A Singapore restaurant Thursday suspended a bizarre promotional stunt where customers use an arcade-style machine with a mechanical claw to catch live crabs after it sparked uproar online.
A video of the pink machine, containing the creatures and emblazoned with a picture of a smiling red crab under the phrase "Come and catch me", went viral after being posted this week.
Similar to machines where people pick up soft toys, the game sees customers pay 5 Singaporean dollars (USD 3.7) to use a joystick to move the claw over the creatures before lowering it to try to grab one.
If successful, the customer can have the Sri Lankan crab cooked on the spot free of charge, choose to take it home, or leave it at the House of Seafood restaurant to eat another time.
But internet users condemned the game as cruel after the specially produced video promoting it went online.
"This is too much," Joseph Soh wrote on Facebook. "Why are you making their remaining life even more difficult... Absolutely disgusting."
"People think I torture them but we don't have any intention of doing that," he said. "The crabs are not being hurt."
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