In Berlin, this sometimes inhospitable city, deeply marked by an often dark past, there are still traces of innocent times when children came to spend their few pfennigs of pocket money on sweets, chewing gums and other gadgets, at the time "made in Japan" on their way home from school.
In German they are called Kaugummiautomaten, and were set up in a clever grid pattern throughout West Berlin to catch the little consumers.
Nowadays they are used as a place to display tags and stickers or to place empty soda or beer bottles.Mostly they are not looked at all, even by their ex-customers.
Before they disappear in the plastic surgery of a twenty-first century globalized city, they appear one last time in the spotlight, as symbols of a civilization that will soon be completely gone.
