Cool DIY Claw Machine Halloween Costume 
Cool Zoltar the Fortune Telling Machine Costume 
The Stove Box Claw Machine Costume
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