It’s Spectacle day. Snapchat surprised everyone this morning by deploying a vending machine that sells Spectacles right along the beach in Venice. The machine will only be there for 24 hours, and there are already crazy lines.
We got some hands on video from Jameson Detweiler, who actually got to use the machine to buy a pair of spectacles.
Some hands-on footage of actually using the @Spectacles vending machine, from @jaymstr. Post coming soon pic.twitter.com/oDvgECoP1z
— Fitz Tepper (@fitztepper) November 10, 2016
The machine itself has a screen, three big buttons to push (one for each color of glasses) and a place to swipe your credit card. And of course an opening from your Spectacles will be dispensed.
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And as you can see in the video, the screen can be used to try on the glasses using augmented reality – a virtual pair of the glasses will appear on your face on the video screen – similar to how the AR “lenses” feature works inside Snapchat itself.
Here’s one more video showing the process from further away.
One more: pic.twitter.com/MeA06Ym5Oi
— Fitz Tepper (@fitztepper) November 10, 2016
The machine actually ran out of glasses when Jameson was in line, but Snapchat came to restock them. A truck pulled up behind the machine and put a white curtain around the whole thing so no one could see them working on the machine.
We’re working on getting some more hands-on footage of someone opening and using Spectacles, but If you want to read up on how Spectacles work in the meantime, check out our post on that here.





