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Meet The Gottliebs: D. Gottlieb & Co.

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·1h 13m·analyzed·Oct 30, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Gottlieb family history from grip testers to Baffle Ball and the birth of D. Gottlieb & Co. in 1931.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles episode on D. Gottlieb & Co. covers the early history of the Gottlieb family and their foundational role in pinball. Hosts David Dennis and Ron Hallett discuss David Gottlieb's origins in Milwaukee, his early ventures in film distribution and punch board sales in Texas, and his discovery of grip-testing machines that led to his move to Chicago in 1927. The episode details the 1931 launch of Baffle Ball, which sold 50,000 units and established D. Gottlieb & Company as a major force in the emerging coin-operated amusement industry during the Great Depression.

Key Claims

  • David Gottlieb moved to Chicago in 1927 specifically to find parts manufacturers and talent for building grip-testing machines

    high confidence · David found Dallas lacked metal casting expertise; Chicago had the industrial infrastructure he needed

  • Baffle Ball sold 50,000 units at $17.50 base price ($37.50 with legs)

    high confidence · Hosts cite historical flyer pricing and sales figures from early 1930s production

  • Gottlieb was producing approximately 400 Baffle Ball units per day in early 1930s

    high confidence · Quote from Alvin Gottlieb describing '8 in the morning till about midnight' production runs with family and night crews

  • D. Gottlieb & Company was officially founded in November 1931

    high confidence · Hosts state this as the formal establishment date of the company

  • Ray Maloney created Pallyhoo after failing to secure sufficient Baffle Ball inventory from Gottlieb as a distributor

    high confidence · Described as Maloney's response to supply constraints; he named his company after the game

  • David Gottlieb had a reputation for being extremely conservative financially, keeping personal funds in U.S. government treasuries rather than stocks

    high confidence · Direct quote from son Alvin describing father's investment philosophy and extreme money discipline

  • Gottlieb's early games had no formal testing; production decisions were based on immediate market feedback

    high confidence · Alvin Gottlieb quote: 'If it was not so good, it didn't last long. If it was a really good [game]...they would run if they hit a hot number'

Notable Quotes

  • “Once he got his hands on a buck, he liked to keep it. His hopeful conservatism was such that I don't think he owned any stock or anything but our own company.”

    Alvin Gottlieb @ ~00:35:00 — Defines David Gottlieb's extreme financial discipline and business philosophy that shaped company culture

  • “The human mind can only concentrate and produce well on one subject at a time. If your mind is clogged up with things on the outside, other investments that you have to worry about, you can't concentrate on your business.”

    David Gottlieb (quoted by Alvin) @ ~00:35:30 — Core philosophy explaining why Gottlieb refused diversification and external investments

  • “They threw the key away because there was always some bunch of people in the place. They were just building constantly, turning these things out.”

    Alvin Gottlieb @ ~00:45:00 — Illustrates the intense production demand and work ethic during Baffle Ball's explosive success

  • “Things were going so well, they were making about 400 of these baffle balls a day. And I and dad, his younger brother, my mother, my mother's younger brother were working from eight in the morning till about midnight.”

    Alvin Gottlieb @ ~00:44:30 — Demonstrates family-centered production model and scale of early manufacturing success

  • “I never, ever want to be broke.”

    David Gottlieb (quoted by Alvin) @ ~00:35:45 — Reveals trauma-driven financial conservatism rooted in pre-WWI economic hardship

  • “If they hit a hot number. See, that's the thing. If they had a hot number, they would do two, three, four months. If they didn't have a number, they didn't do anything.”

    Alvin Gottlieb @ ~00:48:00 — Explains Gottlieb's early product development philosophy: rapid iteration based on market demand

Entities

David GottliebpersonAlvin GottliebpersonMichael GottliebpersonD. Gottlieb & Co.companyBaffle BallgameRay MaloneypersonPallyhoogame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Active listener feedback correcting previous episode details about Haggis Pinball manufacturing (delamination, acrylic overlay mechanics, name pronunciation)

    high · Multiple listener emails cited in corrections segment; hosts acknowledge errors and incorporate community expertise from experienced operators like Dr. John Cosson

  • ?

    event_signal: Silver Ball Chronicles episode examining foundational history of D. Gottlieb & Co. and its role in establishing the commercial pinball industry

    high · Full episode dedicated to David, Alvin, and Michael Gottlieb; hosts signal this is Part 1 of multi-part coverage with Part 2 planned

  • ?

    product_strategy: Silver Ball Chronicles planning expanded coverage of pinball manufacturers; JJP episode being split into two parts due to scope; future episodes on Dutch Pinball's Alice in Wonderland announced

    high · Hosts discuss splitting previously covered episodes and planning future deep-dives; acknowledge Patreon backlog approaching 41 episodes

