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1950-1980: Pinball Adolescence - Pinball Expo 2025 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2025)·video·49m 17s·analyzed·Oct 17, 2025
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TL;DR

Historical survey of pinball 1950-1980: mechanics, art movements, and legal/technological shifts.

Summary

A retired lawyer and pinball enthusiast presents a historical overview of pinball's 'adolescence' from 1950-1980, covering the evolution of mechanics (flippers, bumpers, multiball), cabinet styling, artistic movements (pointy/cubist art, pop art, surrealism), legal battles over skill vs. chance classification, and the transition from electromechanical to solid-state technology. The talk emphasizes three major Williams innovations while documenting the artistic and mechanical innovations that shaped the era.

Key Claims

  • Gottlieb and Williams were the only two major pinball manufacturers at the end of the 1950s; Bally had exited the market to focus on bingo games.

    high confidence · Speaker directly states this based on documented historical research and personal experience collecting games from that era.

  • Gottlieb's 'add-a-ball' mechanism (1960) was a legal innovation designed to address gambling concerns by offering extra balls instead of free replays, making it harder to classify pinball as gambling.

    high confidence · Speaker explains this as a deliberate strategic response to political and legal pressure from Estes Kefauver, Robert Kennedy, and Congress in 1960.

  • Williams' 'Styling of the 60s' cabinet redesign (featuring extended ledges, splayed legs, streamlined design) was commercially unsuccessful, with only ~500 units produced compared to Gottlieb's 1,000+ per game.

    high confidence · Speaker cites specific production numbers and explains failures: weak plywood construction, difficult installation, and poor operator acceptance due to two-person setup requirements.

  • Metal chrome flippers existed on pinball games from 1962-1963 in the first era, including on the Williams 'Friendship 7' game.

    high confidence · Speaker verified this through research at Schiffer Publishing library after initially finding no published sources; provided advertisement and personal examples (Moulin Rouge, Kingpin, Agogo).

  • Jerry Kelly brought a revolutionary cubist/abstract art style to pinball starting with 'Pot of Gold,' breaking industry preferences for red/white/blue colors and introducing turquoise and forbidden greens.

    high confidence · Speaker positions Kelly as pivotal to the 'pointy people' era; notes his prior success designing slot machines (Money Honey for Bally) gave him credibility to defy operator color preferences.

  • Approximately 50 games in the 1960s-70s featured abstract geometric and cubist 'pointy people' artwork, not the ~20 commonly cited.

    medium confidence · Speaker's personal count based on research; notes this contradicts conventional estimates and references Pacific Pinball's documentation work in the area.

Notable Quotes

  • “My wife thinks it's less dangerous than drugs, alcohol, and other diversions.”

    Unnamed retired lawyer/presenter@ 2:06 — Humorous self-deprecation that frames pinball enthusiasm as a benign retirement hobby; establishes the speaker's personal narrative and credibility.

  • “Victory has a thousand authors, but a failure is usually anonymous.”

    Unnamed presenter@ 17:08 — Philosophical observation used to explain why it's difficult to identify who conceived the failed 'Styling of the 60s' cabinet redesign; illustrates historical documentation challenges.

  • “This isn't the Louvre, this isn't the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We're basically trying to produce what the public wants, and I want to feed my family.”

    Pinball artist quoted by presenter@ 22:10 — Explains the commercial pragmatism driving pinball art design; establishes that artists saw themselves as commercial craftspeople rather than fine artists.

  • “There's the pointing people. I don't think that's very accurate. I think that this era of pinball had not only cubist artwork but futurism surrealism op art pop art art deco sci and outer space minimalism and psychedelics.”

    Unnamed presenter@ 24:24 — Pushes back against reductive 'pointy people' characterization; argues for recognition of artistic diversity in the 1960s-70s pinball era.

  • “Jerry Kelly didn't listen to anybody. People wanted his work because he'd basically done some fantastic work in the slot machine area.”

    Unnamed presenter@ 29:12 — Establishes Kelly's outsider status and credibility; explains how his prior industry success allowed him to defy aesthetic conventions in pinball.

