For a few years around 1988, a green reptile with six yellow fangs stood guard over the candy machines in American pizza parlors and grocery vestibules. Its name was spelled wrong on purpose. The machines inside it were sold as a business, and the business ended up in front of the Oregon Supreme Court.
The short version
- The Monstor is a hollow plastic shell that fit over a multi-head bulk candy vendor. Collector listings date it to 1988 and credit it to Vendall.
- It had at least two siblings: Vendor, a silver robot, and Vendora, a red-turbaned genie. Some sellers also report a spaceman.
- A company called Vendall Marketing Corporation of Medford, Oregon sold candy-and-nut vending packages of 15 to 100 machines for $6,885 to $36,900. Oregon's Justice Department opened an investigation after 39 customer complaints, and the state Supreme Court backed that investigation in December 1993.
- Listings describe the shells at about 28 by 21 by 8 inches. Sellers call them blow molds; we could not find a maker's document confirming the process.
- Prices run wide. One complete working four-head machine was listed at a $124.99 opening bid. A lone shell is on eBay this fall at $1,050.99. Neither is a sale record.
What it is
Take away the face and a Monstor is a frame: a tall open rectangle of molded plastic, about eight inches deep, built to drop over a metal stand holding several coin-op candy or gumball heads side by side. The machines sat in the open mouth. A child put in a quarter, turned the crank, and the candy came out between the fangs.
The design does all its work from ten feet away. The brow is ridged and veined in red, the eyes are bloodshot domes, the scales are raised in the plastic, and three fangs hang from the top jaw while three more rise from the bottom one. MONSTOR runs across the chin in yellow cartoon capitals. The misspelling is the point. It is the kind of spelling a toy company used in 1988 to make an ordinary word into a name it could own.
The family: Monstor, Vendor and Vendora
The shells came in characters, and the three most often seen share the same frame proportions, so an operator could swap faces on the same stand.
| Shell | Look | Lettering |
|---|---|---|
| Monstor | Green scaled creature, red eyes, six yellow fangs | MONSTOR, yellow, on the chin |
| Vendor | Silver robot with a domed head, red running lights and molded bolts | VENDOR, red, on the base |
| Vendora | Red frame topped by a grinning yellow genie in a pink turban, hands gripping the frame | VENDORA, white, on the base |
Sellers sometimes list the Vendora as a fortune teller or a "genie Monstor," and an Instagram post pairs the Monstor with a "Spaceman Vendor." Whether the spaceman is a fourth shell or another name for the silver robot, we could not settle from the listings alone.
The company, and the Oregon case
This is where the story stops being about plastic. In the late 1980s, bulk vending was sold to ordinary people as a ready-made business. You bought the machines, placed them in stores, and collected the quarters. A Medford, Oregon firm named Vendall Marketing Corporation sold exactly that: packages of 15 to 100 machines dispensing candy and nuts, priced from $6,885 to $36,900. Its pitch told buyers they could "start up a new business" and that "the potential for immediate return certainly is greater than with almost any other investment."
Oregon's Department of Justice received 39 complaints. Customers said machines were not delivered as promised, that income and product quality were misrepresented, and that the company falsely claimed membership in the National Automatic Merchandising Association. The state issued an investigative demand under the Unlawful Trade Practices Act. Vendall fought it. On December 23, 1993, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled for the state, holding that investigators needed only to show that violations appeared likely, not prove them (Vendall Marketing Corp. v. Department of Justice, 318 Or. 189).
What the record does not say. The court opinion never mentions a Monstor, and the complaints were allegations at an investigative stage, not findings. The shells carry the Vendall name and the dates line up, but the link between this Medford company and the molded characters comes from collector listings, not from a document we have seen. If you own a shell with molded maker text, the back of the base is the place to look.
How to identify one
- Measure it. Listings give roughly 28 inches tall, 21 wide and 8 deep for the Monstor. A shell well under that is likely a later copy or a different product.
- Check the lettering. MONSTOR, VENDOR and VENDORA are raised in the plastic, then painted. Painted-only lettering on a flat surface is a warning sign.
- Look at the paint. Original color is thin and wears first on the fangs, eyes and letters. Many shells have been touched up; one WorthPoint seller said so plainly. Touch-ups are common and not disqualifying, but they should be disclosed.
- Ask about the stand. A shell with its metal stand and working heads is a machine. A shell alone is display plastic. Price them differently.
- Shipping is the real cost. The piece is light but huge. One Canadian seller charges $220 to ship a single shell to the United States.
What they sell for
The market has no stable number yet. Here is what the record shows, and none of it is a confirmed sale.
| What | Price | Kind of number |
|---|---|---|
| Complete four-head Monstor machine with stand, keys, three of four coin mechanisms working | $124.99 opening bid, $174.99 buy-it-now | Listing, local pickup (WorthPoint archive) |
| Monstor shell alone, minor paint loss, shipped from British Columbia | $1,050.99 plus $220 shipping | Active eBay asking price, September 2026 |
The gap between those two lines is the story of this object. Sold as a working candy machine in the local classifieds, it was a used appliance. Sold as a shell to people who remember it from a pizza parlor, it is a display piece priced on nostalgia. A buyer should decide which one they are shopping for before they look at the number.
Its second life
Most shells that come up now are sold empty, without the stand. Collectors hang them on a wall, fit shelves inside the mouth to show action figures, or mount a monitor behind the frame for a game corner. The design has become well known enough that miniature makers sell 1:12 scale copies of all three characters for action-figure dioramas. That is a fair measure of how the Monstor is remembered: less as a vending machine than as a piece of 1980s kid culture, the same gross-out, big-fanged world as Madballs and Boglins.
Hunting a Monstor, Vendor or Vendora shell, or checking what one is going for right now? Search every marketplace at once.
Sources
- Vendall Marketing Corp. v. Department of Justice, 318 Or. 189, 863 P.2d 1263 (1993), for the Medford location, package sizes and prices, the sales pitch, the 39 complaints and the ruling.
- WorthPoint, "VTG 1988 Vendall Monstor Vending Machine Plastic Frame 21 x 28 x 8", for dimensions, the three-part system and the paint touch-up note.
- WorthPoint, "Monstor/Monster Gumball/Candy Vending Machine by Vendall Corporation", for the complete four-head machine and its listing price.
- eBay listing 187772535261, Monstor shell, asking price and shipping, accessed September 26, 2026.
- Instagram, "Monstor and Spaceman Vendor", for the spaceman name.
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