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SYFY WIRE video games

This Angry Birds 'venting machine' gives you a prize for hitting it. Seriously.

By Benjamin Bullard
Angry Birds Venting Machine

If society's tragically hectic pace has got you feeling more than a little frustrated these days, Angry Birds may have just come up with the perfect, guilt-free sponge to absorb all that pent-up angst.  

In celebration of the mobile gaming juggernaut’s 10-year anniversary, developer Rovio has devised a real-life way to reward anyone who just needs a good, totally sane and healthy aggression session to release all those pent-up demons. Behold the “Venting Machine” — a vending machine-sized punching box that can take a licking and reward you for giving it, quite literally, your best shot. 

Padded with punch-absorbing foam that’s happy to soak up all the damage you feel like dishing out with your hands, the Venting Machine more than lives up to its name. Billed as “the only vending machine that accepts anger as payment,” the big red box comes packed with a vending dispensary that offers up an Angry Birds-themed treat once you’ve expended all your energy. There’s even a front-facing camera that records all your hilarious flailing, so if you’re among the lucky few who gets a turn when the giant red punch box makes its public debut in New York’s Times Square this week, your rage will even be broadcast on a giant public billboard.

Of course there’s a good cause behind Angry Birds’ good-natured appetite to invite all the punishment you can dish out. Rovio’s November #BringTheAnger campaign “aims to show how anger can be converted into positive action” by partnering with UNICEF to raise awareness alongside a $100,000 donation to UNICEF’s Education in Emergencies fund, which supports education for children in conflict zones throughout the world.

So far, Rovio hasn’t said what its plans are for the Venting Machine beyond its New York debut, but it sounds like an idea with too much anger-satisfying potential to just languish away in storage after this month's one-and-done. The box flies in on Nov. 21 for its high-profile date in Times Square. But we’re waiting with slingshots drawn, in the hope that one day there’ll be a Venting Machine just an angry arm’s length away — no matter where you are.

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