Irish Sweepstakes
This peculiar arcade game is themed around the Irish Hospital Sweepstake which ran from 1930 to 1987, supposedly to raise funds for under-invested medical services in Ireland, but mostly to line the lottery owners' pockets. The lottery involved nurses drawing the winning tickets (with names of racehorses on them) from a huge rotating drum. Likewise, to play this machine you use the steering wheel to guide the nurse across the rotating drum. The object is for her outstretched arm to release each catch on the drum, thereby lighting a lamp behind the corresponding horse's head. When sufficient lamps are lit, the player's coin is returned. This appears to be the only game which Stevenson and Lovett saw fit to patent: GB607795 |
Stevenson and Lovett 1948
Zunt
Zunt appears to be an alternative variant, perhaps a re-issue of the Advance Pin Table, with the same mechanical arrangement, playfield layout, and small small oak counter-top cabinet. Both games are similar to the Mills Novelty Co.'s "Baby Official" Pin Table of 1932. This example is missing the coin entry knob, which was a distinctive feature of the design. |
Ewan, White & Co 1930s
Advance Pin Table
Judging by surviving numbers, these little oak counter-top pin-tables were made in considerable numbers. The design is a very conservative bagatelle layout and bears more than a passing resemblance to Mills Novelty Co.'s "Baby Official" Pin Table of 1932. This example has a retail label for T H Moor, Ironmonger, South Molton. The company made a very similar game called Zunt. |
Ewan, White & Co 1932
Lifeline
This was one of several very simple but visually attractive games made by the British Manufacturing Company which used the coin as a projectile and required little or no mechanism. The scene is painted directly onto the front glass and the backboard behind. The aim is to fire a penny onto the top of the lighthouse. If it falls on either side of the coast behind the lighthouse (marked 'Reserve'), it is retained by a clip. Further coins falling to Reserve, or falling anywhere else, go straight to the operator's cashbox. In this way, the game can pay between 1 to 3 coins for a win (2 reserve coins, plus the player's penny). Originally there would have been a marquee on top with the name of the game. |
BMCo. 1930s
Cigarettes
Blue painted three column metal wall-mounted cigarette dispensing machine with internal illumination and slots for 2D and 6D. Patent number GB324623. |
Clement Garrett 1930
Music Maker
Known, for obvious reasons, as 'The Fridge', the Jack Hilton Mark 2 Music Maker had a sixteen selection Simplex mechanism, playing one side of the record only. |
Hawtins 1947
Robot King
The first of a new, but short-lived, genre of robot-themed fortune tellers, Robot King incorporated a small printing device. Those who consulted him could see his predictions were custom produced for them, and the operator was saved the expense of ordering pre-printed cards. Dirty smudges transferred to other machines in the arcade from ink-wet hands was an unfortunate consequence. |
Brenner 1934
Skill Score
Small battery-operated flipper-less counter-top pinball with electro-mechanical score dial in the back-box. The balls ricochet between the solenoid bumpers to advance the score. |
Hooper 1940s
Shoot!
This appears to be Shields' first counter-top pinball which paid out rolls of sweets and works on the same principle as the later and more common Tuck Shop. |
Shields 1940s
Whirlwin Spinball
The two large flipper-like arms in the centre oscillate continuously like car screen wiper blades and the object is to fire the ball so that it drops between them just as they sweep across the two central channels to win four or eight coins. This machine, which is similar in size to a conventional pinball, has been converted to decimal coinage. |
Unknown 1960s
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