Entities

Unnamed Presenter (Retired Lawyer/Pinball Collector)personRob BurkepersonJerry KellypersonRoy ParkerpersonGeorge MelantonpersonEstes KefauverpersonRobert F. KennedypersonFiorella LaGuardiaperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Failed cabinet redesign: Williams' 'Styling of the 60s' represents significant R&D investment with poor market uptake (500 units vs. Gottlieb's 1,000+); manufacturers prioritized cost-cutting (metal over expensive wood) during economically challenged period.

    high · Speaker documents specific production failures, installation difficulties, structural weaknesses (3/4 inch vs 1/4 inch plywood), and operator resistance to two-person setup requirements.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Williams cabinet legs featured structural deficiencies: splayed legs were too weak for nudging, requiring 3/4 inch plywood vs. standard 1/4 inch; installation complexity (underneath mounting) created operator friction vs. side-mounted design.

    high · Speaker explains failures: 'The way they made the games originally, the legs that went underneath them were too weak. people tried to nudge... it was hard to nudge these games because they were based on three quarter inch plywood as opposed to a quarter inch plywood... Operators found these games very hard to move because you had to go underneath them and screw them in instead of screwing them on the side.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Speaker advocates for artistic diversity in pinball design; criticizes blanket dismissal of 'pointy people' abstract art as reductive; argues that variety in art styles (Roy Parker vs. Jerry Kelly) brought younger demographics into pinball.

    high · Extended discussion of how abstract art movement was more diverse than 'pointy people' stereotype; argues 'I think just I appreciate Roy Parker's work. I also appreciate the work of later artists. I just wanted to bring to people's attention that I don't think this abstract debate and dislike of abstract art and pinball really made sense.'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Speaker revises conventional estimates of 'pointy people' games (20-game estimate) to ~50 games based on personal research; challenges reductive characterization of 1960s-70s abstract art movement as homogeneous.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.148

0:00
I think PinFest last year in Allentown, and I'll tell a story on that later on. But I also want to thank David for not only introducing me, but also he's commented regularly. Before he knew me, he's commented regularly on some of my questions on Pinside. he's a very helpful resource and I also want to thank Pacific Pinball for its landmark work for also sponsoring the seminars but they've done some incredible work on pinball history and I really encourage people to go out there if possible okay oh okay sorry about that alright that's better we are at a good place This picture was on New York Magazine in 1962.
1:05
He envisioned some large gathering of people playing pinball, and I think that he clearly thought of a place like the game floor here at Expo. I'm going to start with a few personal asides in my talk and then move on to the substance of what I'm talking about. First, pinball captured my interest as a preteen when I had a paper route in Golden, Colorado, which is a little brewing town outside of Denver. I had a paper route, and it's a very hilly area with a lot of work, but at the end of the paper route was a bowling alley that I went to, and I started to play pinballs there.
1:58
Go many years later, now as a retired lawyer, public lawyer, I am able to play pinball. My wife thinks it's less dangerous than drugs, alcohol, and other diversions.
2:14
So today I'm just going to speak with no expertise, but appreciative of an innovative era in pinball, an emphasis on three mainly Williams developments, but I'm going to cover the whole area of that time frame. Styling of the 60s cabinets, chrome flippers, and modern artwork. And you'll see examples of each of these next door on the floor of Expo.

Solid-state pinball rapidly displaced electromechanical machines: by 1977, Evel Knievel sold 14,000 solid-state units vs. 155 EM; by 1979, Charlie's Angels sold 7,600 solid-state vs. 350 EM, after which EM production stopped entirely.

high confidence · Speaker provides specific production figures documenting the transition from parallel manufacturing (1975-1979) to exclusive solid-state production after 1979.

  • The legal landscape around pinball shifted from 1960 (when Congress and Attorney General targeted it as connected to organized crime) to 1980, when formal legal exceptions for amusement pinball games had been established and public concern had evaporated.

    high confidence · Speaker frames this as a major industry victory, referencing Estes Kefauver committee and Robert Kennedy's efforts in 1960 vs. the legal acceptance by 1980.

  • “I think Jerry Kelly brought to pinball a little bit of fine art. In fact, he was abrasive and difficult because he kind of did look down on artwork of some of his predecessors in pinball. I think that's part of why Jerry Kelly hasn't gotten the recognition that he should get.”

    Unnamed presenter (Q&A response)@ 44:19 — Reflects on Kelly's controversial legacy; suggests his fine-art pretensions may have hindered historical recognition despite revolutionary contributions.

  • “By my count, although some think that the Pointy People is listed to about 20 games, I think there's about 50 games in this era manufactured that had abstract geometric and were expansive in color.”

    Unnamed presenter@ 26:33 — Challenges conventional historical counts; supports broader argument that abstract art movement was more pervasive than commonly acknowledged.

  • “Nobody cared. Nobody cared.”

    Unnamed presenter@ 41:01 — Emphatic conclusion about the successful resolution of pinball's legal battles; reflects cultural shift from 1960 moral panic to complete acceptance.

