For years we have collected hand-held or table top plunger, flipper, and flip or free-roll marble games. Some people just call them pinball games. We collect the games with marbles and not the ones which use steel balls. A later game that we bought was so big that it had legs to the floor! We lost that one in a flood after Hurricane Irma. Our collection includes games by Marx (1919 – 1980), Wolverine (1903 – 1986 changed to “Today’s Kids”), Schaper (1949 – 1986, acquired by Tyco Toys), and Lindstrom (1913 – early 1940s).
We find it sad that these bagatelle games, once so prevalent in both the home and in the pub, have shifted over to an electronic platform. Video games and game apps are predominant now. Still, when Rick Sherin[1] looks at electronic formats, he reports that pinball “in all its forms remains popular as I witness every day….” Pinball started with lawn bowling, then moved to the table top where players used miniature cues to strike balls into holes, and then on to a game with a plunger, flipper or rudder used to strike clay marbles.
While we do feel melancholy to see it happen, it seems natural that the game would migrate still further into electronics. While it may be impossible for modern gamers to understand, marble bagatelle was once considered exciting, enjoyable, and competitive.
The Oldest Pinball Game We Have Ever Seen
In 2011 we visited and toured Kokomo Opalescent Glass (KOG) in Kokomo, Indiana. KOG opened in 1888 and it is still going strong. While in Kokomo we visited North-Wind Antiques and Company and had a wonderful time. At the shop we found the oldest pinball game that we had ever seen. The table top game dates from the late 1800s. It is a wooden and cut nail plunger game which we thought at the time was a Bagatelle game.
We bought it but we did not learn until we got home and completed our research exactly what we had. The game is an open wooden box 6⅜” X 10½” X ⅞” deep. The liner is a dark colored paper. The box has a chute and a spring action plunger with an opening in the metal slide so the player could see how far back the plunger was drawn and thus estimate the amount of force that would be exerted on the marble when the plunger was released.
There is a steel wire at the top of the box curved to guide the marble around the top and onto the field of play. Inside the box are a number of wire nails or pins which serve as bumpers for the marbles. Printed on the paper liner are numbers: 50; 100; 40; 15; and, at the bottom the numbers 40 and 20 are still legible. Of course, these numbers are used to score each players’ shot.
In a Smoky Bar
We are confident, based on our study of the literature and the wear patterns on the antique game, that there was once a bell in the center of the box directly above the number 100. The game is branded ‘Redgrave’s Patent Games’. Of course we have no way to validate it, but we believe that this old game saw hours of play in some smoky bar. And while it is an antique, it certainly is not the first bagatelle table top game.
While it sounds apocryphal, there really is a Chateau de Bagatelle in Paris. King Louis XVI, the last King of France (1774 – 92), did introduce bagatelle to his queen Marie Antoinette at the Chateau. The game was table top but with little cues and balls.
The Roots of Bagatelle Games
And Redgrave’s improved game was not even the first to use a coiled spring and plunger. Rick Sherin says that honor goes to Japanese billiards. This game is not oriental. It was made in Europe; and France makes quality Japanese billiard games. Montague Redgrave was born in Surrey England in 1844.
We find it interesting that even King Louis XVI’s bagatelle is acknowledged to have British roots. In 1869 Redgrave settled in America and soon he manufactured bagatelle tables out of his factory in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1871 Redgrave was granted US Patent #115,357 for his “Improvements in Bagatelle”, which replaced the cue at the player’s end of the table with a coiled spring and a plunger.
The player shot balls up the inclined field of play using a plunger, a device that remains in pinball to this day. This innovation made the game friendlier to players. The game also shrank in size and began to fit on top of a bar or counter. The balls were exchanged for clay marbles and the wickets were now small “pins” (wire nails). Redgrave’s innovations in game design are acknowledged as the birth of pinball in its modern form.
Redgrave produced versions of his game from ca. 1871 until at least 1902. There are nine different styles. We cannot date ours to a particular year, but because it does have the open ball shooter cover we know that it dates to the 1890s.
One of the First Commercially Produced “Pinball” Machines
So, our little Kokomo bagatelle is an example of one of the first commercially produced “pinball” machines in America, and the first to use marbles rather than Bagatelle balls! Our game is not in excellent condition. As noted, the bell is missing. We replaced one wire nail. The metal lid of the plunger has been repaired at some time in the ancient past. But it is remarkable for all that. After over a century the plunger or “ball shooter” as it was called at the time is still strong. Probably made of coiled steel, one could still play on this old board!
On the back of the board which is the field of play there is something written in pencil in an old style script. It is either “TA” or “JA” over the number “10”. Is this a portion of a name? We have never found a bagatelle from the World War I and 1920s eras. However, in 2013 we did find another antique.
We were shopping and exploring in Buckhannon, West Virginia when we were very happy and surprised to find an antique marble Gold Star Bagatelle game manufactured by the Lindstrom Tool and Toy Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1934. It is pictured in Natikin, B.C., and S. Kirk. All About Pinball. NY: Gosset & Dunlap, 1977, page 20 and we found an article and picture online at the Elliott Avedon Virtual Museum of Games, the University of Waterloo, Ontario Canada.[1]
Other Bagatelle Games from the 50’s and 60’s
This one is a giant! The only other game that we have which is nearly as large is Wolverine’s Operation Moon Probe, made in the late 1950s – early 1960s. And even Moon Probe is about an inch smaller overall.
Arched at the top, the old Gold Star measures 24⅛” long X 14⅛” wide while the tin guard around the board is 1¼” high. Like the Redgrave and unlike Moon Probe and more recent marble bagatelle, it is not covered in plastic. Made of tin, gold printed paper, and wire pull nails, the old Goldstar’s metal strips serve as marble deflectors on the board’s surface. Wire strips and nails also form traps with numbers for the marbles. Play starts from a metal plunger with a wooden handle.
Finding Instructions for Playing the Game
Instructions for play and scoring are taped to the back of the game. Unfortunately, the paper is very brittle and some has been lost. However, the Canadian museum site provides detailed instructions for play. While larger, this old bagatelle is remarkably similar to the one from the turn of the century which we bought in Kokomo. We have no idea what this super pinball cost in 1932 – 1934 or it’s manufacturing date, but it had to be expensive in rural West Virginia during the Depression.
We do know that $1 in 1934 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $20.37 today.[2] This pinball was the top of the line for Lindstrom. While we have no idea why they would produce and sell it in the depth of the Depression, the Company made a long line of “sketter bugs,” tin push cars and trucks, and tin animated toys. Maybe this is where the profit was.
Shoot-a-Loop Marble Game
We have an unusual 1940s Shoot-a-Loop marble game by Wolverine which we bought in 2013 in Webster, Florida. This one has a plunger with a little knob used to pull back the sheet tin flipper. The red base is oval and 8⅛” long X 2¼” wide. The loop is 9” tall. Let go of the plunger and it strikes a marble (we have found that a ¾” works best) which travels over a loop and into a tiny cup. The value of each cup runs between 0 to 250. The intent, of course, is to make the highest score. Our game is red, green, and yellow, and, while the green paint has run some, we believe the paint job to be original.
Some of our pinball games were more popular than others when new. For some odd reason, a very simple 1930s Wolverine Marble Bingo game was extremely popular! Today it is a rare find. This tin lithographed marble game measures 17.5″ long and only 3½” wide at the flipper. It tapers wider toward the back board. The 6” high back board folds down when the game is not in play.
The object is as straight forward as the old game itself. Each player in turn launches the marble off the tensile steel spring, bounces them off the backboard and into the scoring trays. Or perhaps the player just shoots easy and gets a marble directly into a scoring tray. Scuffed and just about worn out though it is, there is no telling how many children learned on our old game.
Ladder Type Rolling Ball Skill Game
In 2011 we bought another scarce game, but we believe its scarcity is because it was never very attractive to children. Either that or only a few were made. It has a plastic cover and a lithographed tin base. Richard N. Carver, Inventor, assignor to Louis Marx & Company, Inc., NY, filed the application on 31 December 1952.
The patent was granted on 16 March 1954, some 14½” months later. Carver called the game “Ladder Type Rolling Ball Skill Game Apparatus” and his patent is the shortest we have ever seen. It only takes up one paragraph and three schematics. The plunger can be moves f side to side and there are five marbles: yellow, blue, black (which counts double), red, and green. The game measures 17¼” long X 5¼” wide and the design is a garden trellis.
What attracted us to the game is the unusual design. About one quarter of the way from the top of the game the tin forms a wash board. Each rung of the wash board has a value ranging from 20 at the base to 100 at the top. The very top rung has no score.
While we cannot imagine the 1950s Marx Pop-a-Puppet was ever very popular, either, Bazooka (Marx 1958) must have been a blast! We have two of these and both work well. They are lithograph on tin with bright graphics of a soldier firing a bazooka, jeeps, and various sizes of machine guns. The game is 12½” long X 6½” wide. One plastic stand has been broken off one game, and replaced with a metal bolt! The cracks in some of our plastic covers look like the games sometimes got overheated and saw an entirely different use than the maker planned!
Our Newest Bagatelle Game
We bought our newest game in 2007, copyrighted 2001. The game is named ‘Play Ball!’, and we found the rules of play printed on the back of the metal playing field. Plastic legs raise the game slightly from front to back while in play. The shape of a baseball diamond, it was made in China for Schylling. Incidentally, we know that baseball pinball has been popular since at least the 1930s. Flea markets and antique shops provide opportunities for finding a number of styles.
So, there it is. We have pinball marble games of all sorts and sizes made from the 1890s to 2001. Each and every one has a history. Some, treasured and played almost endlessly. Daddy or big sister or brother had to fix some along the way. The players are grandparents themselves now. While we do get the blues sometimes that things have changed so dramatically, we do keep on looking and cleaning off dust in flea markets and shops: we just have no idea what we will find next!
][1] “ A Mere Bagatelle: From Marbles to Pinball and Beyond.” The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. https://www.museumofplay.org/exhibits/egamerevolution (9/7/2021). The title “A Mere Bagatelle, incidentally, “a mere bagatelle” is a phrase used, especially in Britain, to mean Something of little value or significance.
[2] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1934?amount=1 9/10/2021
[3]http://gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/ 10/6/2013, 10/29/2013, 9/10/21
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