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.228

0:00
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0:12
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1:07
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. Anyway, sorry about being late. The building across from me is on fire. Apparently they've been pumping water into it for three hours. so i apologize if you can hear uh a bunch of um like grinding or sawing or something it's because they're trying to bust into the ceiling like into the attic of this building oh my
1:54
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. And with me is Ron, the Govna Hallett. What's up fella? The Govna. Because I went to England, I'm a Govna. You did. Okay. And you grew a mustache. Well, I had that before I went to England, but yes. Yeah, it's a very English thing with the mustache and the traveling and the pinball. Not really. I'd have to wax it, maybe put handlebars, and then I'd feel more. Oh, yes, with the things? Yeah. With the curly things? That's what I should do. Very good. And you enjoyed yourself in England. I was there in high school once, and it was one of the most amazing times I've ever had. Hmm. But you're not a city person. No, hate it. You hate cities. I dig that. The British Museum, I didn't realize when I was there, because I read this later, that it's the largest museum in the world. Yes. And the best part about the British Museum is that most of the stuff in there is stolen from other people. Yeah, yeah. I noticed that.
David Dennis
person
Ron Hallettperson
Silver Ball Chroniclespodcast
Wayne Gillardperson
Haggis Pinballcompany
Dr. John Cossonperson
Ryanperson
3:08
Very, very cool. All this Egyptian stuff, and it's like, that didn't come from here. Did you get to the London Dungeon? Did you go there? The London Dungeon. It's like a touristy place where they'd explore all of the worst parts about London through, like, the 16th century and the London Fire and Jack the Ripper. I went to the Tower of London where they did have a dungeon. I saw the crown jewels. Oh!
3:40
Oh, you mean the diamonds. Yes, yes. The actual crown jewels. Wow. Yeah. That's still a giggle when you say that. Canadians are so goofy Speaking of family jewels how about the launch of Alice in Wonderland I'm sure that'll be in a future episode we'll do on Dutch Pinballs Alice Adventures in Wonderland Yeah so that's a whole thing but then there's also X-Men which I think looks like a winner congratulations Jack Danger I'm slowly piecing together an episode for you so just keep going and we'll get you something together here and hopefully help celebrate the awesome pins that you're creating. But then we've also got Mark Seiden's first pin over at JJP, a theme that I like, although I can't imagine buying a $15,000 pin,
4:34
Avatar. Oh, looks beautiful. JJP, you make the best premier fancy-looking pinball machines. I'll tell you what. That's their gimmick. If only we were talking about them in a future episode. Yes, I've almost got the JJP episode done, but I'm going to have to split it into two pieces. The episodes that I've created recently have all ended up being too big and have been required to be split into two, including this episode. All right. Poor content. And you can space it out longer and milk it longer. So good. And as most of our listeners know, most of the content is just stuff I take from other people and we just talk about it. So it's not like I'm doing anything at all. Well, for some of it, I was actually there. Yeah, that helps. That's why the JJP thing will be interesting for me, because I got to see it all happen in real time. Yes, you got to see Jersey Jack's birth.
5:29
As a pinball manufacturer. Yes, yes, yes. Not the actual Jersey Jack. No, he's older than me, so that would have been impossible. Well, we've sold out, as everybody knows, over at patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. jump on for three dollars a month not a big commitment just to come in and say thank you it's been a wild ride so far and i'll tell you what since the last episode we've seen um we've seen a lot of activity over on the patreon and and i i don't know why we just covered the australian pinball ones but i want to say welcome to yum mcbane what's that mcbane thing oh the goggles they do nothing they're from the simpsons yes from simpsons i'm mcpain i'm here to lead not to read so thank you very much nick and then uh we've also got the secret antelope who is my favorite new premium crony who has joined us spending a lot of time hanging out on the discord channel at six dollars a month you get early ad free access to the episode plus access to the discord chat room what do you think about that discord chat room and what's going on in there ron uh it's all barbecue and porsches that's what there's no pinball talk whatsoever but uh it it does devolve into a lot of barbecue tips uh which i have to say i've taken quite a few of the suggestions for the barbecue. What about yourself? Well, most people don't know that. They're in Discord. We've already named the next 10 games. People don't know that. Yes, and they're all barbecue themed, which I think is a winner if I have ever heard of a theme.
7:27
So shout out to the Haymaker and all of his barbecue tips. From the U.S., shout out to him. Thank you. Yes, exactly, exactly. Also, $20 a month gets you the ad-free access, the Discord access, plus you get a free t-shirt after three months. But if you just want a t-shirt, you don't want to do any of the shenanigans, you can swing on over to silverballswag.com. You can click on the Silver Ball Chronicles link, and all of that comes up. You can also chat with us over on facebook.com slash silverballchronicles. that's where uh uh mcbane dropped us a couple of really nice comments and thank you very much for that i like how it's the facebook that said like a true senior i ordered something from the amazon with that increased engagement also came some increased scrutiny on our previous episode Wrong! Correction time. We were wrong on a few things. And I want to set it clear here. Okay, so first of all, I had somebody reach out to me almost immediately. And they said, by the way, you have said some of the names incorrectly.
8:51
Well, we know that. Wayne Gillard is how Wayne's name is pronounced. Not Gillard. It's Gillard. Okay. Yes. So in Canada, the reason I struggle sometimes with certain names is we have a French influence, particularly in my region and my province. Gillard. Yeah, it would be Gillard. Here.
9:16
Gillard? Oh, Gillard, probably, right? If you're French. No, it would be Gillard. Oh, oh. Gillard. Right? So that's why I'm like, so I thought I did a good time by saying, what did I say? like gillard but apparently it's gillard i don't know i can't remember and i don't go back to listen to these other episodes because once i'm done editing that's the end of that but we also had a uh chat from ryan over at the phantom tilt podcast it's ryan here from the greatest bi-monthly recorded in western australia above the tropic of capricorn podcast in the world the phantom tilt pinball podcast i really enjoyed the latest episode and i'm looking forward to hearing you deep dive more into pinball down here it's a shame it had to start with the sniveling runt damien wow but i know there are so many other interesting characters around australia and new zealand to get into so i'll eagerly i'll be eagerly awaiting the next one if you need any aussie call outs to throw in throughout the show don't be shy send me a list and i'll record them in my best i don't know where that is bogan voice that must be that like stereotypical like rural Australian voice. Well, I'm off to watch my kangaroo before I ride it into work tomorrow. I hope you can both make it down here one day and try our local delicacies. Bunnings, snags, and Vegemite sangas.
10:36
Very cool. I probably said all that wrong. I've always kind of wanted to go down to Australia because it's fairly similar to Canada being a former British colony that didn't revolt against our great king.
10:53
