Grog Machine

From MIwiki

The grog machine as it appears in Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Escape from Monkey Island

The Grog Machine is a recurring prop from the Monkey Island series. During the first game, Secret of Monkey Island, it is located at Stan's Previously Owned Vessels. Guybrush can put pieces of eight into it, but nothing ever comes out. At the finale of the game LeChuck punches him into the Grog Machine, and a bottle of root beer falls out of the machine, which has a role in completing the game.

The grog machine appears again in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge during the finale of the game. While walking around in the underground tunnels looking for materials for a voodoo doll to destroy LeChuck Guybrush finds the machine gathering dust in an old room. If he uses the coin return, a piece of eight flies out which serves a later purpose in distracting LeChuck to get his underwear.

Curse of Monkey Island does not feature the grog machine, but there is a gum vending machine in the Voodoo Lady's residence.

The grog machine returns for Escape from Monkey Island, once again at the shipyards, which is now being run by the Harbor Mistress. As before it will not disperse any grog when Guybrush uses it, although if he kicks the machine a pile of cans will eventually fall out.

Trivia

According to LucasArts designer Noah Falstein, the grog machine was originally considered as an opportunity for product placement.

LucasArts approached Coca Cola in the late 80's to see if they could get any money for featuring a Coke machine in their Monkey Island game, and Coke promptly offered an outrageous charge to use it. I guess the idea was that everyone would want to play the game because it had a coke machine in it. Anyway, the result was that the machine became a generic soft-drink machine. ^[1]

In The Secret of Monkey Island it is possible to get stuck in the game, unable to continue the adventure further, if you put all of your money in the grog machine. You do not have enough pieces of eight then to complete certain puzzles so must re-load from a previous save.