    • Sam Stern
    person
    Art Stenhelmperson
    Gordon Morrisonperson
    Charles Bellperson
    Dave Christensenperson
    David Van Nessperson
    Nick Schellperson
    Christian Marshperson
    Ted Zaleperson
    Dirty Donnieperson
    Henry (Grandson)person
    Gottliebcompany
    Williams Electronicscompany
    Ballycompany
    Pacific Pinballcompany
    Pinball Expoevent
    Pinsideorganization

    medium · Speaker states: 'By my count, although some think that the Pointy People is listed to about 20 games, I think there's about 50 games in this era manufactured that had abstract geometric and were expansive in color.'

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Pinball's legal status transformed from political target (1960: Kefauver Committee, RFK organized crime investigation) to fully accepted amusement game by 1980 with formal legal exceptions established.

    high · Speaker emphasizes that by 1980 'formal law had developed exceptions for amusement pinball games' and 'Nobody cared. Nobody cared.' about the gambling/skill distinction that had been central to 1960s debates.

  • $

    market_signal: Metal chrome flipper adoption failed as a premium feature despite their aesthetic appeal; lack of modern manufacturing and strong collector secondary market interest suggests market opportunity may have existed but was never pursued.

    medium · Speaker notes: 'I wish that somebody was manufacturing them now' and 'try to buy a set of metal flippers now. People have taken them, hoarded them, put them into machines.' Suggests supply constraint rather than demand failure.

  • ?

    community_signal: Jerry Kelly's revolutionary influence on pinball aesthetics stemmed from credibility built in adjacent industry (slot machine design for Bally), allowing him to defy operator color preferences and introduce fine-art sensibility to commercial pinball design.

    high · Speaker notes Kelly's prior success with Money Honey slot machine gave him authority to ignore red/white/blue preferences; also notes his 'abrasive and difficult' personality and fine-art pretensions hindered historical recognition despite revolutionary contributions.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Gottlieb's 'add-a-ball' mechanism (1960) was a strategic legal innovation designed specifically to address gambling concerns by offering extra balls instead of free replays, making pinball harder to classify as gambling.

    high · Speaker explains: 'Gottlieb came in and said, okay, instead of winning a whole game, what if you just won an extra ball or two? And it made the case It's much harder for people who opposed amusement pinball to legally get rid of it.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Rapid technological transition: Solid-state pinball achieved dominant market share within 2-3 years (1975-1979), with EM games discontinued entirely by 1980. Production data shows exponential adoption.

    high · 1975 Freedom: 5,000 EM vs. 1,500 solid-state. 1977 Evel Knievel: 155 EM vs. 14,000 solid-state. 1979 Charlie's Angels: 350 EM vs. 7,600 solid-state. After 1979, no duplicate EM production.

