Slot Machine

Pinball and the slot machine grew up as siblings in the coin-operated trade, and for decades the line between them was blurry. Before Flippers arrived in 1947 to reward skill, many a “pin game” was really a gambling device that paid out in coins, and the makers moved freely between the two businesses. The machines gathered here are the slot side of that family - the upright consoles and “flasher type” payout games that catalogs like IPDB swept up alongside pinball because they came off the same factory floors.

Keeney, Games, Incorporated and Bally built these one-coin gambles by the thousands through the 1930s, '40s and '50s, while Mills Novelty Company - the house that perfected the spinning-reel bandit - turned out “flasher” games like Flasher (Bell Fruit) that lit a winning combination instead of spinning a reel. They are not pinball, but they are pinball’s shadow: the chance-driven amusements the industry spent decades trying to live down before skill, flippers and respectability finally won out.