We just got too expensive, and they decided to get rid of us. I find that very exciting. I'd love to make it down there. We're a big deal in Australia. We sell a lot of shirts down there. Yeah, and they tend to be fairly large, like XX or XXXL shirts. What are you saying? I'm saying a little less Vegemite, guys. What about Dr. John? Who's Dr. John? It's Dr. John Cosson, well-known in the pinball community, australian he says hello david and the slam tilt chap yes that's my other podcast the slam tilt podcast oh that's the one with bruce nightingale that's my plug uh he says as you mentioned i had dealings with haggis from an early stage purchasing the first kelts built it was a simple but slightly frustrating game but held up well even went on location for two years as we know building one is easy but not manufacturing multiple uh damien had multiple innovations in the game including the purse pecs perspex back glass that is one piece similar to what abba has from pinball brothers uh i think alien has that too it was like a one piece it did have magnets but also a locking key on top so it wouldn't fall off during play my adhesive did fail at one point so the whole thing fell off the frame onto the glass during play one day. Very confusing and frightening to see, but did no damage to anything. Just glued it back on. Okay. He also incorporated locking levers you twist to lock the bat box in place rather than head bolts. Fabric-lined glass channels to eliminate glass rattles. I wish more people would do that. Printing on the underside of the play field to align and mount mechs and other minor features. He says, I received my fathom number one. Nine months after I paid full for it. This was quite fast by all reports. Season ticket holders got their games first and waited a year in some cases after paying the full cost invoice and receiving their games. I personally told Damien face-to-face this was not a good way to run a business, but it was his business, so didn't have to listen. Of course, I didn't order the Centaur due to what was happening. Even longer delays, minimal staffing, no communication, etc. Just to correct a few things from the informative Haggis episode. uh-oh uh wayne's last name is pronounced yes gill lard uh kelts also came with the acrylic overlay on the play field see pic of mine below so he sent a picture the wood is not glued to the acrylic ah this is the big mistake here i got a couple of emails on this they are held together by the mechs that go through both i think the term delaminating is a misnomer because what seems to have happened to some. The game suffered heat exposure. The acrylic top expanded more than the wood. Thus, where there was less mechs holding it down, there would be a bow or buckle. Which is basically the center of the play field, right? Sort of the middle between the flippers and stuff like that. The score displays on the Fathom are also RGB. In Mermaid Battle, they change from blue to red. Super cool, super cool. So there's the thing, right? So we had said the delaminating that was happening to some of those pins was because of the heat exposure and there was some lifting. Well, the idea was that it wasn't glued to the playfield, so it wasn't actually delaminating from the playfield. It was bending or whatever because of the shrinking or expanding of the wood underneath it. uh okay the other thing about this acrylic top that we said was that it was likely the heat exposure from when it sat on a dock waiting to get into containers or from containers through customs into the dealers etc etc in north america actually some of those bowing or buckling playfields were actually air freight so they didn't spend a lot of time sitting on a boat and things like that with heat changes, and they still had problems. So I wanted to be crystal clear about that, even though we screwed up in the first episode, which, I mean, is the first time for everything, right? And what about Greg Sealby? He says, Hi, guys. I've been listening to your podcast since you started. Love it. I just wanted to say thanks for pronouncing my name correctly in the Haggis episode. As I know, this is not usually your strong suit. Oh, thanks for that. But we did it. We did it. We got that name. We did it. Let's jump into today's topic, shall we? We shall. David Gottlieb, Alvin Gottlieb, and Michael Gottlieb. All people with the same last name. It's like they're related. A famous last name.
15:38
A name that is synonymous with pinball, its growth, expansion, and then its collapse. the Gottliebs are absolutely integral to what we know as pinball today. David, the grandfather, Alvin, the father, and Michael, the son, all had a hand in building a Gottlieb pinball machine. Although they all kind of had separate names for companies. But in the beginning, it was David Gottlieb. so join us this month for meet the got leaves what is your memories of got leaves what is the first memory of got hmm that's a good question like when was the first time where you were like playing a pinball machine and you realized got leave was something uh when i saw all these one player ems and they were all got leaves all the wedge heads and they're all got leaves wow this got leave made a lot of games without a doubt now my first memory was i was searching out pinball machines in my in my 30s when i first got back into pinball and i realized there were manufacturers and different companies and things like it wasn't just pinball there was like a whole business there and i played jungle princess the no no jungle queen the four player do you know what that one with the monkeys and the drop targets.
17:10
And I remember looking at that and being like, oh, Gottlieb, that's the company that made this. This thing is heavy and built like a tank. It's wild. That's my first memory of Gottlieb. If you have a first memory of Gottlieb, listener, shoot us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. And also phonetically spell out how you say your name.
17:33
And we know Dennis is lying. The first one he played was Spring Break. Yeah, that's right. Everybody, yeah. What was the other one? It's the one with the cactus. Oh, yes. Cactus Jacks. Dancing cacti. Gotta love that. But that was a whole other thing. That'll be in part two. But let's wind it away back. Let's go back to the beginning.
17:57
David Gottlieb was one of nine kids growing up in Milwaukee. or as it's known by the Iroquois in the area, Milwaukee, which means the river. Isn't that true from Wayne's World? Oh, I've never seen it. You haven't seen Wayne's World? Oh, that really fell flat. That did not go well. So his father was a foreman in a type of tailoring shop, And David's grandfather before him came from the old country, like so many other people back when they came in with the aughts. You remember the old country, Ron? I'm two or three generations removed from the old country. Wow. That's pretty good for like an Italian-American. Yeah, I would say my great-grandparents were from Italy. Oh see my grandparents were their grandparents and their grandparents We landed here in like 1860 Wow Yeah before they even kept records We just sort of showed up on the shores of eastern Canada You are Canadian as they come. I am as Canadian as they absolutely come. It is unbelievable. So there was no old country, really, for us, which was pretty wild. But we did come from the correct part of Europe, which is England and Scotland. The correct part. All right. When David Gottlieb was eight or nine, he had a newspaper route and started at four in the morning. He had some serious hardworking ethic right from when he was a child. And he started from zero and he continued to grow over the years. He attended the University of Minnesota. What does that mean? He started from zero? Like zero. Like he didn't have anything. He did it all himself. That's a weird lie. He started from... You guys don't say that down there? No, and I thought you were talking about his paper route. He started with like zero subscribers and then grew over the years. Then he became the paper boy, and they made a video game about it. That's right. And then he ran the territories of all the other paper boys, and then they had to make him part of a cut. And then he did obstacle courses for some reason. People need to be... He wasn't wearing a helmet. Oh, no one wore a helmet back then. Are you kidding? David attended the University of Minnesota when the First World War broke out, and he went to the Army Training Corps. The Great War, if you will, because they didn't know what second one was coming yet. Yeah, at the time it was not called World War I. It was called the Great War. Yes, that's right. And this Army Training Corps was in the university that he attended, and by the time he was ready to ship out, World War I had already ended. Now, of course, you remember when the First World War started, right, Ron? It's like something like 1914 to 1918, something like that. Oh, well, no, for you it was 1917, wasn't it? Everybody else was in war in the 1914. You Americans sat on the sidelines. Well, yeah, we weren't in the area, you know. Let's see, 1914 to 1918. Damn, I'm good. Damn it, I thought I was going to get you. And after the war, David and Saul, his brother, began selling film on the road to theaters. Now, this was in the old Nickelodeon days. And no, it's not Nickelodeon like the Nickelodeon Channel and cartoons.
21:24
But this was like something I had to look up. So in the 1920s, Nickelodeon was a theater chain with what they called movie palaces. Have you ever been to a movie palace? In Albany, there was a palace theater.
21:42
Oh, okay. So you have been to a palace. It was an old school. Then there was the Madison, which was your old school-like theater with a huge lobby and all that kind of cool stuff we don't have anymore. Yeah. So what they did in our local place is they've replaced everything with recliners because they realized that people don't want to come and pay $50 to go see a movie and sit on terrible seats. And wait 40 minutes before it could even start.
22:08
David and Saul had an old Model T Ford car, and it was so difficult and stiff to start with those old cars, Ron, you could almost like break your arm to start them, that they only stopped in towns that had a hill, so that they could start the car by pushing it down the hill rather than turning the crank. Well, to jumpstart the engine, yes. Exactly, exactly. David came up with this brilliant idea to splice the national anthem and the American flag into every film he sold. So that at the end of the film, the people would stand up and applaud and cheer for America. The people outside of the theater would hear this noise and excitement and assume that the film was so good, they would buy a ticket for the next showing. that is salesmanship the family would move to dallas texas to get away from the cold weather of minnesota have you been to minnesota ah just the airport just the airport yeah so i mean it's a big difference between minnesota and dallas you know texas is the heart of the american oil industry and he began to work in the oil fields he would sell what was called punch boards to the oil field workers. I had no idea what the heck a punch board was. So I had to look this up and it is in our show notes. A punch board is like a portable gambling device, which had jackpots. Oh, everyone knows that. Does everybody know that? I've never heard of that before. I was like, I've never heard of this before. So like, you know, nowadays we have like the one arm band or you go and you have a VLT, a video lottery terminal or, you know, those things that you've got in in like vegas well back in the day you would carry around these like boxes and you'd put your finger in and break the hole it's sort of like an advent calendar you know what i mean so he carried a lot of cash around with him because if anybody won the jackpot he would have to pay them this was like western cowboys kind of hotel thing so what did he do to keep safe. He had a gun. And he was young. Teenager, he would sleep with the gun under his pillow and he would put a dresser up against the door. It was so dangerous. David Gottlieb had a reputation for being very tight with money. He didn't joke around. This is a great example of how wealth is built over generations. Wealth doesn't just come to everybody. It doesn't just appear one day. But you have to think that over generations, both David and Alvin and Michael and all of his grandchildren, all that stuff, have all benefited. Wealth is built over generations. That's why Europeans look kind of fancy, because they've had a lot more generations to build wealth. What does Alvin Gottlieb say about his father being so tight? Once he got his hands on a buck, he liked to keep it. His hopeful conservatism was such that I don't think he owned any stock or anything but our own company. His personal funds were always in the U.S. government treasuries. He preached that loud and long to anyone with an earshot. He said the human mind can only concentrate and produce well on one subject at a time. If your mind is clogged up with things on the outside, other investments that you have to worry about, you can't concentrate on your business. His experiences in those days were such, he said, I never, ever want to be broke. So we could see that once you're in those early aughts and tens around the First World War, life was a lot tougher you had to be uh you had to have more grit you couldn't just go to the grocery store like we have now life was tough and that means that you never ever want to go back to that again especially when you've been given such a gift in 1927 david gottlieb discovered a grip testing machine which was manufactured in dallas texas so what's a grip testing machine uh if it's the game one you you grip it and the harder you grip it the you know the higher ranking you have yeah and it's a competition yeah right you got all these oil field guys these these roughnecks that work out on the oil field and these are all big dudes right they are all muscular because they're like lifting up pipes and turning things with big tools you can tell i'm no you can tell you've never actually done physical labor yes so anyway so those guys they'd come out from the oil fields and they'd have a bunch of money and they would get these punch cards and they'd gamble and then they would go and then they get all all you know they'd have a couple drinks and then they would want to see who's the stronger one who's got the stronger grip strength so this thing would probably print money what do you think i'm curious what it looked like if it had like a window or different levels like wussy strong hercules level or something david gottlieb bought one of these machines and he wanted to produce his own but he couldn't find anyone in texas with the expertise in making the castings that he would need because it needed these like metal grips and all these like little bits and pieces it wasn't just sort of like today where you've got a computer board and some software you needed like literal mechanisms dave and saul were traveling to chicago quite extensively as part of their sort of jack-of-all-trades jobs. David would move to Chicago in 1927 because they had the parts and the talent to build these types of machines that David was drawn to. And he would move to Jefferson Street, where he began building grip-testing machines. In 1930, David discovered pinball machines in Ohio, and that's where he saw the potential. And we spoke a little bit about this in episode 27, a brief history of pinball. You love that episode. So long ago. 27 episodes. We're on episode like 40. Damn. I think it's 41, maybe. Holy crap. We're on episode 41. Like I said. We're like elder statesmen now. This is where production of Baffle Ball by Gottlieb had started. And he had to move to a larger facility. And that was when he moved over to Chicago Avenue, which was essentially just an oversized garage. Now, you remember Baffle Ball. They sold a lot of them. 50,000 units. Now, they weren't $10,000 each, but they weren't exactly cheap either. Well, we had a flyer, didn't we? Here's the flyer. You know, Baffle Ball, it's the greatest value ever offered. It says so. Ten shots for one cent. It's absolutely the finest pinboard game made. Pinboard. No bugs in this game. I wonder if that was a problem back then. It's like literally bugs? Bugs as in it doesn't work right.
29:08
Oh. Operators, before buying machines, get our low prices. They are astonishing, and they are also not on our flyer. They're not there. Nobody wants to hear any of those. Back in this time, we're not talking about pinball with flippers, and we're not really talking about pinball with like bingo, which was like the one with holes and things like that. We're talking a very small sort of tabletop game. It also came with legs in some versions. And you would kind of shoot the ball up, and it would go through the arch, just kind of like those 1970s games, which are not really a thing anymore, where the ball goes up and it bounces back and forth and back and forth, and then comes down the play field and into various holes scoring. Well, we have some pricing. You can get your new baffle ball for only $17.50. Could you imagine? If you want the legs, it's $37.50.
30:26
inflation, market volatility, and determining how to maximize your retirement income in the safest, most effective, and tax-efficient way. Today's economy requires an experienced hand and a personalized plan. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Nordman. I am the Nordman, and I approve of Dennis Financial's investment and insurance advice. Their opinions on vacuum pump ramps are If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book. Or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc., Canadian residents only. Right. Now, it's got the fancy legs. It's also got the designs on the side. Very nice.
31:25
Very nice. You could upgrade to the Playboy Senior, which was the leg version of Playboy, which was not what Playboy is nowadays.
31:36
$1750 and $3750, respectively. Really cool stuff. So this was the era where it all started in November of 31. And this was D. Gottlieb and Company. That is the Gottlieb that we know and love and will continue for many years. We'll follow it for quite a while. The game resonated with people because they just wanted some cheap entertainment during this Great Depression era. Anything that you could do to kind of distract yourself from kind of the trials and tribulations of society. Drugstores and taverns in the U.S. primarily operated these types of machines, with many of the locations quickly recovering the cost of those games. What did Alvin Gottlieb say about this era? He said things were going so well, they were making about 400 of these baffle balls a day. And I and dad, his younger brother, my mother, my mother's younger brother were working from eight in the morning till about midnight. And they had people there all night long. The term was they threw the key away because there was always some bunch of people in the place. They were just building constantly, turning these things out.
32:56
So there's that hardworking kind of tough work ethic. You know what I mean? to maximize the profit, to maximize the potential. Your family are the ones you're employing to build them because your family is willing to work eight till midnight every night. Now, Ray Maloney, this is a name that has popped up in some of our previous episodes. Remember?
33:19