    • 2:44
    I want to make clear with respect to pinball, I think, is there anything really wrong with being an eager beaver? I don't think so. This is one of the few pinball games that has animals rather than people on it. Okay, pinball in the 1950s. basically there were two companies gotlieb and williams i managed to get this game from doing the pinball route i talked my father into going down to denver the distributors at the time had pinball games available nobody really was buying in them to bring them home because I don't think people wanted and especially the women in the house did not want pinballs in the home. So I was able to get one relatively cheaply. This one was called Poker Face. I think it's kind of fascinating now. It would last about 10 minutes in modern life. How many ways can you be offensive to Native Americans? But it had some beautiful artwork work on it, and it was a good instructive machine for me learning a little bit about pinball. Pinball at the end of the 50s, again, there were two major companies. Bally had dropped out of it because Bally was doing only bingo games, but left was Gottlieb, which made a lot of games, and Williams was a more minor player in it, and they didn't really show data on how many games they were selling. Mechanics of the time had flipper development started with Humpty Dumpty where the flippers were actually reverse of what they are now seeing in pinball games. It added an element of skill to pinball, and as a result, it made amusement part and the skill part of pinball more acceptable socially and legally.
    5:15
    The games also had what I call the hated gobble holes, which eventually were removed from games because really the gobble holes would take a ball, pull it out of the game, and you lost the ball.
    5:32
    In that era, by the end of the 1950s, we had active power bumpers and slingshot bumpers, so it made the game more active and made it more interesting to people.
    5:45
    And also it had conversion from bulb scoring to scoring reels. I think a lot of people enjoyed watching the reel go around. It was a little more exciting than lights going on inside of a cabinet.
    6:07
    Style and art also, at the end of the 1950s, was basically wooden traditional. It had Roy Parker art, which my friend Nick Schell at Roanoke Pinball Museum called Folksy.
    6:29
    It was representational art, very similar to magazine art, commercial art. A successor was George Melanton, who did more regal work of women, and he mainly did it for Williams. The cabinet artwork at the time had Gottlieb with geometric shapes on their cabinets, and Williams, up until 1960, had more thematic style cabinet painting. At the time, pinball was moving from bars, which were not very socially acceptable, to family amusement center environments. And, for example, the bowling alley I talked about, but they actually were in other locations like skating rinks and also even some drugstores. At the time, there were significant political and legal concerns on pinball. Now, people are very familiar with the New York mayor, Fiorella LaGuardia, who made a big name for himself by taking pinball machines and throwing them into the river. But people are less familiar with the fact that at the start of 1960, not only Congress with Estes Kefauver and the head of a committee, but the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, the senior, finding that pinball was connected with organized crime. And it was basically the scourge of society, and they made a lot of headway and political headway about pinball as being bad. so pinball manufacturers and people who enjoyed pinball had a real battle because they had to try to convince the general public and politicians that they were amusement games of skill as opposed to gambling games of chance and that gets us more into the question is what is the thing of value if you get something by having a successful pinball score. Gottlieb made a brilliant choice in 1960 to develop a mechanism known as add-a-ball as opposed to the free replay.
    9:14
    Free replay had been around in pinball in the 1950s where you could win a game if you got a certain score. Some people, some social critics said that I was getting a thing of value if you won the same thing that you paid for. That was gambling. So Gottlieb came in and said, okay, instead of winning a whole game, what if you just won an extra ball or two? And it made the case It's much harder for people who opposed amusement pinball to legally get rid of it. Now we turn to kind of some of the fun part for me. This is a Williams Caravelle game. I laugh because I'm here because I ran into Rob Burke at Pinfest and he saw the pinball game on the left and said, you know, whose game is that? And I said, well, it was mine. He said, that's a horrible paint job. I told Rob, well, I picked it up the night before because I'd driven from Baltimore up to Rhode Island to trade pinball games. I traded a magic clock for Caravelle because I liked the Caravelle style better. And I didn't have time to paint it in my hotel room and have the paint dry before I got to Pinfest Arcade. But in any event, the style of the 60s I find fascinating because instead of having a square box pinball cabinet, it built an extra ledge onto the outside. People in those days, especially in bars, would take their drinks and put them right on the glass of the pinball games. they take their cigarettes and flick them right in the air on top of their pinball games. The shelf there was designed to have people actually store their products in the front of the pinball game and not destroy the game.
    11:26
    It also had, you'll see on the left, legs that came out from underneath the cabinet as opposed to legs that were attached to the side of the cabinet. Williams spent a lot of money in developing these new pinball cabinet types.
    11:49
    It was called the styling of the 60s, and there's an advertising brochure that was put out in association with them. It was a big move for Williams, which had made a change from Harry Williams to Sam Stern and taken over the had taken over Williams at the time What was the change Well it developed colorful streamlined cabinets with low sleek styling It had proposed rolling front design first time in 30 years that pinball design had changed
