Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pinball Machines

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why pinball machines are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Visit https://maximumfun.org/boco to get your digital art for Episode 200! There are also posters in the vault for Episodes 50, 100, and 150.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Get tickets to see us LIVE at the London Podcast Festival this September: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/comedy/secretly-incredibly-fascinating/

Just a quick heads up, as she'll mention in the episode, Katie needed to use her backup audio system for this. It still sounds great. That's why we put the episode out and you're hearing it. And if you're an audiophile, if your ears or headphones or speakers are amazing, hopefully all three, then you might hear a slight difference. But that's what's going on. It's not you. It's us. And thanks. Enjoy the episode. Pinball machines. Known for being for being pins famous for being balls machines. Nobody thinks much about them. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why pinball machines are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is

more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of pinball machines? Well, if it sounds like my voice is slightly different this time, it is because I am recording with a pinball machine, an ancient technology used in podcasting. No, I'm having some technical difficulties. So. Which, which, which Adam's family character are you speaking into the face of? Is it Gomez or is it? Morticia. Always Morticia. That's correct. That's the right way

to do it. That was a trick question. I brought up Gomez as a red herring, never talking to Gomez. I love pinball machines. Um, I used to play, there was like this pinball program on early Macintosh computers that I used to play. Gosh, what was it called? Anyways, it was, it was really fun. One of my favorite games. I think that also like, uh, Windows also had like sort of a native pinball machine game that came with the computers that I would play. And sometimes it would just say like tilt on the game. And I had no idea what that means because like I didn't it was a computer. What do you mean I'm tilting it?

It's flat on a computer. And then I realized that real pinball machines are physical machines that you have an actual ball. And that was incredible for me to learn that there was an analog version of pinball. Anyhow, I've played it before. One could say I'm a bit of a pinball wizard. Nice. They're great. No, I'm not that good, actually. I'm fine at pinball. I might have a similar thing. I have played pinball at arcades, you know, probably a dozen times. And I have played 3D pinball Space Cadet on a mid-1990s Windows computer about a million

times, about a million rounds. And it's great, but virtual and different. Yeah. We live near an arcade and they have a Star Trek The Next Generation pinball table. So that's pretty good. My favorite pinball, the most exciting ones is like when something cool happens, when you hit certain bumpers, right? And it's really exciting. Yeah. Because the machines got pretty complex. I think. I don't know, in the 80s or 90s, like you would hit bumper and then like a little guy would come out of a hole,

especially like the, like you said, like the Addams Family themed ones or the horror themed ones, like you could like hit a bumper and then a Frankenstein would pop up at you and you're like, oh no, I've made the Frankenstein mad with my pinballs. Yeah, there's like a story and characters, but it's very just a ball has done something.

Yeah. Which isn't that just life? A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Feels right. Yeah. And also thank you to Rob Freeman for suggesting this.

And thank you to folks for picking it in the polls. And the suggestion was pinball machines specifically. This will be very cultural and historical because it turns out that's super weird and a little less on the technical end. And then the bonus show is about specific weird and fun concepts for pinball machines. So the characters and story and so on, that's the bonus. We'll start with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics in a segment called 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are numbers. Nice. And it was submitted by Jeff B. on the Discord. We have a new name every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpot at gmail.com.

And the first number this week takes us into the past. It is 1931. Okay. Good year. Solid year. Yeah. Well, yeah, the teeth of the Great Depression. Yeah, yeah, pretty good.

Hey, well, I was thinking that's the year of the cool hats, but I guess depression also. Oh, the hats were good. You know, you're right. The hats were good? Good and bad. Tale of Two Cities.

Yeah. 1931 is the year when a Chicago amusement maker named David Gottlieb released a pinball game called Baffle Ball. Oh, okay. And that's considered the first commercially successful pinball machine. Baffle Ball. Yeah. Yeah. I see considered the first commercially successful pinball machine. Baffle ball. Yeah. Yeah. I see why they changed it to pinball.

And the name is, I think, trying to do a play on baseball. The playing field of the machine was like a baseball diamond, and each of the bases was worth something. Yeah, I'm looking at it. It's like a wooden box, and it has, you know, the pinball things. It looks like a place to put your coins and then the little plunger for the pinball. And yeah, it doesn't seem to have any of the, it doesn't have like the paddles that kick the ball around. So it looks more like, almost like a Plinko situation. Exactly.

Those are all the important things because this machine is a ball launcher. A player would put one penny into it and then get 10 balls. Man. But then they would just launch the 10 balls into the field. Ball flation. Ball flation is out of control. One penny for 10 balls. Incredible.

And part of it is that there were no flippers. So other than some tilting, once you launch the ball, it just plinkos through some metal pins. And when we say metal pins, they're basically like sewing pins or something. Yeah, they're just like little thin spikes of metal. And it turns out that's where the name pinball comes from. It used to be a bunch of tiny little metal pins in a way that it isn't today. I guess I've seen some pinball machines that have like pins. Definitely they all have balls. That's a consistent, that is a consistent trend.

So what is the objective for this game? Because I like, what is the win case? Because I see some, they're like four circles with sort of narrow entrances guarded by more pins. And then at the bottom of it, it also has some slots. So are you trying to get the ball into one of those circles? What's going on? to get the ball into one of those circles? What's going on? Yeah, it's that and then more complicated in a way we'll talk about a little bit later. And this extremely simple and seemingly not that advanced game basically launched the pinball industry

because the machine was very, very cheap. And this is just a tabletop thing. There's no back glass behind it. It's not its own table with legs. It's just a like flat thing that you're playing with. And Gottlieb sold over 50,000 units of these baffle ball machines, and they only cost $17.50. And even with inflation, that's less than $500 from what I could calculate with inflation calculators online. So would these mostly be used in bars or restaurants or smoke rooms? I don't really, I'm out of things that I know existed back then.

