Nickel Games

While members of the American National Livestock Association were parching in El Paso last week another convention in Chicago was setting records for liquor consumption, big buying and fun. This was fitting, for the National Association of Coin Operated Machine Manufacturers is most precisely in the fun business. In the spacious, hearty Hotel Sherman, no manufacturers exhibited about 1,000 coin machines on an acre of ball room, for which they paid $1.50 a sq. ft., and in private show rooms most of which were equipped with bars. To their convivial customers they sold $5,000,000 worth of nickel games before the fun was over.

Slot machines originated in penny arcades and ended up in gangland. Chicago's boisterous Mills Brothers made a $10,000,000 business of their Mills Novelty Co. partly by making slot machines which became the instruments of a $150,000,000 racket (TIME, May 13. 1935). Since U. S. Courts began to take the fun out of this form of gambling, U. S. manufacturers have been busy taking the gambling out of this form of fun. In the last three years they have made 5-c- bagatelle a national craze, filled the land with glass enclosed, pin-studded playing fields for plunger-driven, hovering little balls. At last week's convention the term "slot machine" was banned.* Taking their cue from the degrees of interest shown by the public in their exhibits, the coin machine manufacturers last week foresaw the passing of Bagatelle, increasing popularity for new bowling (Skee-ball), ray shooting and baseball games, games that actually play. Most impressive of these was Inventor Frank Train's robot checker player, a 7-ft., 650-lb. aluminum "Magic Brain'' which has been touring the country as a publicity stunt for Radio Corporation of America, and which will be sold commercially at $10,000 each around April 15. Second best advertised was a baseball game called "1937 World Series" made by Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corp.

Named not for a coin machine but for its president, short, swart David C. Rockola, this company was incorporated in 1932 with a capital of $50,000. now has a surplus of $1,500,000, makes 200 coin-operated phonographs, 400 Skee-ball alleys a day at its West Side Chicago plant, is second only to Mills Novelty Co. in annual business. Into the development of "1937 World Series," Rockola put $250,000, paid $5,000 more last week for the personal appearance and blessing of Pitcher Dizzy Dean. Popular with "World Series" players, gamboling Dizzy Dean drew catcalls at the Association's annual banquet when he devoted two out of three minutes of his speech to plugging Rock-Ola.

Most cause for catcalls had old, famed Rudolph Wurlitzer Co., one of the world's largest music houses, best known exhibitor at the show. Two years ago, to recoup Depression losses on organs, pianos, violins, Wurlitzer broke into the coin machine market with nickel operated phonographs, Skee-ball games. Last year it is supposed to have grossed about $8,000,000 on these items alone. Last summer Rock-Ola, which had acquired patents on the coin phonograph from the old Deca-Disc Co., sued Wurlitzer for patent infringement. If this case goes against it, Wurlitzer may lose $1,000,000 in damages.

Coin phonographs retail at $235, $340, and up, are very popular in the Deep South, are sold to lunch parlors, roadside diners and social clubs, often may be paid for in installments out of the proceeds. A third big phonograph maker is J. P. Seeburg Corp. of Chicago, whose tall, polished President Noel Marshall Seeburg was chairman of the coin men's convention last week for the third time.

Though Seeburg's main business is in phonographs, its main interest at present is in the still fertile realm of coin machines purveying other commodities than music. Recently Seeburg engineers have perfected ice cream and Coca-Cola vendors. Mr. Seeburg got interested in merchandise vending machines in England, where cigaret machines first came into general use, where as early as 1932, at the London Zoo, visitors ta the seals could operate for sixpence a herring hurling machine.

*Any coin game can be equipped with a device for disgorging coins, can be regulated by the house as to the percentage paid to players. Some state laws make a distinction between games of "skill" which reward high scores and the old out-and-out slot machine of the lemon & cherry variety. Still manufactured by five companies, including Mills, these can be legally operated only in Florida, Nevada, Maine and South Dakota.

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