    12:32
    It had metal replacing wood. At the time, wood was getting actually more expensive than metal. And so – and pinball manufacturers were looking any way to make it cheaper for them to produce pinballs because it was a seriously challenged economic industry.
    13:01
    Where did the style come from? Well, at the time, American popular culture was changing, and you had new forms of entertainment.
    13:12
    You had radios, which had been around for a while. Television had just started to explode on the scene, and also record players.
    13:23
    People needed furniture to put in their house to handle these activities, but the furniture had to be attractive. They wanted to use something to make it stylish. In general, American manufacturers were looking to Europe to come out with better styles for furniture, simpler styles, minimalist styles. And this is what they came up with. In part, splayed legs that were underneath the basic product. And so the effort was to try to try to get something to look good. Pinball, they were wondering whether that would work with pinball. David actually pointed out to me in a in a pin side response that before the styling of the 60 pinball game came out, that Williams had done and some underneath whole legs for their arcade rifle games.
    14:31
    Okay, here's an example of a good starting of the 60s game. Jungle, it's a lot of fun to play because not only does it have play on the playing field, but it's got back glass animation. So when you hit a certain target, an animal went down. Kind of fun and also a very attractive game. I took this picture at Past Times Arcade. I say, just like I enjoyed going to Pacific Pinball to see their pointy people work, go to Past Times Arcade and go down their road. they have a row that starts with the games, the styling of the 60s. He's got five out of the ten games produced in that style, and then you go from there to chrome flippers and pointy art, which are areas of interest of mine.
    15:32
    How did it go over? Well, unfortunately, these games didn't go over very well. They didn't sell, which was the number one criteria, Basically, Williams got up to maybe 500 versions of the game, units of the game. Gottlieb still stayed way ahead with 1,000 units for most of their games.
    16:04
    Only 10 games were produced, but all of a sudden at the end of the run, And they pulled that and went back, not to wooden legs, but to metal legs.
    16:17
    Operators found these games very hard to move because you had to go underneath them and screw them in instead of screwing them on the side. It was basically a two-person operation. It didn't go over well. The way they made the games originally, the legs that went underneath them were too weak. people tried to nudge because we all try to nudge in pinball well it was hard to nudge these games because they were based on three quarter inch plywood as opposed to a quarter inch plywood so for a variety of reasons this thing failed but um it still i think was a a brave effort to try to add some style to pinball. And I'd like to figure out, you know, who actually, whose idea it was. You know, Victory has a thousand authors, but a failure is usually anonymous. I'd like to figure out who developed the styling of the 60s. I like to think it was, one person suggested it was Jerry Kelly, the famous illustrator who I'm going to get to eventually. Others said there was an advertising agency called Mel Blunt, which is Mel Bolt, excuse me, in Chicago that came up with it. Anyhow, it was a fascinating development, unfortunately a failed development in pinball. next is a another experiment tried by williams that fascinated me which involved metal flippers now when i first got back into it 50 years later got back into playing pinball i'd remembered that there were at least one set of metal flippers on a game i'd played back in that bowling alley in golden colorado there were no published articles on it a lot of the people who were in pinball said no there have never been any metal flippers fortunately with with my wife we travel to philadelphia area regularly because she picks up antiques from auctions schiffer publishing is right outside philadelphia they have a library there that you can go through all of their history books. I went there and I found out where the metal, there were indeed metal flippers and they were in a number of games. There's an advertisement for a game that I believe was the one that I played which was Friendship 7, and if you'll note, it's got polished metal chrome flippers as part of their advertising enticement. I think David also mentioned that to me when I was trying to figure out who was the author of this.
    19:22
    There were three eras of metal flippers. One, the very highly polished good metal chromins in the first era, which was from 62 to 63. There was a second period of weaker metals from 64 to 67.
    19:43
    And then there was the red flipper era. A couple of games, San Francisco, Palooka, Riverboat. That was a few of them that came out.
    19:55
    And this is my game Moulin Rouge. It has metal flippers. What is better than one set of metal flippers? Two sets of metal flippers. Here is two games that are from my collection, Kingpin and Agogo, both of which have metal flippers. I think they're very attractive. I've seen them on a lot of machines, not Williams.
    20:27
    And so I think really a lot of the parts of metal flippers were recirculated into other machines like ballet machines.
    20:39
    Why did they fail? Well, were they mechanically more difficult? Was the metal more difficult for the electromechanical devices there? Was it financial? Was it just too expensive to put metal flippers in? Or was it public acceptance? People didn't like it that much. I don't think it was the last one because try to buy a set of metal flippers now. People have taken them, hoarded them, put them into machines. I wish that somebody was manufacturing them now. I kind of answer my own question, why is no one making them? Because really, is there any market now for any type of two-inch flipper as opposed to the three-inch flippers on games now? Now turning to the central part of this era that a lot of people have strong feelings about, for and against, which is what about modern art in the 1960s and 70s. In the 1960s, Roy Parker fell ill. His work was taken over by Art Stenhelm and then Gordon Morrison. The artwork was, again, commercial, comical. At the time, one artist said, this isn't the Louvre, this isn't the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We're basically trying to produce what the public wants, and I want to feed my family. So they did the best kind of artwork that they felt would sell.
    22:37
    Entering the field was a gentleman named Jerry Kelly. But before Kelly started, there was this product, Starjet, which you can see next door. It's on the floor at Expo, which showed themes of what was coming in the art world of pinball.
    23:02
    First, it was on a Ted Zale machine. Ted Zale machines are interesting because most pinball, basically you could cut it down the center and fold it and both sides of the pinball field look pretty similar. Not with a Ted Zale machine. His machines were asymmetrical, so the ball goes up and it goes crosswise and a lot of the action is diagonal in his. This game was very prescient because here, Valley game, they put together what was a coming advance, not only in pinball, but in media in general.
    23:48
    The Jetsons TV show was a year away from coming out. So this is something that was kind of an exciting advance. There have been actually two Jetson machines developed after this. One is Jet Spin that got rethemed as the Jetsons, and also there's Spooky put one out in 2017.
    24:15
    People say, when they talk about this era of pinball, they say in a kind of a derogatory fashion, there's the pointing people. I don't think that's very accurate. I think that this era of pinball had not only cubist artwork but futurism surrealism op art pop art art deco sci and outer space minimalism and psychedelics
    24:49
    Now, some of that was social, but because our country was going through great changes in the 1960s, mainly due to the Vietnam War.
    25:03
    When this trend of artistic, triangular, cubist, abstract art hit pinball and the arcade world in general, it did not go over very well with some people. The chief guy who writes on shuffle and bowling alley history literally lists 1963 as the start of United Ugly Era with new pinball design and pointy art. pinball hall of famer Michael Shalab has had different commentary in the field but he basically has said personally I don't like it as I prefer the old style artwork of the two legends of Parker and Melenton there is no comparison others skirted the issue if you look at Pinside You can find a whole thread that talks about somebody else dislikes Christian Marsh as much as me. He was a successor to Jerry Kelly.
    26:14
    It's dwarfed, however, by a very large thread titled Pointy People Pin Ponderings, Homage to Marsh and Kelly.
    26:26
    Cubism is the basis of the pointing people. It's a trend towards more abstract art. By my count, although some think that the Pointy People is listed to about 20 games, I think there's about 50 games in this era manufactured that had abstract geometric and were expansive in color.
    26:51
    Pacific Pinball did a lot of work in this area, and I've put down references for that. These are four games from my basement, which reflect pointy cubist pinball artwork.
    27:08
    I think they're fascinating because it points out to be what I call old guy basement sales syndrome, which is each of these games I got because for some reason they were in a basement and gotten into disuse. and all the games had rubbers that were cracked, a filthy game. They hadn't been played in many, many years. The most interesting one is Gulfstream that came to my attention when I was playing. I played old man ice hockey.
    27:54
    I was playing in a tournament. when a guy reached over the bench I was sitting on and said, hey, I heard you're into pinball. Can you look at my parents' basement? They moved out, and I got stuck with two pinball games. I didn't think too much of it at the time because most games I wasn't interested in, but it turned out to be Gulfstream, which has beautiful pointing people artwork on it. Okay, I've got some categories that I'm going to go through fairly quickly, but just to show that there are a number of varieties of abstract art in this timeframe. The first game of this type, beyond the predecessor Starjet, was Pot of Gold. And you can see in it, it's got some turquoise colors and a few browns and that kind of thing.
    28:53
    Revolutionary in pinball. Revolutionary because at the time, the owners wanted red, white, blue colors. They did not want any other colors, especially not green. Well, Jerry Kelly didn't listen to anybody. People wanted his work because he'd basically done some fantastic work in the slot machine area.
    29:29
    And if you have been to places, casinos with slot machines, you're usually used to seeing a three-fold machine that you sit in front of, and originally you pulled an arm, now you just push buttons. That machine was designed by Jerry Kelly, who did a slot machine that was called Money Honey when he was working for Bally. so he was a popular innovator and people knew he did good work but he was also very controversial and he made plenty enemies in the area Pop Art at the time the country was going through great change with the Beatles coming to America fashion, new fashion coming to America And I call this adolescence because basically it was a rebellion of the people in their late teens, early 20s. First, they didn't want to go fight in the Vietnam War. Second, they didn't find enjoyment and the nostalgia of the 50s that other people had. And guys were growing long hair and women weren't wearing bras and it was a very, very different time. this is some of the artwork that came out of it. On the right-hand side, you have,
    31:05
    there are artists, two artists who are known for pop. One is Andy Warhol. The other is Ray Lichtenstein.
    31:17
    Warhol did, I think you may have seen, the tomato soup can is one of his products. Coca-Cola bottles is another one of his art products. This is Pinball's version of that, Canada Dry.
    31:34
    Surrealism was a big part of what happened with Pinball then. The colors were very different, turquoise, pink, purple, et cetera. And also we start veering into dreams and what people saw in their dreams rather than the nostalgic era of the 1950s. What came after that was a number of pinball games that had the theme of targets, time tunnels, futurism, and here a couple of them came out. And again, there were Gottlieb games, which Gottlieb was the most traditional of the manufacturers. And here they were adopting new abstract art techniques.
    32:30
    There's more Gottlieb games. And then you have here the Time Zone by Bally and Mars Trek, which is a Sonic game. There's another really good Sonic game called Faces that has kind of some of the same themes to it.
    32:49
    Art Deco, those of you who appreciate the artwork of Dave Christensen, these are some of his finer products, and they definitely fit within the Art Deco realm. this is my favorite game and it was the second game that i purchased after poker face which was bobby or power play people from boston hate it because it shows bobby or as a blackhawk bobby or basically was a boston bruin by the time he got traded to chicago his knees were shot But he wound up, because Chicago was the center of the pinball universe, Bobby Orr became a Blackhawk on this, and it's a wonderful game. What I like about the artwork on it is you've got a mixture of chrome, bright colors, highlighted, properly highlighted spaces.
    34:01
    It's just a lot of fun to play and own. I mention this because it's been mentioned in several of the talks earlier today.
    34:12
    The Beatles were a big deal when they came to the United States. and as a result, someone wanted to do a pinball game on it. Well, I don't know where the lawyers were at the time, but here, instead of having the Beatles, they were called the Boodles, but everybody knew what they were talking about and to me, it basically presaged the licensing that would come very shortly thereafter with the Pinball Wizard. This game I call Cuba's Everything because it's really got a mixture of a lot of stuff. It's got film noir. It's got futurism. It's got sci-fi. Then in the corner, it's got a guy helping a woman change a tire on the expressway. But to me, it's a very fun game.
    35:08
    In the 60s and 70s, what was added? Well, Adaball came from Gottlieb. I already mentioned that. Magic Clock had the moving target.
    35:21
    Vagabond had the drop target when it dropped down below the playing field. Spinner came on. Multiball came on.
    35:32
    As an aside, I think many of us become enamored with games from our adolescence. and I know, I mean, you'll show, you see the stuff I liked here was basically from when I was a young man when my grandson was playing in my basement, playing my vagabond game. He looked at me and said, how do you get multiball started?
    36:00
    Multiball had not been invented by the time of that machine. The good news is, however, Last Saturday, that grandson, Henry, won the pinball competition at White Rose Game Show in York, Pennsylvania. And he plays a lot of multiball now. Manual ball lift. Used to be you had to push a lever to get the ball up in the playing field. That got changed in 1966.
    36:29
    Bumpers became a lot more active. Return lanes built in. And zipper flippers, you'll see some of those on the playing floor. The flipper closed, and you basically got a free game out of that because you could flip all you wanted to until you hit a rollover where it opened the flippers again.
    36:53
    That was found in the pinball Capersville which was an extraordinarily popular pinball game and convinced pinball manufacturers that abstract art wasn such a bad thing
    37:11
    Captive ball spinner, I think you've seen it where it's basically a roulette wheel where the ball gets into and spins around and you get points based on that. It came out in a go-go, which was a double flipper, chrome flipper pinball game. This is the era that it came from two-inch to three-inch flippers. I personally am, I think from hockey, I'm a fan of the two-inch flippers because I think it requires more precision. And I warm up from playing hockey by playing on my two-inch flipper games. But that was a thing of the past. Three-inch flippers came and are still with us today. The up post got built into games at the end of this era. And bonus ladders and the fun part of those came in.
    38:05
    Drop target scoring bank, spinning discs, licensing on movie themes. I mean, now everything's licensed. And I actually wish that there was a lot more creative, abstract, and regular art with respect to pinball.
    38:25
    Solid State Pinball Games emerged. Spirit of 75 in 1975. Bally mass marketed Freedom in 1976. And then from 76 to 79, there was parallel building of EM games and solid state games.
    38:50
    Also came along in this era, the start of electronic sounds, human language in Gorgar, and we heard earlier today discuss the attractive feminine voice in Xenon.
    39:04
    This shows you how quickly solid state took over. In 1975, Freedom had both versions. One was 5,000 machines, an EM version, solid state, 1,500. By 77, the numbers changed to, on Evo Knievel, 14,000 solid state machines as opposed to 155 EMS. games. Two years later, Charlie's Angels factory run a 7600 for Solid State, 350 for EM. After that, they stopped making duplicate EM games. So pinball by the end of the 1970s, EMs were gone, South State took over. Scoring went from bulbs to reels to digital. Bumpers went from disc to thumper. Single player to largely multiplayer. Audio speech, multi-level, multi-ball.
