Farmington Hills, Michigan - Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum

Farmington Hills, Michigan - Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum

This uber-arcade and curiosity museum packed to bursting with fun stuff, including P.T. Barnum's fake of the fake Cardiff Giant. Roadsideamerica.com Report...

Farmington Hills, Michigan - Marvelous Marvin's Mechanical Museum

Another must-see, esp. if you find yourself w/an excess of spare change, is Marvelous Marvin's Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, MI, on Orchard Lane Rd. I like to think of it as a test of nerves. Jam-packed w/video games, old-school mechanical fortune tellers (plus their newer cousin, a fortune-telling device that scans your palm like a bar code), motorized dioramas (my fave is "The Drunkard's Nightmare," where your coinage summons devils from the cupboards and a snake out of his hootch jug), toy planes circling endlessly overhead. A little overwhelming at first and not for the weak for any extended period of time, like, more than 20 minutes. [Miranda Leigh Tarrow, 07/10/1997]