Man spends life savings on carnival game, wins stuffed banana with dreadlocks

Henry Gribbohm eventually won a prize at a carnival game, but not before spending all of his savings — $2,600 in total — to do it.

Gribbohm went public with his tale of woe, telling Boston news station WBZ-TV that he attended the carnival in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he started playing a game called Tubs of Fun with the hope of winning an Xbox Kinect.

He quickly blew through $300 and then went home to get more money. He lost another $2,300, in an attempt to win his original $300 back. He came away with a giant stuffed banana sporting dread locks and a rastacap.

“It’s not possible that it wasn’t rigged,” Gribbohm, 30, told WBZ-TV. “You just get caught up in the whole ‘I’ve got to win my money back.'”

The next day, Gribbohm complained and got $600 back. Police are investigating to see if the owner of the carnival game committed fraud.

Besides the banana, Gribbohm’s tale of gambling woe has also gained him international notoriety — at least for a couple of days. His story has been picked up by news outlets across the U.S., as well as on tech site Boing Boing and at the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Here’s the original report that garnered all the attention: