The Milk Bottle Toss Scam

We’ve all played the milk bottle game at a county fair, haven’t we? You know the one: a pyramid of three or sometimes six bottles that you toss a ball at in order to knock them over and win a prize that cost less to make than the piddling amount you’re charged to play the game. It looks so easy to knock those bottles over, plus you’ve got gravity on your side as well. Not to mention the fact that you’re typically given three balls and three chances to knock the bottles over. And yet how often have you ever seen anyone actually win at this game?

That’s because usually the game is a cheat. Or, in the parlance of the carny, it’s been “gaffed.” But wait a minute, you say, you’ve seen people successfully knock the bottles over; maybe you’ve even done it yourself. So the game can’t be crooked, right? Besides, aren’t there regulations against that now? Yeah, just like there are regulations protecting you from being cheated by big business.

The game isn’t always gaffed, that’s true. And it’s also true that you may have been one of the lucky ones who knocked over the bottles and walked off with a Pink Floyd mirror. But you were just a pawn in a bigger game, my friend. After all, if somebody doesn’t win sometimes, nobody would ever play it. Usually, of course, the guy who walks off with that Pink Floyd mirror or Budweiser mug is a friend of the guy running the game. But not always. The next time you luck into someone winning the milk bottle toss game, stick around and watch how many people come up and go back down again without knocking every bottle over.

The way the milk bottle toss game is gaffed is not complicated, to say the least. There may be variations depending on how sophisticated the carny wants to get, but basically it all comes down to simple weights. In the six bottle version, half the bottles have lead bottoms and half don’t. When the carny wants somebody to win, the unweighted bottles make up the anchor at the bottle of the pyramid. When he doesn’t want anyone to win, the heavy bottles are on the bottle. That’s why you see a lot of people knocking the top bottles off, but not the bottom ones. The ones on the bottom will still be standing there until a powerful earthquake comes along.

Although the price to take a gamble on the milk bottle game may be very low, in some cases it can turn into a veritable cash cow for the carny. You see, the milk bottle game is one of those particular games where pride comes in. Not just male pride, either. A lot of people still play baseball and softball in this country, though not as many as used to, of course. And any baseball or softball player worth his or her salt takes pride in their throwing ability, even if they aren’t a pitcher. This pride provides for many opportunities for the carny to cash in. The carny may let the thrower knock over the bottles two or three times, even to build up the person’s confidence that this is a cakewalk. So he offers up the chance for the guy or gal to get his money back with interest. He makes a wager that the guy can knock it over two out of three times. Of course, the thrower does exactly that and begins to think there couldn’t possibly be anything crooked going on here. So he takes up the carny up on a double or nothing proposition. Then he simply rearranges the very same bottles that the guy has been consistently knocking over and suddenly the guy can’t knock them over to save his life. If the carny is skilled at picking out potential victims of this scam, he can easily walk away with a few hundred bucks.

The milk bottle toss may not always be a scam, it’s true. And it’s also certainly true that your chances of finding an honest milk bottle toss game is better today than it was twenty or fifty years ago. But because it’s such an easy scam to pull, don’t expect it to ever go away.