with any claw, regardless of its settings. Legality The ability of the crane machine owner to set features such as a payout percentage raises the question of whether these machines should be considered gambling devices in a legal sense, alongside slot machines. In the United States, claw vending machines are typically specifically exempted from statutes which regulate gambling devices, contingent upon compliance with certain rules. In the state of Michigan, for example, this exemption applies only if the wholesale value of the prizes inside is below a certain threshold, and if these prizes are actually retrievable with the claw. Other states regulate crane machines very little. In addition, some attorneys have advised claw machine owners to avoid using the word "skill" in the game description decal present on most machines. In other jurisdictions, such as Alberta, Canada, skill cranes are illegal unless the player is allowed to make repeated attempts (on a single credit) until he or she wins a prize. Skill cranes in single-play mode (where the player has only one chance per credit to try for a prize) were found by the Ontario Court of Appeal to be essentially games of chance, and therefore prohibited except at fairs or exhibitions, where they are covered by an exemption. Global popularity Asia In Japan, modern trolley-style claw machines began being manufactured by Sega and Taito in the 1960s. Sega released its first modern electro-mechanical (EM) arcade crane game, Skill Diga, in 1965, and followed it with Super Skill Diga (1968), which included dolls as prizes. By the 1970s, Sega and Taito machines had drawn the attention of plush toy vendors, with the machines used to display and deploy stuffed animals, evolving into modern claw machines. They gained popularity in Japan during the late 1970s, with crane games among Japan's top ten highest-grossing EM arcade games of 1977, and then Sega's magnetic crane machine the sixth highest-grossing EM arcade game of 1978. By the 1980s, crane machines had become much larger, with plush dolls the major prizes, and cranes common at carnivals and arcades. A boom in crane games occurred with the release of Sega's UFO Catcher in 1985, and since then the term "UFO catcher" has become synonymous with crane games in Japan. It stood out for its eagle claw shape, hence the name "UFO" catcher, along with its kawaii (cute) family-friendly design, helping to make them more marketable to