Or were they for like personal use? The first thing, yeah. Yeah, like bar owners, tavern owners would buy one of these, and they all raved about how they made the $17.50 back within weeks. People would play that amount of games. It's a penny. So they would have 1,750 games, and they made the money back. And then it's just pure profit from there. Yeah, easy money.

Yeah, and Gottlieb's company had started a few years earlier to make amusement type stuff, like a grip strength tester and carnival stuff. And then when baffle ball worked out, he focused on new other ways to do pinball. Competitors copied that, imitated that too. And so 1931 is the start of a pinball industry. Like it's less than a hundred years old. I was going to say that people were easily entertained back then, but honestly, this does look fun. I think I would have fun doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. Like across the stories of this, it seems like good gameplay just really sells this and the machines with bad gameplay kind of go away, no matter how many other things you throw on it. As much as we have so many great video games, when I see a pinball machine and it looks like fancy and it's making sounds and noises, I am drawn to it like a moth to a pinball. Oh no, it's made of cedar. Oh no, it's a cedar ball. Oh no, get out, get out, get out. Yeah, but that's really interesting. I mean, this is, it's definitely, this is not as fancy as the, the, you know, eighties, nineties pinball machines, but it does still look like the basic saying mechanics, right? You still have the ball that comes up and goes, there's like a arc that the ball has to go through

and the plunger where you're plunging the ball. And it, you know, kind of has all these little obstacles that it has to maneuver through. And then it's just like with this one, it is a lot more, you don't, once the ball is there, you are just at the observation point because you are helpless to guide the ball any further. Exactly, yeah.

Other than a little tilting, and even then, people weren't supposed to tilt it a lot. That's just it. Yeah. And then jumping to the next big, huge seller, the number is a little over 20,000 machines. So less than baffle ball, but still a little over 20,000 machines. So less than baffle ball, but still a little over 20,000 machines. That's the official sales number for the Addams Family pinball machine released by the Bally Company in 1992. I'm surprised it wasn't more. Yeah, it turns out that is the all-time top-selling modern-style pinball machine,

where it has a back glass and a playing field and legs and all the bells and whistles, literally. And so, yeah, researching sales of these has really made me appreciate any time I see a cool pinball machine, because there just aren't that many of them on Earth. They can go for quite a bit apparently. So like, because there are, they, they've become in a way sort of collectors items because they only made so many of certain ones. I think my dad, um, he, he had got his hands on one that was pretty rare and just needed to be fixed up.

And he gave that as like a gift to my, um, to his nephew and, uh, you know, like, yeah. It's a cool uncle, man. Wow. I got to catch up. I got to get on that level. That was really nice. It's very nice. But like, uh, it is interesting that like, there is, I think there is a whole subculture

in terms of like finding these, fixing them up. And then they actually go for quite a bit, uh, for collectors. of like finding these, fixing them up. And then they actually go for quite a bit for collectors. And honestly, in terms of like collector's items things, I really get these because some of these are, do you know like automatons that were made in like the 1800s when they're really these like intricate kind of mechanisms and stuff

and people collect them and they can go for like quite a high price. Like pinball machines kind of remind me of that because like some of them are, they're really interesting. There's like a lot of thought has gone into the various mechanisms, the very, like this, like you said, like the story of what is happening within the machine. And then the, like, you know, the ball hits something and triggers some sound or something. So was that with this pinball machine, with the Addams Family pinball machine, like how complex was it? Great question.

It was about as complex as the others of the time, but it was a time of huge innovation. So pretty much everybody making a machine was adding something new. Like the year before, 1991, there was a Terminator 2 Judgment Day pinball machine that added like a video component into the back glass. This Addams Family one was one of the first ones with recordings of the cast. And this was specifically a tie-in to the 1991 movie, not the TV series. Or if people don't know, The Addams Family was originally a set of New Yorker cartoons by a guy named Charles Addams. But that's old. People were like, there's a new blockbuster movie with Angelica Houston. And that's what this pinball is to me.

I like all three of those versions of The Addams Family. I like the old cartoons, I like the TV show, and then the Angelica Houston vehicle. They're all great, yeah. And the machine, its big feature was that there was a mechanical hand modeled after the character Thing, who is just a hand, and like that would grab the ball at certain situations. It's really cool. I love that. I love that stuff. I am such a sucker for the world where you're playing this game and the things that are happening to the game are like it's actual physics is really cool to me. I really love that. Yeah, me too. And, and that plays into part of the specific question of why is an Adam's family machine, the all time top top-selling pinball. I mean, other than Angelica Houston.

Right. Who you're speaking into right now. Right into her mouth. It's not weird. Yeah. The people just love the tactile element of pinball, even as video games get more and more advanced. There's also some people who still feel like video games are just not something they understand yet, even now, but especially in 1992. And so the older generation was relatively drawn to pinball and they were more drawn to an Addams Family IP concept than like, say, Terminator 2 or Star Trek The Next Generation. And then on top of all that, this Addams Family machine, for reasons that are hard to describe, it was just really good gameplay. Like the ramps and the bumpers and everything. It was just like a really well-made pinball game.

And then there's Addams Family art on it. That sounds so good. I feel like maybe after playing Elden Ring, the Elden Ring DLC, that might break me mentally enough that I just go completely analog and only play pinball from now on. And you go to the arcade and they're like, great news. We have the Shadow of the Erdtree pinball machine. You're like, no. I know you're making a joke, but that sounds so sick. That sounds so cool. God, I really do. You're like, I know you're making a joke, but that sounds so sick. That sounds so cool. God, I really do. You know what? Like I love video games and I love, man, if you could like, if you could do us, I don't know how familiar people are with, uh, souls, uh, games, but they're notoriously difficult and they earn that reputation. Uh, like if you could make a pinball machine that has that same sort of like you need that extremely precise timing. And I think you could because pinball is all about really precise timing and subtle movements.

And big fans of it really know whether a table is good or not. Like they've played, learned, figured it out. So there's a whole fandom around it. they've played, learned, figured it out. So there's a whole fandom around it. I was sadly, I was, I don't, I think I missed this because I was born in 89. So kind of like just around when I feel like these arcades were dying out, but like the people crowding around someone at a pinball machine doing really well. It's like, that's so fun and exciting. That's that too. Yeah. It's so tactile. It's so present. My favorite number about that, I wish it was stronger sourcing. This is just one current and pretty long running pinball company saying so, but the number is half a mile because the Stern Pinball Machine Company of Chicago, they say that half a mile of wire goes into one of their machines.

Chicago, they say that half a mile of wire goes into one of their machines. So what does that mean? Half a mile of wire? As in like the mechanisms are so complex that they need that much wiring? Yes. Yeah. For all the different little lights, bumpers, functions. And some machines are more digital, some are less today, but basically all of these are apparently pretty handmade because it's so intricate, it's so complex, So you just have a lot of like human work going into it and they compare it to the era when most cars were like handmade one at a time. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's so cool. I guess I do. I think that there is, I know that there's a lot of nostalgia that's like not well earned because we kind of look past all of the negative things about it. But I do think that as we sort of lose the people who know how to make things by hand like that, it is, it is genuinely sad to me because I think a lot of

these, these handmade machines and there's so much artistry. I hope you have some information on this, like how much, uh, how many people are still making pinball machines or things like it. Now it seems like it'd be a pretty small enclave. Yeah. And I'm going to link, there's a great pinball fan website. I discovered researching this. It's called kineticists.com, which is just a cool name too, kineticist, because it's kinetic, man. Yeah, they're really trying to fancy that up. They have a directory of active companies making the machines, and there are several right now, but apparently in the early 2000s, there was a low point where the Stern Company of Chicago was the only one. It was like the only one left where people were still building machines. And yeah, the peak of this was probably the 70s to the 90s.

And the first spark was the 30s. And so that's sort of the timeline and where it's at today. But they're still making current machines. Like there's an article I'll link about Logan's Arcade in Chicago. They have like a Game of Thrones machine. And there's like new machines for big properties. It's still a living industry. And flipping to a more negative, but also super interesting thing about new machines, the next number is two times, two times, because that's how many times a modern

company re-skinned their game due to complaints about its sexist game art. Ah, well, you know, the thing is that I do recognize that a lot of pinball machines really put an emphasis on chesty women. Yeah. There's also kind of two trends at once in pinball because, like, again, this started in the 1930s so there's a lot of vintage machines from the actual past with like pinup women and stuff and some people are preserving that as like old art and a thing to like keep up and video game history right but there's an amazing new york times piece by peter kujawinski he covers a 2015 machine by the Stern Company where they made

like a brand new concepts, sort of hearkening back to that, but just also kind of new. And the game was called Whoa Nelly, Big Juicy Melons. Yeah. And the art theme is a like cartoon family of watermelon farmers. But the main character is a chesty farm girl named Nellie doing the Austin Powers thing of two watermelons in front of her boobs. Okay, but the thing is, how do we know that she's chesty, right? Because her entire top half is actually covered by the watermelons. That's true that, you know, to be not to be to go to blue here, but like her cup size is unknown at this point. Right. Because, again, the the watermelons are doing a good job of covering this. Yeah. And as Austin Powers warned us, sometimes that's a fem bot, you know, like what if there's guns?

We don't know. Exactly. There could be, there could be little turrets in there. We don't know. It appears there's a horse throwing a guy off, uh, into the watermelon. Uh, you know, I think that I, I, I, I consider myself a feminist and I do understand the, you know, there's a little, it's a little weird, the fixation with busty women on pinball machines. I just think we need to even it out and have a bunch of banana hammock-themed machines, and then we're square. I am realizing I referenced a real Game of Thrones machine that exists. That could be the one focused on the other way. Right, the paddles could be bananas. There could be little hammocks you're trying to get the ball in.

Yeah, you know? Yeah, it all works. The answer is to objectify more people, is what I'm saying. Of all genders. Yeah, yeah. Because like, because sex is fine. And across video games, there's been a very reasonable pushback against especially products that just make money on objectifying women specifically. Like it's past a point that people are cool with. And since this isn't some kind of vintage thing, it's just modern boobs. Players of all genders kind of push back on that. Whoa, Nelly machine. Right. We've got to preserve, we've got to preserve vintage boobs, but if those are modern

boobs, it doesn't matter. They're vintage. Yeah. A well, a well-aged boob, well-aged objectification. On the side of a world war two plane, we're all saluting, you know, but now forget it. Yeah, exactly. Forget it. Yeah. Pretty much. That's pretty much the logic with pinball. Yeah. And the thing is, there was also a very easy solution to this because the Stern company responded by reskinning the machine and doing it under different art concepts, like the exact same flippers and bumpers and everything. But they tried two additional marketing schemes. The first was to make it a beer-themed game called Pabst Can Crusher, tied into Pabst Brewing. And then they redid it again as a

pinball game themed around the alternative metal band Primus. They made a Primus pinball machine. Incredible. Like any pinball game can be anything. There was no, like it's what, there was nothing lost in the gameplay to not make it a lady's watermelon boobs. It was just normal pinball beneath that back glass. Now, Alex, you're saying a lady's watermelon boobs, which implies that her boobs are actually made out of watermelons. And if that was the case, I feel like that would be medically interesting enough for it to go beyond just pure objectification. The rest of the show is just lore about Nellie. Like, yeah, I have a lot of fiction I've written.

lore about Nellie. Like, yeah, I have a lot of fiction I've written. Yeah. She's a scientist who was researching watermelon genetics and accidentally got bit by a radioactive watermelon. What's the Adam Webb thing? Her mom was in the Amazon or something. That joke. Yeah. Studying spiders. Yeah, that's right. Now, that would be a good pinball machine. A Madam Web one. That's probably going to exist if it doesn't already, actually, because it's like ironic. You're really confident in that. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll make some calls. Yeah. Yeah, I'll make some calls. Yeah. But this story keeps playing into pinball tradition because it turns out totally redoing the art of a machine for sales or some other reason is actually very traditional. It's been happening across kind of the whole pinball industry's history. They'll just like take a machine that's not selling that well, totally redo the art, see if that works.

And there was also a separate case in World War II where the U.S.'s war production effort needed as much metal as possible. And so some pinball factories, as silly as it is, they just like switch to war production. But others started up a business of we'll come to your business and reskin your pinball machine. So it feels like you've got something new, even though there's not metal to make you something new. Right. Turning your pinballs into war shares. Right. In the first book of pinball, Paul's letters to the big GC Melons. I'm going to try to make a swords to plowshares reference in every episode. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's the runner.

Yeah, it's our running theme. Yeah. The next week's topic is plowshares. You're like, I don't know how to fit it in. I can't. This is impossible. And yeah, reskinning machines, it's also happened in other wars just for profit. Because apparently in World War II, one of the most popular reskins was a theme called Victory in the Pacific.

Like they just turned the war into the pinball theme. I see. And I'll also link the page for a 1991 machine called Operation Desert Storm. Oh. It was a 1991 pinball machine, and the back glass has Saddam Hussein and Norman Schwarzkopf on it. And that was, according to the Internet Pinball Databball database that was from the data east company and it was just a total reskin of a pinball machine called checkpoint with a car racing theme that wasn't selling well i see are there any rock war pinball machines that

that's like the search for wmds and the game is that you never find them and you killed a bunch of people? Yeah, the saddest machine. I couldn't find it, but send us on Discord if you find any second Iraq war machines. If you find any pinball machines that technically qualify as war crimes, let us know. Also send them to the ICC. Us and the ICC, yeah. Us first. ICC second. Priorities people. I couldn't tell if it was before the war even ended or not. There wasn't a month, but 1991, like when Desert Storm was happening, basically, they made a pinball machine out of it. Well, just for fun. Like we were not out of metal in that war that we just did pinball for it anyway. Well, you know, patriotism, right? Like, hey, we got to support our troops by supporting our pinballs.

Yeah. And that kind of thing will come up later, actually, too. But the last number this week is pretty wild because the number is 2014. And the year 2014 is when the Oakland, California City Council amended its gambling ordinance to legalize pinball. Oh, what? It was illegal? It turns out that Oakland outlawed it in the 1930s. There's a weird internet thing where people will find odd laws on the books in random towns that nobody thinks about. But it turns out there were very active and real laws against pinball in most U.S. cities for a lot of the 1900s and into this century. Well, that's interesting because they're saying it's gambling. And yet I didn't think pinball machines dispense prizes. Like you don't put money in and then play pinball really good and get money out.

Like you're just paying to play the game. So I don't see how that's gambling. You're right. And the answer is it used to be different. Oh. Which leads us into a giant takeaway number one. Traditionally, pinball machines are a gambling machine built in Chicago. So it did used to be like Plinko.

Yeah. It turns out they were demonized as a gambling business for many decades and for like good reasons. It makes sense that a lot of cities decided they're just for gambling. And also across pinball history, they've pretty much all been built in Chicago specifically. This is a very Chicago phenomenon. Chicago. I'm already there. I see the Tommy Guns. already there. I see the Tommy guns, the, I see, um, you know, the ladies doing the dance, doing the, the cell block tango. And key sources for this are a piece for Chicago magazine by JC Gable, a piece for popular mechanics by Seth Porges, writing by popular historian Christopher Klein, and a piece for The Verge by Laura June. Starting with the Chicago bit, it's mostly just geography and infrastructure is why Chicago was

home to a lot of early U.S. amusement companies because it's a relatively large item and Chicago was a central rail hub to ship that on trains to most of the contiguous 48 states in DC. Yeah. I mean, you just, you follow the transit routes when you want to find high concentrations of pinball machines. You always got to follow the transit. Just like you learn in Settlers of Catan, right? Oh man. I want to, I want custom cards now. Development cards. Oh man, I want custom cards now. Development cards. Pinball. My strategy is pinball queen. Why did you draw a development card and say Morticia under your breath? Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. That's cool. I'm not winning yet. Yeah, and so the baffle ball machine came from Chicago, the Gottlieb Company was there. And as soon as the 1930s, there were more than 100 amusement companies in Chicago. And also a little bit from the 1893 Columbian Exposition and the roots of like national entertainment in Chicago, but it was mostly a lot of just production in Chicago and then a local scene of competing to make pinball machines and ship them nationwide.

Wow. And so like with these machines, you're saying it was kind of like gambling. So were they you were getting money? You were like putting in money, having the ball. And if the ball does well, you get money out of it. So, no, the the gambling was usually not built into the physical machine. It was just how everybody operated them. I see. And also the culture around it. But the one big mechanical reason it was seen as gambling, I guess the number for it is 1947.

What happened in 1947 is an engineer at the Gottlieb company, his name was Harry Mabbs, he created the idea of adding flippers to the board. So that's 15 plus years after pinball started existing, there started to be flippers. And the argument before flippers is that it was not really a skill game. I see. Like you're basically launching a ball and you can tilt it if you want, but otherwise it's just plinko-ing. And that's part of why baffle ball gave you 10 balls. Like most modern machines, there are only three balls because you're going to play the ball for a while unless you mess up.

Like it'll take some time to lose the ball. And so people said, hey, pinball just seems like roulette or something, right? You're not doing anything before there's flippers. Yeah, you're just watching and trying to move the ball with your telekinesis powers, which may or may not work. Yeah. Pitball, its origins didn't really suggest flippers. That was a really novel idea. Apparently, a British inventor who moved to the US, his name is Montague Redgrave. Amazing name. Montague Redgrave, way back in 1869, filed a patent for what's basically the ball launcher that fires the ball. And he didn't name it anything related to pinball. He named it Improvements in Bagatelle.

What? Bagatelle is an indoor game on a flat table where you're rolling a ball through wooden obstacles. And that's an indoor version of even older lawn games. And so like the thing, there were a bunch of tabletop games before baffle ball, where it is metal pins and a board and there's a ball, but they're all kind of based on stuff like bocce or even just lawn bowling, like where you throw a ball one time and see what happens. And so there's skill in the one throw, but none of that suggested flippers. Like flippers was really nearly a century later.

People thought of that. The flippers are the best part. There's like not, there's a little skill in the plunger, I guess, because you want it to plunge fully. But yeah, it's mostly the flippers that, that does it, man. I can't like, I don't know. I think I would definitely get bored with a Plinko version much faster. Right.

Yeah. Like, I couldn't imagine pinball working away without flippers, but it was the main way until 1947. And then partly because that's boring, people gambled a bunch of money on it. I see. It's like why roulette is gambling. Like, If you were just spinning the ball, who cares? And so people would either place a bet with the guy running the machine or the person owning the bar or arcade or building. And then you could win prizes from extra pinballs to sticks of gum, little stuff, but all the way up to luxuries like jewelry and

fine china. Wow. And it was like serious gambling in a game that's barely a skill game. And so a bunch of cities correctly said, this is gambling and let's just take our existing anti-gambling ordinance and apply that to pinball. They just hate fun though. gambling ordinance and apply that to pinball. They just hate fun, though. And yeah, and then another reason people thought it was gambling is that all the machines were made in Chicago with this Al Capone reputation. Yeah. That was not directly involved. I didn't find anything about Al Capone building them and stuff. But there were cases where organized crime would either run the pinball next to other gambling or give a business the capital to buy the machine or, you know, like it's, it's a very, very plausible thing that these cities did. It's

not some like weird buttoned up thing where they said it's gambling. Yeah. I mean, that's, it is kind of funny though. Cause it's just like, I'm sure Al Capone also used toilets. Is that gambling? I mean, sometimes it is, honestly. Sometimes it is. Right, especially with like 1930s food safety. Great. Let's roll the dice with every sandwich. Yep.

Yeah, and my favorite part of this is the Illinois General Assembly, which is the state legislature. They outlawed, quote, mechanical gambling devices in 1895. And so then once pinball started existing, a series of lawsuits and some Illinois legislators applied that law to pinball. And so Chicago had a thriving legal industry of building pinball machines, and it was illegal to play them in Chicago or in the state of Illinois. Well, you know, that's, so they had to essentially launch their machines elsewhere into the right spot. Yeah, the trains like that plunger. Yeah, that you pull. Yeah.

But yeah, so and that has like weird legal ramifications to this day. There's a New York Times piece we'll link. They cover a wonderful club in Oakland. It's called Bells and Chimes. And they self-describe as an international network of inclusive women's pinball leagues run by women for women. And that's all really cool. But technically, they formed their club in 2013, one year before it was legal to play pinball in the city of Oakland where they formed. So yeah, this has kind of been an outlaw thing in a lot of our lifetimes. Like a lot of us have probably illegally played pinball at some point. Well, I think that makes it cooler, number one.

Because then I feel like I'm doing something illicit, like entering a speakeasy. But yeah, I mean, that is it is interesting. There are a lot of weird laws like you're not allowed to eat carrots on Wednesdays because that's that's for that's for drunks or something. I don't know. It's it's. But yeah, I mean, I don't think they're being enforced. That's the thing, like there's that genre of weird, unenforced law. That's the thing. There's that genre of weird, unenforced law, and then some cities didn't really enforce these anti-pinball laws, or it's like a lot of vice where it just gets overlooked because either crime or the cops or just the system isn't cracking down. And then other cities, they would raid it and smash up pinball operations. Yeah, you've got this picture of this very serious guy in a fedora with a sledgehammer, but also in this way that looks really boring. So this is the most boring smashing of a pinball machine I've ever seen. Yeah, and that's in New York City. We are going to take a quick break and then head to New York City and the legalization in very recent years of pinball.

You know, Katie, I don't know if you know this, but one in five Americans have learn a new language on their bucket list. If that's you, make 2024 the year you finally check it off the list with Babbel. It's interesting because I have a variety of buckets on my bucket list, like plastic beach, tin, old timey wooden one that goes in the well. But you know what, Alex, I do want to learn a new language because I live in a country where English is not spoken. It's Italy. And honestly, I actually do think Babbel is one of my favorite app-based learning things. It seems to prioritize the true learning process and how you actually will hear and interact with the language rather than learning semi-random vocabulary that probably won't come up. Like I don't actually need to know

how to say, please, my horse has run away. Help me find it. That never really happens. So it actually does teach me phrases that are much more likely to come up in conversation. Like, please, my lion is devouring an old lady. Help me save her. And yeah, I do find the size of lessons very approachable and real for life. They're usually about 10 minutes. They're put together by experts. It's a size and scale of learning that is both extremely useful and extremely bite-sized at the same time, which is what fits my life. I'm busy. And then also I want to actually get some knowledge and skills out of the time. Folks, here is a special limited time deal for

you who listen to SIF. Right now you can get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription, but only for folks who listen to the show, at babbel.com slash SIF, S-I-F. You get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash SIF, and that service is spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash SIF. Rules and restrictions may apply. And we're also supported this week by Solar Slice, which is another wonderful thing because a lot of us feel helpless about climate change and feel like that's just going on and there's nothing we can do. Solar slice offers you the opportunity to contribute money to make a solar farm happen that otherwise wouldn't happen at all. People know what a solar farm is, right? A solar power plant? Yes, it is a farm that grows

sun trees and then you pluck those sun trees and you get tiny suns that you squeeze the juice out of and you put it in the wall or in your car and it makes things go. It started to feel like a story about the god Apollo or something. I kind of liked it. Yeah. But this is a way to buy a slice, is what they call it, of a solar farm. Because you, as an individual, probably can't fund an entire solar power plant, but you can add 50 watts of

clean energy to your power grids. And you don't own that, you are contributing and helping to make the world a better place. That feels really cool because there's a lot of news about all the pretty not great things that we're doing to the planet and you could get this and be like every time you see news about like with a polar bear and it looks really just bereft and then you're like hey let me check i was thinking of a polar bear when you said news ice caps melting there's a sad polar bear on it. And they are sad, but also, hey, at least you're doing something. You actually get feedback on what is happening with your little dutchie of the solar farm. Are you ready to take action? If so, visit solarslice.com and buy a slice on Kickstarter

today. Together, we can build a cleaner, greener world, one slice at a time. That's solarslice.com. Don't just offset your carbon footprint, build a brighter future. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. We're back and we're heading to New York City because takeaway number two. What? That's right.

Get out of the plane. I'm not even packed. I don't even have pizza money. I'm not ready to make friends with all the rats and the pizza and the turtles. Yeah. And there's an Italian element here, too, because takeaway number two. New York City exploited the Pearl Harbor attack to destroy its pinball machines and let the police give themselves the coins. What?

I don't like what is the lot like? Well, these pinball machines, they could have been made. They could be used by Japan to spy on us. So we've got to destroy them and take their coins. The super short version of the logic is the war against Japan is the last straw for this horrible phenomenon of pinball. And this medal should be going to the war effort. Oh, I see. And then after the cops smashed all the machines, they put the coins straight into the police pension fund for themselves. Okay, yeah. They were scooping the coins out, bringing them to a bank or something, and putting them in their own pension fund. And this was the NYPD? I'm so surprised.

NYPD. And they did that like openly, like people knew it was not some kind of fly by night taking the coins. Like everybody was clapping, you know. Yeah, yeah. But and this was all led in 1942 by New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Yeah. Who was a son of immigrants, Italian-American Fiorello LaGuardia. Yeah. Who was a son of immigrants, Italian-American. Hey, LaGuardia Airport, right? Yes, and that airport's named after him. That's the main way people know the name.

Yeah, and he used that pinball money to fund the airport, and that's how he got his name on it. That's right. One bag of coins, airport. That's how it works, folks. So the sources here are a piece for the Daily Beast by Alison McNerney, and then the archives of the New York Times, as well as some earlier stuff we cited. And Fiorella LaGuardia might be the leading anti-pinball figure of American history. He was mayor of New York from 1934 all the way to 1946. That's three terms. It was the most of any modern mayor until later on.

And he was also a six-term congressman before that. And he had like a unique moral passion for crushing pinball. In an affidavit to the Supreme Court, he said that pinball machines, quote, robbed the pockets of schoolchildren in the forms of nickels and dimes, given them as lunch money. And so he hated the gambling and he hated the like kids get addicted to it and spend their lunch money on it who are poor. And he was Republican, but in the era where that could be progressive. And he was a socialist in the general way. Like he was really rooting for the poor and the working class. And he felt like pinball was something that preyed on them.

But like, couldn't we just make it the people's pinball? Yeah, he I think just didn't see a way. He said we need to destroy it like most gambling. If I was a socialist mayor at this time, I would have just used like put some caulking foam in the coin deposit. You know what I mean? Now pinball's free. Just like stick them up and it's just a caulking gun and I'm making pinball free, but I'm like wielding it like a Tommy gun.

I just imagined a gangster with a Tommy gun of caulking guns. Like it's 10 caulking guns that rotate around in that thing. So Congressman LaGuardia, long before he was mayor, he proposed a federal ban on slot machines as well as pinball machines. And this did not pass the House. And again, that's early on, so it's before baffle ball but it's when the even earlier pinball exists and it was seen as basically a slot machine he lumped it in and most people did i have mixed feelings because have you you've have you ever been to las vegas yeah i have seen like the there is a certain element of like, what are we doing here when it's like you see a lot of people, especially like sort of like older people just sitting at machines like clearly very addicted.

And I can see this guy's perspective, right? Like if pinball machines are essentially at that point just Plinko and that's gambling and gambling is causing these issues. It's just I don't know if prohibition ever works. Right. Like when we went like prohibition of alcohol, drugs, gambling. I don't know that that that if that ever really works, because then it just all goes underground and people find people find a way right to do it. to do it. Yeah, exactly. If there had been some kind of effective ban on this, either a Las Vegas

would have popped up or people would be doing it some secret way or something. I don't know how we would prevent it completely. Underground pinball. Just like the sounds of Morticia coming from your basement and a police officer is like, what's that? Oh, nothing.

We're just playing the classic movie, The Addams Family Values, downstairs. Yeah. And it's the only one thing worth really bringing up about it as a surprising thing. But the song by The Who, Pinball Wizard from Tommy, because pinball still had kind of this gambling stink on it and this illicit stink, even in the early seventies, that song is edgier than we know now. Like it was, it was like kind of anti-authoritarian and underground to be playing pinball then. And so the song had a different tone when it came out. Now we're like, oh, he's good at games. Cool. Like whatever. It'd be like calling them a vape wizard or something, right? Today, vaping.

I'm thinking of Fast and the Furious, like street racing or something. Right. Like everybody has cars, but yeah, like doing that. Whoa. You know? He's the cars racing wizard. He's really good at cars. He sure plays the mean cars racing. Yeah, that works. Yeah. And so LaGuardia is up to many things as mayor of New York City. And well into his second term, the Pearl Harbor attack happens. Japan strikes, the US declares war also against the Germans and Italians. I just love how it's like, that's it? We gotta get rid of pinball?

Yeah, LaGuardia, he told the public, quote, we feel that it is infinitely preferable that the metal in these evil contraptions be manufactured into arms and bullets, which can be used to destroy our foreign enemies, end quote. Yeah. Which is a little of a leap, but correct. Like, there is metal in there. So he just, he was like, this is the hundredth reason we need to ban pinball, is World War II. Right. I mean, like, I get it. Like, I'm obviously very much in favor of getting into World War II for obvious reasons. But also it's really funny

where it's like, we got to turn these evil pinball machines into the good and virtuous bullets. Right. So LaGuardia seizes on this very fast. Pearl Harbor is in December 1941. By the following month, January 1942, LaGuardia has strong-armed the New York City Council into passing a ban on pinball as a public amusement. And then basically the moment it passed, he sent NYPD on a citywide raid to seize and destroy pinball machines. It's estimated they seized 20% of them on their first sweep and then further ones after that. They issued more than a thousand summonses for business owners accused of running pinball games. And LaGuardia and the police commissioners showed

up with sledgehammers to destroy machines for the press and hold up fistfuls of pinballs to demonstrate that, you know, this will go to the front lines now. We've done it. Oh, wait, is that the picture I'm looking at of the guy very seriously smashing a pinball machine? Yeah, that's one of the police commissioners of New York City. Again, I'd like to reiterate, this is the most boring photo of someone smashing a pinball machine that I could have ever conceived of. Cause it's like, they just like, like, ho-hum, I guess I'm smashing this pinball machine. Yeah. He's really not making it fun, even though they're clearly trying to capture the joy of like the G-men stopping alcohol bootleggers, you know, like the cool Elliot Ness Untouchables thing, but he's not making, he's not putting anything into it. Yeah. D minus.

So was this pre, was this pre flippers or post flippers and it was pre flippers flippers weren't till 1947 so again it's like that recently pinball was seen as a slot machine but almost worse because it's kind of aimed at kids like Like it was seen as really, really scummy. Yeah. As NYPD did this, they put out numbers to show how much they were helping the war effort. They said that they seized enough pinballs to build four 2,000 pound aerial bombs, four humongous bombs just out of the balls from the machines. But then the Germans invented flippers.

Giant, giant flippers for the bombs. And yeah, they also did another sort of press event when they dumped the unusable scraps of destroyed machines into Long Island Sound as like a final gotcha destroyed. And yeah, and they seized nearly $10,000 in coins and put it straight into the police pension fund for themselves. Okay, wow. Which would be nearly 200 grand today from the quick collection calculations. So shocked the NYPD would do this. Really? Are you sure? The NYPD?

Interesting. And they really, really had like public support. Like not everybody was against gambling, but they could just do this publicly without much pushback. Right. And pinball, even after the flippers were added, it remains considered like seedy and scandalous. And apparently one weird example is in the 1960 presidential election. Republicans distributed what they thought was a damning photo of Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy. The photo was him standing next to a businessman,

and the businessman co-owned an Indiana pinball company. Wow. Like, that's it. That was the scandal. This is very Music Man. It is, yeah. Like Footloose Town. Yeah, yeah. They have a pool table and it's a big scandal. Yeah, and like most cities did this.

I know it probably sounds like we're picking on New York, but most of the United States already had an anti-gambling law when the good pinball came along and then applied it in some way. And two events changed that, which is our last takeaway number three. One heroic pinball manufacturer made pinball legal in New York City by playing pinball awesomely in front of the city council. awesomely in front of the city council. He like did it. He like demonstrated that pinball is a skill game by being awesome at it at a city council hearing. And that helped make pinball legal in New York city. Oh man, that is, that must be so cool. Like imagine like you're a,

imagine if you're a skateboarder and there's, you know, this like anti, cause that's, that's a modern, or I guess somewhat relevant, right. In the past few decades, like skateboard, like the local city council's coming down on skateboarders being like, you can't skateboard here, but imagine doing a skateboarding trick. So cool that the city council is just like, all right, skateboarding is allowed everywhere now. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I tried to modernize like an old thing with another thing that's equally out of touch with today's youth. Imagine if someone vaped so good that they skibbity the city, city council.

Yeah. And the city council hawk to us about it, you know, and then, yeah, they rizzed, they rizzed the city council so good that they made skivvity legal everywhere. A nation of 12 year olds are nodding now. Like, yes, I get it. Okay. Thanks. If you're 12 and you're listening to this, I respect you. Oh yeah. Younger kids do. Yeah. They're the best. We respect you and your lingo. The joke is that we're dumb. Yeah, that we're stupid. Exactly. And this, the main event of a guy being awesome at it, it's a guy named Roger Sharp, pinball designer and player. And he also has two sons who are currently like globally ranked at

playing pinball, but they were sort of the key events in a trend that started with the flippers. Once flippers were common on pinball machines, it still basically took three decades, but more and more Americans said, hey, I think this is starting to be a skill game. And especially as also the idea of arcades starts really getting going later in the 1900s. And so there's like just games for amusement where you're not gambling. Like once there's not active betting and once they're flippers, people more and more started to say, hey, maybe this is like, okay. Also as then like closer to our times, video games, especially

oriented around guns come along. So then people worry about that. And pinball is cute. Right. So that's kind of the trajectory to make it make it a not illicit thing. I mean, there's got to be a pinball machine, though, where the plunger is like a gun and the ball is supposed to be the bullet. You know what I'm saying? There are. We talked about all those war ones.

Like, there's definitely still either pop culture or just themes where it's violent for sure. Yeah. But, you know. I do love, though, how we go from like, we need to turn these evil pinball machines into actual bullets and guns and bombs. And then like, oh, no, our kids are playing with fake bullets and guns and bombs on their video games. Why aren't they playing more pinball? Those trends turn out a dime. It's great. It's always the thing that's old, right? Like you and I, we don't understand skibbity toilet,

but that's just because we're old and out of touch. And this happens cyclically with every generation, right? Where it's like when I was a kid, pinball machines were sort of the edgy thing, but as an adult, now they're normal and fine. And the cycle... As the town elder, I will ban skibbity toilet. I will stop this. You're anti-skibbity. Turning skibbity shares into plow toilets. I don't know. Anyway... Pinball. Yeah. So this, like the peak of this change with pinball is this guy playing it awesomely. And the other part of it right before that is in 1974, the California state Supreme court made a big decision. Oh boy. Cause Los Angeles had a very similar ban on pinball.

And the basis of the LA ban was that pinball is a chance game. So it's gambling. But the state Supreme Court overturned that and said it's a skill game rather than a chance game. And with some other just little things around, you can't gamble, gamble on it. And so that was really not how pinball was going at the time. And so pinball was legal in Los Angeles and really statewide. And so then a lot of other cities started to review their laws, including New York City. And in 1976, the New York City Council sought testimony about pinball and the amusement games industry, like an industry group recruited amazing pinball player, Roger Sharp, to do a demo for the New York City Council and show that it is a skill

game by being awesome at it. That's fantastic. What a legacy. I just, that is like my, that's my dream, right? Like if there's ever a podcasting ban, if I could podcast so good that it changes people's minds against banning podcasting, I would be so proud. I actually can't think of a good argument for why podcasting is a skills-based kind of game. I think we are gambling here. Right. It's all, the internet's all tubes. Who knows what's going on? Right. I don't know what's in there. It's just, we're all just little balls hitting tubes.

And oddly, the big comparison to this moment and how it played is a previous sports thing. There's a famous baseball game in the 1932 World Series where Babe Ruth hit a home run. And it's like sort of mythical, he might've just been pointing randomly, but he seemed to point to the place where he was going to hit the home run before he hit the home run. And people say that he called his shots. Like he said, I'm so good, I'm going to hit a home run on the next pitch and then did. And apparently at Sharp's demo, they brought a game he's amazing at, and then a second backup table in case that didn't work. One of the city councilmen thought he'd throw off Sharp and made him use the backup table that he's not as good at.

And then according to the legend, he was only playing okay on this backup table. He could tell the council was not impressed. And then he said, like, with my next ball, I'm going to hit it to this really hard part at the top of the table. And then, bam, hit it to the top part of the table and blew everybody's minds, is the legend. Wow. Babe Ruth moment. Yeah, like a Babe Ruth moment of pinball for the New York City Council. You know, I wonder, so weed legalization, I personally don't partake in weed, but I am very much for it being legalized. If one of you guys could blow a weed circle,

sorry, like a smoke ring so good, like Gandalf does in Lord of the Rings where he like makes his smoke a little boat that he, with his wizard magic. If someone could like, if someone could be so good at smoking weed that you could do a cool trick and you're like, with my next puff, I'm going to make it the shape of a boat. They would have to legalize it. They'd have to do it. Weed is a good parallel here because there's one other part that the legend usually skips, which is that apparently not only was New York City Council getting this demo, they had also received some figures and they were told that if the city charged a $50 license on each pinball machine, they'd bring in $1.5 million in 1970s money every year.

And they're like, no, oh, no, hang on. This legend is a real story. And then also it seems like kind of like weed legalization. Like the city said, oh, right, money and legalized pinball. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like it has to also like you need it needs to reach a point where there is enough social acceptance of it that you can do that. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like, it has to also, like, you need, it needs to reach a point where there is enough social acceptance of it that you can do that. Right. Um, so that it won't be really

unpopular, but like once you get to the point where it's like, Hey, maybe this is actually just good old fashioned fun with a ball. Uh, then yeah, you know, there's there is definitely money to be to be had from taxation. And a lot of it has to do with how the machines are set up and the changes. Yeah. It's thanks to the flippers that we have the pinball of today. Yeah, truly flippers. Yeah. But man, when that ball gets stuck under a flipper and it's just the worst thing that should be illegal. Katie, put that sledgehammer down. Katie, stop. Stop. I'm just, I'm just emulating the, the America's finest in YPD.

Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, traditionally pinball machines are a gambling machine built in Chicago. Takeaway number two, New York City exploited the Pearl Harbor attack to destroy its pinball machines and let police give themselves the coins. Takeaway number three, one heroic pinball manufacturer made pinball machines legal by playing pinball awesomely in front of the New York City Council. And then so many numbers about the timeline of pinball existing, how and when pinball became more of a game of skill, why the Addams Family is such a big pinball machine, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org.

Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is weird and amazing designs of pinball machines. Just cool pinball machines. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 17 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It is special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things. Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include newspaper archives, in particular from the New York Times and the Chicago Reader,

pinball fan sites, in particular Kineticist.com, and digital writing from Popular Mechanics, Chicago Magazine, The Verge, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigook people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIFT Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life.

There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 75. That's about the topic of maize, aka corn. Fun fact, the US Capitol building has secret columns holding up the whole thing with a maize design theme. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand.

Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. maximum fun a worker-owned network of artists own shows supported directly by you