Ten cents nothing, I remember bubble gumball machines that cost one cent - and that was in the 1960s and 1970s!
I also remember the little rubber animals that came in vending machines - lizards, snakes, spiders, flies with clear plastic wings and mice (either gray with black eyes or white with pink eyes), for example. Did anyone else besides me ever notice that the rubber mouse's tail was always shaped like a backwards question mark without the dot on the bottom?
Ah, Creepy Crawlers, as we used to call ‘em, remember them fondly. In my neck of the woods for a period of time we were able to buy them loose in neighborhood stores, which was cool because you could pick the ones you want and get like 12 for a buck. This coincided with the OS Wacky era if I remember correctly.
Did not have as much success with getting them from gumball machines, because you never seemed to get the ones you wanted, or they were mixed with other crap you didn’t want at all. That’s probably why those vending mini football helmets were so popular - you knew you were getting a helmet on every crank of the handle no matter what. I also remember with the creepys they would always put a mouse/rat on the header card as an enticer, but I never saw one in any of the plastic eggs, let alone actually come out of a machine.
The one time I remember being thrilled with a vending machine was when I found one filled with nothing but glow-in-the-dark creepy crawlers, in that pale whitish-greenish color. Got some nice insects, lizards and a nice big cockroach.