He was selling machines via mail order, and he couldn't get enough of these baffle balls from David Gottlieb's company. So as a distributor, you're struggling with getting enough product. So that's when he said, well, I'll just make my own. And he made... Pallyhoo. And it did so well, he named his company after it. Gottlieb, however, was sort of the innovator in this area. And they continued to survive because they would change sort of the methodology of these pin games, if you will, as opposed to pinball. and they would sort of continue to tweak those to really build and become the total creator of the entire coin op industry. David Gottlieb loved innovation. Only he saw a way forward to continue to push sales. Well, Alan Gottlieb says they would run if they hit a hot number. See, that's the thing. If they had a hot number, they would do two, three, four months. If they didn't have a number, they didn't do anything. They would just sit around, work like the Dickens, and try to invent something else. I assume he means like the game itself. Like if the game didn't sell, like, okay, this ain't selling. We need something else. There's no such thing as testing. They would start building them, and they'd go into production. If it was not so good, it didn't last long. If it was a really good item, they would go like the Dickens, and pretty soon everyone and their uncle was making the same thing. They would be copying each other. Continuing innovation. Now, I think Toyota has this thing that's called Kaizen. Are you aware of Kaizen?
35:01
No. It's continuous, gradual, conscious improvement, right? You're always trying to improve the process. You're always trying to improve production. You're always trying to improve innovation. You're just picking away at things all the time. And that is what naturally David Gottlieb would do is he was always trying to innovate and change and improve. That led to the rise of the entire coin op industry. Well, let's see what Alvin has to say about that. He says, you've got to bear in mind that that was back in the days when there wasn't a lot of states running slot machines. The jukebox business was in its infancy. The coin op machine business as such hardly existed. The old coin telephone and vending machines were coming into their own, being a bit more accepted. Telephone, right? Literally, the telephone was not a thing in like 1919 and sort of outside of major cities. You know what I mean? Like having a phone booth, which is now exotic for my kids and kids growing up today, they've never seen it. But vending machines are still alive and well. Yeah, they've got this vending machine in our local mall that makes like cotton candy with crazy designs. Have you seen one of those? No. That's cool stuff. I'll send you a video of that. That's worth a Google there, listeners. Worth a Google. But how did the business continue to rise during the Great Depression? Because people got nothing to do. They got nothing to do. They got no money. Spending time in the pub, drowning your sorrows, is what you did. The pool halls, pool halls became a thing because the alternative was hanging out on the street. So games rose in popularity to distract. But there were some serious doubts that this fledgling new industry would actually take off. One of those large doubters was David Gottlieb himself. So they brought out a game called Five Star Final in 1932. Five Star Final is one of these sort of games that sticks out in the mind of Alvin Gottlieb and some others. And this is another one of those big 50,000 plus sellers. It's like quite a wonderful game here. So let's just describe what we're looking at. It's wood. And it looks like a figure eight. And it only weighs 20 pounds. That's amazing. It has two stars. It looks sort of like Iron Man's shield. It's me, the Silver Ball Chronicles AI. I'm pretty sure David meant Captain America's shield, not Iron Man's. Wow, I thought he knew his comic book stuff. How embarrassing. Well, enjoy the rest of this so-called history podcast. I have to get back to learning to drive a Tesla cyber cab before the investors realize it's a marketing scam. Like top and bottom in the shape of an eight. and you shoot the ball up and it will zip around based on the strength of which you plunge that ball You plunge the ball really hard It goes all the way around to the bottom eight and up and through and it can keep going around and flip. It looks really fun, eh? I've probably played this at some point. Kind of like one of those old sections? Yeah, it'll have the 30 tabletop. The 30 tabletop section will have all these games. Yeah, this was also when Prohibition took off, specifically in Chicago. Well, it didn't take off. They had Prohibition in the 20s. Well, that's right. It's still going. It's actually dying out near the early 30s. I'm trying to think when repeal went into effect. It's like 34, 35, something like that. Well, Alvin says, Prohibition in Chicago, of course, always made headlines that weren't good. There were reasons to try and establish an image separate, apart from what the press had. This is Gene Simmons from KISS I would like you to join the Patreon For Silver Ball Chronicles Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks And it starts at $3 a month Want to get early access To episodes before everyone else? Want to be as cool as KISS? Interested in having your comments and questions Take priority in our episodes? Jump up to a $6 a month Premium crony And then go to KISS online.com Stop that. We're not going to Kiss Online. Just finish up the damn list. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an Ellie Letus Cronin. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Then afterwards, you can swing on over to kissonline.com. If your games, like Five Star Final and all that stuff, are in pubs and bars and things like that, you're associated with that. Well, then they needed to create an association or a lobbying group to help improve their image. So the reason David Gottlieb was a doubter is that he brings out something like Five Star Final, a smash hit, But he's being sort of dragged down into this seedy underbelly of alcohol and whatever. And that's not David Gottlieb's sort of modus operandi. He's not that kind of person. He's a very squeaky clean kind of guy.
40:22
But that industry association, the business needed to compete across distributors and manufacturers. They all had to come together if they were going to survive. They had to have some competition, but they needed to have the right kind of competition. By the time they started to coordinate this together, that's when the old WW2 broke out. And when did that start, Ron?
40:50
When did World War II start? Ah, 39. Are you sure? Well, no, it would be 41 for us because it would be December 8th when we entered the war because of a little thing that happened on December 7th. Yes. Yes, a little bit late. By the way, Prohibition ended in 1933. I was one year off. Sue me. You've just been late. We were late getting in. It had been going on for two years. It's when Germany invaded Poland, I believe, is when it officially started. That's right. That's okay, just twice. But, boy, you've been early in every other war since, eh?
41:19
Wow. We know Canada's track record. Actually, there were Canadians at the Battle of Normandy, including Scotty from Star Trek. He was there, and he survived because he was a smoker. True story. The bullet deflected off the cigarette case he had in his pocket. So literally being a smoker saved his life. There you go. James Doohan. Was it James? I believe so. So when the war broke out, all the North American industrial output was moved to the war effort. Now, even though you guys were a little bit late, you did, let's say, ramp up your industrial output to help out the European war effort. But the problem with this is it made finding parts and skilled labor in the game and coin op industry, which was kind of in this precarious situation, really, really difficult. So David, like Harry Williams and Lynn Durant, began refurbishing games and trying to sell them as new rather than building brand new pieces. David would buy old stock back from people who had purchased these machines. He disassembled them, then reassembled them, changed the art, and they were new. truckloads of the stuff along with rats bugs and animals would all come back to the factory inside these old machines so these machines did have some bugs no they also made parachute hardware glider tow hooks and machine gun awesome in their fact those are machine gun clip that says like d got leaving company on it that would be awesome probably our games will kill you literally rock Gola, you know them. They were a jukebox manufacturer, right? That's what I know them for, yes. They made rifles because they had the woodworking shops, and they were able to make those kind of gun grip things. The wood part, yes. The wood part, because I'm definitely a gun person. They sort of had started a few things and paused a few games. Now, a game that kind of started production kind of trailed off, and then they ramped production back up during that time period was a game called Stage Door Canteen. I'm a big fan of canteens, like where you get snacks. And this has a back box on it. Yeah, so this is – we're changing. Brief History of Pinball Podcast talks about sort of the change and the reason to attract people and scoring and things like that. But