Retrospective studies suggest that the over 90% of UK adults remember engaging with these machines as children ( Newall, Russell, Sharman, & Walasek, 2020, 2021), making their childhood usage more common than age-restricted gambling machines, which in general only a minority of children engage with ( Gambling Commission, 2020). Playing these machines involves risking money in the chance of winning something more valuable, which is a key feature in the definition of gambling ( Neal, Delfabbro, & O’Neil, 2005).

These non-age-restricted machines allow users to insert money, in the hope of winning either more valuable toys (crane grabs), or larger amounts of money (coin pushers). In some jurisdictions such as the UK, there are products that are legal to be used by people under 18, such as coin pusher and crane grab machines, which are often found at seaside arcades ( Fisher, 1991 Forrest & McHale, 2012). While most research has focused on illegal engagement with age-restricted gambling products ( Botella-Guijarro, Lloret-Irles, Segura-Heras, Cabrera-Perona, & Moriano, 2020 Estévez et al., 2021 Farhat et al., 2021 King, Russell, & Hing, 2020 León-Jariego, Parrado-González, & Ojea-Rodríguez, 2020 Montiel, Ortega-Barón, Basterra-González, González-Cabrera, & Machimbarrena, 2021 Noble et al., 2022, 2022 Parrado-González & León-Jariego, 2020, 2022 Raisamo, Kinnunen, Pere, Lindfors, & Rimpelä, 2020 Tani, Ponti, & Ghinassi, 2021), the usage of legal youth gambling products is comparatively under-researched. Youth gambling has become a growing public health concern in recent years ( Giralt et al., 2018), with harmful psychosocial and health consequences ( Blinn-Pike, Worthy, & Jonkman, 2010 Livazović & Bojčić, 2019).

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