you can shorten your code even shorter by combining the custom event and passing of the variable into one line.

dispatchEvent(new VendingMachineEvent(VendingMachineEvent.RETURN_SNACK, snack));

for others wanting to know what the VendingMachineEvent class would look like:


package
{
import flash.events.Event;

public function VendingMachineEvent(type:String, snack:*)
{
this.snack = snack;
super(type);
}
}
}


and then like Andres mentioned, your receiver method:


private function getASnack(e:VendingMachineEvent):void
{
var mySnack:[what type] = e.snack;
}