when you look at this game being the first one, quote, like kind of, the first game that they really manufactured when they got back, What is what's happened here all of a sudden? It looks more like a modern pinball machine. Yes. Yeah. We got bumpers, but no flippers. Are those pop up or are they just dead bumpers? Well, they look like they look like pop ups. Yes. You hit them and they go ding. They don't actually they don't bounce the ball around. Things are changing, right? The technologies that have been invented because of the government spending to ramp up the war effort. things like casting plastics, rubber, those kind of things have all started to trickle down into the actual kind of economy. But there was a huge innovation that Gottlieb had in the 1940s, and that was Humpty Dumpty. The flipper had been around for years, but it was essentially like a baseball bat, pitch and bat kind of game. and the baseball bat was mounted in the front of the game on the you know it wasn't quite the same harry mabs is the one that sort of solved the major issue and created the flipper as we know it today again we covered that in greater detail in a brief history of pinball but what did harry what did alvin say about harry he says harry been working on a switch built into the flipper so that the ball rolled by that that particular piece of plastic was called an island okay so when the ball came down and hit the switch, it would bat it out of the way. He would monkey with this thing, and he couldn't get it to work because the swing and the impact of the fast stopping would shatter the mechanics. So he had the wires pulled outside of the cabinet, and he was hitting the two wires together. When the ball rolled down and he hit the two wires, he got the effect he wanted. He then realized, what am I doing? He put the buttons on the side of the cabinet and built the first flipper. That's a great little quote with adding some context from something. This is a quote that I found before. So he's just kind of screwing around with trying to figure out a way for this thing to just automatically kind of flip up and hit the ball, but it's not working. It's breaking. So then he invents the flipper by going, I'll just put it outside the cabinet and touch the wires together like you're hot rod in a car, right? It would take a month or so, but when they realized that they had it, it was almost perfect. Samples went out to the field and people went nuts. That was when the old diehard skeptics said oh my god they'll play this game forever how long are people going to play on this game because before it was all about draining dollars and it was all about draining coins well before you plunge and it's going to get to the bottom eventually now you have flippers they're probably like oh no you can keep hitting it up top over and over and over and it's never going to drain well they were wrong it drained it drained a lot so who is alvin gottlieb david gottlieb's son David Gottlieb. We had mentioned that before. We've pulled a lot of his quotes. These quotes come from Roger Sharpe's interviews, which he used to make his book. What was that book called? Pinball. back in the day when he was doing his research. So the recordings that he made, if you've seen The Man Who Saved Pinball the Film, all of the interviews that he had with people, this would be one of those interviews. Alvin served in the Second World War in the Navy, and when he left in 1947, he began working in the family's factory. He was 20, and he was working in the engineering department, and he learned all the ins and outs of design, development, and production of pinball machines. He worked in almost all areas of the business, including travel to distributors, sales department, manufacturing, product quality review, like he did it all. He was a jack of all trades. During this time, Gottlieb struggled compared to those prior years. They were no longer selling 50,000 tabletop units. and the reason for that ron was one thing gambling what kind of games were those bingo five ball games were suffering what's with your anti-bingo sentiment come on you did a whole episode on bingo yeah great episode everybody loved that one we got a lot tons of emails in support of that oh it's part of history folks i'm just joking i loved it well alvin says david gotley's point of view was that he just wanted to be strictly an amusement game business gambling was no interest to him at all he wanted to be able to provide in his own words provide amusement for the populace at a very low price we tried to make a couple of games that were games of chance but his heart wasn't in it it was more or less to maintain competitiveness he didn't enjoy it at all i was in the engineering department one day and he came in and told us that it was the end of our attempt to get into that business at all from then on it was strictly amusement games. Yeah, so David Gottlieb is actually running his business in a direction which is negatively affecting sales and negatively affecting the growth of his business. He didn't want to build gambling machines. Either that was a moral thing or gambling was bad or the whole thing, even though he did a lot of gambling stuff when he was a kid. Maybe he saw the damage that the gambling did to the individuals that he sold his gambling things to when he was younger in Texas. didn't want to do it. Amusement games only. And companies like Bally were shooting the lights out. Isn't that right? Yeah, Bally was like, gambling, yeah, all in.
49:38
But that was when the Johnson Act would change everything. Many companies struggled to keep afloat during this time, but since Gottlieb wasn't in the slot machine or games of chance business like Bingo, they actually weathered quite well. And it was because David, being very conservative with his management style, he didn't focus on too many different ventures. He focused on amusement games. And the Johnson Act was in 1952. It was the absolute right decision to make because the government changed the goalpost when it came to gambling machines. But by 19, so by 1956, production numbers of pinball, five ball pinball machines had jumped back to the tip top and they were away the industry leader.
50:32
Who's Judd Weinberg? I don't know. It says, I don't know where else this fits in. That's right. So I'm going to stick it in here. so judd weinberg he was the husband of marjorie gottlieb david's sister and he worked in their father's clothing company after he graduated from university in 1947 so he's fairly young dude judd joined gottlieb in 1952 david gottlieb was delighted to have his son-in-law join the company where he was tasked with building some pinball machines. Now, Judd Weinberg, super, super important to the growth and development of D. Gottlieb & Co., almost as strong as David Gottlieb himself. Judd joins Gottlieb. It's coming together. They're building like a management team, right? They're building like an actual kind of scaled company, People with, rather than trying to do all things, David needed to bring experts in from other individual sort of talents and continue to expand the business. When David got to the point where he no longer was able or willing or wanted to run the day-to-day of D. Gottlieb & Co., Alvin took over more and more of those operations. Judd would join him as the president of the company. So Judd's skills were perfectly complement Alvin's, who was more of kind of a hands-on engineer salesy guy. He needed somebody to actually run the plant smoothly and do all of the budgeting and numbers. Does that make a lot of sense? Mm-hmm. So Judd would pass away in February of 2020 at the age of 93. Could we all only get to 93? It depends what kind of shape we're in when we're 93. My knees, not a big deal. My mind, please let me still have that. So let's wind it all the way back again. Now we're in the late 50s. What's your favorite part of the late 50s? I wasn't alive, so I can't really say what my favorite part was. The Yankees were really good there. Yeah, you can think about back in the day, right, how great it was in the late 50s. Wasn't that the time that Back to the Future was? I think that was 1955 in the movie. Ah, okay, so it was mid-50s. Mid-50s. Well, David Gottlieb started plans to build a hospital. A hospital? Yeah, he's moved out of kind of the day-to-day of the pinball manufacturing thing. He's got all this money. He's got the money he inherited and grew. He's got the money from the business. What's he going to do? He's going to build a hospital. This hospital is known as Gottlieb Memorial Hospital. Michael Gottlieb, the grandson of David Gottlieb, has some thoughts on that. My grandfather came from nothing. He made more money than he ever conceived of. And once he had enough to take care of his family, he pretty much just gave the rest away. Instead of just giving it away and writing a check and not paying any attention to it, he thought it would be really good to give back to the community. My dad, Alvin, was physically the guy watching the foundation, and he was flying around the United States interviewing doctors. He kind of built that whole thing from the ground up. The family is coming together. They're giving back. I don't know if that's ingrained within society quite