    40:19
    And then they had competition from the arcade, stand-up arcade, video arcade games. took a large toll. There were a number of pinball manufacturing companies that joined the fray in 1980. Well, that contracted dramatically after 1980.
    40:41
    And one good part of that whole thing, though, was people were really worried about the threat of amusement pinball games in 1960. By 1980, the legal landscape had changed so that formal law had developed exceptions for amusement pinball games. And in fact, nobody cared. Nobody cared.
    41:06
    Okay. Most of this talk has been art applied to pinball. Well, this is pinball becoming art. Charles Bell is an artist who made his name by taking pinball scenes and painting them out.
    41:25
    His books are pretty popular. And he looked after fireball and paragon and wizard and a few other games. Worth looking at if you haven't seen Charles Bell book.
    41:43
    And that is it. I've included some references. Anybody who's, a few people, I've made a few extras on my talk if anybody wants a copy of the talk.
    41:57
    And I'll open it to any questions. Okay. A few corrections for your slides. That's fine. I guess one notable one is the mushroom was actually developed by Stoner. It had a few games just before World War II.
    42:30
    And theirs was kind of a larger mushroom. It could be lit up, but it worked about the same way as the bally mushroom. So the bally mushroom is more like an innovation in lowering the production costs. And I think the innovative part as a player would be the way it absorbs energy. So you kind of thunk into it and fall back with a lot less energy on the ball. Good to know. Correct. Someone else have questions? I'll run over to you. At the beginning of your talk, you alluded to the artist looking down somewhat on pinball art. Were there any occasions that you know of where artists actually did artwork for pinball machines? I'm sorry, I didn't get that fully. I was interested to know if artists actually did any work for pinball machines.
    43:35
    You spoke originally about artists looking down on pinball art as rather a sort of low-grade. Okay, well, the point I was trying to make was that pinball artists themselves saw themselves largely as, in the commercial end of it, trying to make an art that sold. So I think what you might be talking about, like now we have Dirty Donnie who is doing more of a fine art thing and he came into pinball already having a reputation in the fine art world. Yeah, that's a change. Okay.
    44:19
    I think Jerry Kelly brought to pinball a little bit of fine art. In fact, he was abrasive and difficult because he kind of did look down on artwork of some of his predecessors in pinball. I think that's part of why Jerry Kelly hasn't gotten the recognition that he should get in terms of really being a revolutionary artist in the pinball field. I think there's room in pinball for every version of art. I think just I appreciate Roy Parker's work. I also appreciate the work of later artists. I just wanted to bring to people's attention that I don't think this abstract debate and dislike of abstract art and pinball really made sense. I think it made a lot more sense to have more variety in pinball, and it got younger people more interested in it.
    45:25
    much of your talk seemed to involve u.s companies and i was just wondering what was going on in europe for 30 or 40 years is pinball really a a u united states kind of phenomenon no no and i i I should have added my caveat that I actually had in my written notes, but I was trying to abbreviate a little bit because I had less time than I thought I'd have.
    46:01
    No, there's a very active community in Germany and France and other areas. And in fact, the style of the 60s pinball with the wings that extend out and the legs underneath, There is an example of a French pinball rally game on the floor over here at Expo.
    46:30
    Yes, a lot of the business was U.S. games exported overseas, but there was a thriving European business too. I just couldn't include it in my talk. And did the Europeans follow the U.S., or was it the U.S. following the Europeans, or was it kind of a conjoined development? I think there was more that went from U.S. to Europe than from Europe to U.S. I agree. I think many of the countries felt like the American product was the – But I'm not an expert on that. I mean, I said at the start of my thing, I'm a novice in the area. It's actually kind of daunting to speak in a room with all you experts on pinball. but I'm having fun with it.
    47:17
    Thanks for a great talk. I had a sort of a question and tangent question. So much of Pinball seems to be based on IP that's out there and in the 70s, 60s, 80s it looked like it was mostly very original works until Wizard came along but still even after Wizard during the solid state era there were still like innovative creative one offs. I have an opinion about that, but what do you think about that? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
    47:50
    That's one problem with age. Oh, no worries. We're in the same age bracket. But it seems like so much pinball now is based on IP, movies, TV, and so on. But the 60s, 70s, 80s seemed to have so much innovation until Wizard, but even after Wizard. That's what I was trying to highlight in my talk is that there's a lot of creative artwork that went on 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. And I think I appreciate it. I enjoy it. I think artwork you can include, you know, you've got representational artwork on one end. You've got abstract on the other. And I think a mix of both is really good for people. Yeah, it's nice to see an artist can draw something almost perfectly in two-dimensional art.
    48:45
    But the abstract piece is where they start doing triangles and shadows and turn it into three-dimensional. I think that's pretty fun, too. That's more my interest, but I don't disparage people that like the more traditional artwork.
    49:03
    Last call for questions? Okay, thank you very much, Fred.