the late 1970s early 80s space invader arcade machines

[Gogs]

does anybody remember skipping the school and you could go to a shop and buy a disposable electronic cigarette lighter for peanut money, tear it apart to get the electronic spark ignitor, or go in to woolies and steal a gas cooker ignitor, and you could click the high powered dc spark on to one of the locks on the arcade machines and it gave you a random amount of free credits, sometimes up to 66 with one click, machines like pacman, galaxian, tank commander, etc, i spent my secondary school years in airports, railway station cafes, and anywhere else that had them. i used to charge primary school kids to click up the machine for them, even if they only had a packet of crisps, or 5 fags in a half empty packet as payment it was re-saleable goods,and it was 10p for a single fag for the kids in our street from the ice cream van, brings back memories. the amount i spent must have run into 10s of thousands..