as much as it was sort of in the late 50s. David and Richard Weinberg, they were Judd's three boys. They've all been involved in the Gottlieb hospital system right up to even the early 2000s. cousins michael's cousin whose name is peter gottlieb he's also involved in that so the whole family is still involved in this gottlieb hospital so let's give a tip of the hat ron tip of the hat building a hospital now in canada it's different because we have single-payer health care we don't have people that build hospitals and hire doctors and create a company so it's a bit alien to me that way but wow what an awesome way to give back but 1960 right 59 60 so alvin got leave he would also design a few games in the 1960s so we talk about november of 1960 his first game was called get this flipper terrible name unless it's uh unless it's about the dolphin oh god i think there's a game called like bumper too or something yeah so we're looking at flipper here and oh no Nope, not about the Dolphin. That's a fail. Sells 1,100 units. Alvin Gottlieb did the concept, and he worked with Wayne Nyans on designing the game. Because Wayne Nyans, brilliant. We talked about him in the Centurion, Pinball Centurion episode. Art was by Roy Parker. Why was this a big deal for Gottlieb and Alvin? You know what I mean? When we sort of look at this game, they've had the Flipper for years. We talked about that. They've had the back box. They've had score reels. But there's something very, very special about this game that made it a big, big deal. It's a wedge head. Ah! You spoke about it. You said wedge head before. So when we say wedge head, what do we actually mean? It's just the shape of the back box head. The back box. It's wider at the top, and then it narrows down. as it goes into the cabinet. Yeah, it's quite literally the head of the pinball machine is in the shape of a wedge. And then there's the reverse wedge that some manufacturers had, or the opposite. Right, where it was really narrow and got wider.
56:30
Now, when you aesthetically look at it, the Gottlieb version is much more pleasing to the eye, is it not? It is very pleasing. Where the other one just looks weird. And it's the same thing, it's just flipped upside down. I don't understand why it's different. So what does Wayne Nyhan say about the wedgehead? He says When the games came on location We soon heard complaints about side games It was hard to keep the games in line and separated So that there was room for two pairs of hands I believe that Doc who was Roman F Doc Garbark the head of mechanical engineering at Gottlieb, came up with the wedge head design. It was cheaper for us to spend a little more money on the cabinet than to buy a larger glass, more artwork, screens, etc. It was a new look, a win-win deal for us. I don't know who hung the name wedge head on the design, but it's very descriptive you're playing next to each other you got a row of like four or five pinball machines your hands are all rubbing together like not now because it's a wedge head because now the back boxes can be touching but you'll have room between the games ah so smart so this is that continuous innovation that david gottlieb had sort of built into the culture of gottlieb it wasn't you know he wasn't there making the decisions like you need to make this it was just ingrained in their culture to always be looking for improvement. Yeah, the wedge head wasn't the only thing. This is a groundbreaking pin for Gottlieb. A new concept. Let's see the flyer. I wonder if they trademarked it. Is it trademarked on the flyer? Did they put a little TM in it? No, they didn't.
58:02
Introducing Adaball, a revolutionary type of extended play. New Adaball feature coupled with bold, futuristic styling and hard coat, wear-resistant playboard finish. which, yeah, I bet it's resistant, scored an instant success in comprehensive field tests. A skillful player operation adds an unlimited number of balls to each game. If I was an operator, I'd be like, unlimited? I don't know if I like that. I hate skilled players. Skilled players cost me money. But, yeah, you do something skillfully, and you get another ball. An add-a-ball. Yes, an add-a-ball. So Flipper was the first add-a-ball machine, And that introduced the concept of this extended play. So until this game was made, David Gottlieb was of the firm opinion that they will never replace the free play game attraction thing, which was you'd get enough points and you hit a couple of things and bam, you get a free game. There was no way you were going to add anything else to that. But this was something totally different. See, Alvin says, after David, David Gottlieb, played Wayne's first finished production model, he decided to try to get it approved in some foreign markets where a free play was considered a thing of value that made it part of gambling. Oh, God, you gave me this to say. Ha ha! Surin Fagion's Mondial Company managed to get it approved in France and Italy, and the rest is history. So you get around laws now. Like, you're not winning a free game. It's just another ball. You're adding another ball. The ball is not a thing of value. So we're kind of playing in a bit of a gray area there, but it's also a bit silly to think that a free play could be gambling, but whatever. This Schoenfeisjans Mondale Company, that's going to be very important in our next part two of Meet the Gottliebs. But we'll get to that some other time. Gottlieb also got into pool tables. Yeah, did you know that? I actually know. This is the first time I'd heard of that. Yeah, this was in one of the interviews I'd heard. It didn't work out too well. Have you ever seen any? I've never seen a Gottlieb pool table. Okay.
60:22
So give me a little context as to what's going on here. Well, they ventured into pool tables. It was a disaster. They told the Gottliebs if you're going to do something, do it right or not at all. It's a multimillion-dollar mess. But they still made money, maybe $15K. they lost they spent millions of dollars and they made 15 grand yeah let's tie this back to what david gottlieb's philosophy was was focus on one thing and alvin's kind of coming in and him and judd right so you know david gottlieb is sort of slowly moving out of the picture alvin and judd are kind of moving into the picture and they came up with let's get distracted by pool tables boy oh boy, they learned, if you can't do it 100%, get out. But that's still around this time is when the positive momentum returns like a rocket ship to Gottlieb. By 1961, things had turned around into a serious positive market. By 1967, Gottlieb had to move plants a few times to keep up with production because they had to continue to modernize their production processes. from the front to the back they started to design everything with receiving manufacturing shipping end to end raw materials coming in one end machines going out the other so this is when we get into the real uh manufacturing boom of the 1960s in the united states innovation is bleeding through society seeing some of their factory pictures from like the early 70s it they're too clean it's mind-boggling isn't it how can you have anything that clean and you're making games there especially when like the games that you're making are like there's tons of like cabling and wires and wire cutting and this and that right like it was it was it was pretty wild we spoke a lot about this sort of process uh around uh system one uh gotlieb we're skipping a lot of time now we're We're going right to, we're in the 70s all of a sudden. So if you want to learn all about kind of that 70s kind of era, I'm sorry, the 60s era, the 70s era, we've got our other Gottlieb episodes. I'm also still working on our Wedgehead episode, which is primarily focused in this sort of section. So, yes, I am going to jump ahead in time here to the next sort of major milestone within the Gottlieb company's history. And what is that next major milestone? The sale to Columbia Pictures. Sale to Columbia Pictures. Now, why did D. Gottlieb & Co. sell to Columbia Pictures? Did they have money issues? Were things in the tank?
63:14
What do you think? see yeah i've never heard a concrete reason from anyone in the know about why that happened and i've looked yeah it's so weird it's it's i don't know why i've looked in the pinball compendium i've looked online i've looked i've gone through uh you know youtube old youtube like videos talking to wayne nions and all of those guys but nobody can come out and say oh you know Alvin Gottlieb just got tired. Like they were hurting in any way. They were still – this was pre-Solid State they got sold. Yeah. That's the thing. They were the kings. I mean from the 60s into the early 70s, I mean they're the Cadillac of the industry. And it's like I understand like, oh, maybe they're too busy with the hospital stuff. Maybe they're – maybe his heart just isn't in it anymore. You know, maybe Alvin's kids are too young to sort of take over or maybe he doesn't want to be on the road. Like, I haven't heard any answers. And it's kind of annoying because there's like this black hole spit a bit in this kind of part of history. If you know or you've talked to anybody or you have a primary source, not my brother's uncle's cousin's former roommate told me that he once talked to David Gottlieb. No, like I need like it written down or some primary source to really put a nice button on this. But I did reach out to Dave Marston. And do you know who Dave Marston is? Dave Marston has been to every single pinball expo ever. He's a New England guy. He has a vanity license plate that says pinball without a one for the I or anything. Like it literally is pinball. So you know he got that thing a long time ago. He is one of the organizers of Pintastic New England. And I would say he's – I would say I'm an amateur historian, right? Like I look all this stuff up and collate all these things. I would probably say that he's like one level up for me. I wouldn't say he's like – he's not like a university professor historian. He'd be close. I mean he was an operator. Right, but he knows what's up. Yes. He knows what's up. He's been in every frigging expo since what was it, 1987? Dave said, yeah, 85 was the first one. Yes, it's going to be the 40th one this year. It's going to be exciting. But what Dave says, without consulting sources and resources, I can offer well-informed theories. I do not think that they had a money crunch. They had already invested in System One just to get the company to the point that it would be saleable. They may have been intimidated by further investing to develop video games in-house. I think Alvin was more interested in expanding the Gottlieb Hospital, which had been the beneficiary of family donations for years already. Combine that with Alvin's background as an electromechanical guy, and he probably saw the business becoming less fun. Then factor in licenses, which made the acquisition by Columbia Pictures an especially good fit, as they owned one of the world's largest licensing agencies. You just make note that the Gottliebs did not relinquish management on the day they sold. So Dave is just saying – like he's making some well-informed theories, which is speculation. But his speculation I think is kind of in line with most people speculate, and he's had conversations with people, right? So yeah, the hospital is kind of a big focus. Investing in video games and these new System 1 systems is probably terrifying for a lot of these management folks. The thing is they sold it before they even had an electronic – Before it was done. Yeah, because I remember, I think it's, there's an EM called Big Hit.
66:53
And I remember seeing it, and it has the D. Gottlieb and company, but then it has, you know, subsidiary or whatever, Columbia Pictures on it. I'm like, oh, I always thought that was like, that came along with the electronic era. Like there were no EMS that actually said that, but there are. Yeah, it's a precarious time because I think you and I and other people romanticize about this time period. Like, oh, man, Gottlieb was so great, and their games in this era were so fun and innovative, and their drop targets were so effectively built and all those things. And then they just sort of disappeared, right? They kind of slowly kind of fell apart. Well, if you remember our System 1 episode, they did pretty good at the beginning. Yeah.
67:37
Then they bled, and then they ended up being premier. And then because now they've got corporate overlords.
67:44
Then they had Coca-Cola. And then they became Milestar with Coca-Cola. The employees bought it back, thank God, to give it some more years. Then the Mondale Group comes in and then their premier technology. They just lost that former glory. I did find one quote from Alvin Gottlieb, which is a bit cryptic, but maybe you can read between the lines as to his thought process at the time. Alvin said, We had been operating the business for all those years. We got to a point where my brother-in-law and I discussed the situation. We thought it was about time that we could take it easy after that. A friend of his managed to come up with the Columbia deal. The numbers were good. They treated the people properly. At that point, I was pretty much done. I was quite busy being a daddy to Mike and Joe and enjoying that very much. Yeah, his heart was no longer in it. I mean, when businesses get to a certain point, Ron, They get so big that to sell them to somebody and get money for that sale becomes really, really difficult, especially in this era when we're getting into like corporate tax law and IRS rules and things like that. Things are getting really complicated. So to sell the business and get money out, it's going to be really hard to do that. But the other thing is I heard a stat the other day, which was really cool, Ron, that only 10% of businesses transition from one generation to the next.
69:19
And only 3% of those businesses, 3% of those 10% businesses make it from the second generation to the third generation of ownership. Did you know that? I did not know that. It's a very cool stat. So this is a great example of that, right? Like they survived to the next generation being David to Alvin. But then to go to the next generation, you know, there's only a 3% chance of that, which is pretty wild. Did you know Alvin stayed on with Gottlieb for a five-year management contract and continued working through that period? He even stayed until Columbia sold the Coca-Cola in 1981. So he stuck around because he was, you know, it's still a family company, right? It was still family run. The management was still family, although they had a corporate overlord. The biggest thing with business transition is if the owner of that business just disappears. Because if they disappear, Alvin probably had all the relationships with the distributors, right? Alvin, like everybody says, oh, Alvin, he's the greatest. He comes and he buys us drinks whenever he comes down to, you know, comes over to Detroit. You know, if you've got those relationships and then Alvin just disappears, That's a risk to the sale of your business. So he's got to stick around regardless. Then we get into the change from Gottlieb to Milestar.
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Well, Alvin says, when Coca-Cola bought out Columbia, things changed. Coca-Cola was one of those mega corporations where you have to have a meeting to have a meeting to decide to have a meeting. Now, that wasn't exactly our management style. So things are starting to get messy now, right? Like things – this is when things really start to change. We get into this sort of discussion around the sort of future of pinball, the future of Gottlieb in one of our other episodes, which is the ADB era. And we also talk about Milestar in one of our other episodes, which escapes me at the moment. It was probably our Wayne Nions episode. Yeah, it's probably around there. If you want to check out silverballchronicles.com, you can click on the archive and the show notes there, and you can see all of those previous episodes. Because, Ron, this is episode 41, and I can't remember a friggin' thing. Not me neither. But that brings this episode to a close. David Gottlieb was an absolute just miracle man for our hobby, and he has left a massive legacy forever and ever. What do you think? I agree. What is your favorite old school sort of pre-Milestar Gottlieb? Oh, hmm. Which one do you really enjoy? I like several, honestly. I like 2001.
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Good one. Also known as Dimension, I think, is the other version. The Adaball version. Oh, there you go.
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Let's see. 70s ones. Far Out. Oh, I love Far Out. That's a good one. Awesome. Volley. Volley's a big one. Volley's good. They knew their EMs, man. They did. Now, remember, we'll have a part two of Meet the Gottliebs where we'll cover everything kind of from Milestar all the way up. and then we'll also talk about that weird adventure that alvin and michael gottlieb would get into in the 90s oh alvin g where they couldn't use their own name they literally could not use their own name oh sorry i just got up it's only like noon and now as always you can send your comments questions, corrections and concerns to civilcronicles at gmail.com We look forward to all your messages and we read every one.
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Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic download so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five star review, that way more people can find us. Unless of course it's six or seven stars, then give us that many. Let's see, join us on Patreon to support the show. Becoming a pro crony. We're still doing that. That is so classless. My god. Pro Crony is the perfect way to say thanks and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what Discord is? Jump on as a $6 a month premium crony. Want all the other perks and a t-shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an elite-est crony. Maybe you just want a shirt, I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Super Bowl Chronicles t-shirt, especially the ones with Ron's name first.
74:31
It's like, what is going on? Well, us high-level pinheads, you know, we're rich. You should know that, yeah.
74:38
Alvin served in the Second World War in the Navy. When he had left in 1949, he began working. 47. Yeah.
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