Post an Image of a Favourite Monster or Sci-Fi Collectible!

[Hepcat]

I have to limit myself to the various collectibles associated with the machine, like the brochure, the key fobs, the "3D" counter display, the embroidered patch and such.

Good stuff! Once you pick up the Bally pinball machine then you'll be able to join that very select company of completists.

[Mike Scott]

Once you pick up the Bally pinball machine then you'll be able to join that very select company of completists.

A completist I'll never be! There are other Creature collectibles that cost even more than the pinball machine. And that's not counting movie posters!

[Hepcat]

It's not about the cost. It's about the aesthetic appeal of the artifact and the psychic pleasure one derives from its possession!

[Mike Scott]

It's not about the cost.

It is if you don't have it. Besides, I don't even play pinball.

[Hepcat]

Me I'm a sordid pinball degenerate. I don't remember precisely where and when I encountered my first pinball machine but it must have been over sixty years ago before I discovered any kind of monster related toys/items and I've loved them ever since.

As a youngster in the early sixties I was usually required to attend supplemental Lithuanian language classes Saturdays between 4:00 and 5:30 PM during the school year. These classes were in the basement of St. Peter's elementary school just north of downtown London on Richmond Street by the cathedral. Dreadfully inconvenient to be sure.

There was a silver lining though. I'd be given $0.50 or so to go see a movie downtown prior to classes plus bus fare there and back. But St. Peter's was only about a mile and a half away from where we lived in Old South London. So I could walk there anyway. The bus fare I could then spend otherwise!

Sometimes I would indeed take in a movie. But often I'd elect to deploy my cash in other ways.

One temptation was a pinball machine at a diner that was right across from the Wishing Well Beverages bottling plant on Richmond Street which was on the southern edge of the downtown area about halfway to St. Peter's. I believe that it was this Gottlieb Sweet Hearts machine released in 1963:





http://www.youtube.com/v/nViQpsT9Kvg&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

http://www.youtube.com/v/K6TOvPaGPJY&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

But pinball machines were then banned in Canada as "illegal gambling devices" until January 1976. But when the new student recreation center at the University of Western Ontario was completed in 1971, it had five pinball machines! One of them was the Gottlieb 2001 released in 1971 which ended up becoming my own gateway machine to a lifetime of sordid pinball degeneracy.





http://www.youtube.com/v/fnn9Or6FhMo&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

Now I was never short of cash as a student and so I fed many a quarter into that machine. But it couldn't last. You see under the law it was an "illegal gaming device". Accordingly a City of London police officer appeared at the rec center after about three months, played the machines for two or three hours to satisfy himself that they were indeed illegal gaming devices which could very well corrupt students, policemen and whoever else for life, and the machines were gone for good the next day. Yes, seized they were by the fascist State!

While the draconian law was repealed a few years later, I've never forgiven the bastiches. Smash the State I say!

When pinball machines were legalized in my environs in 1975 or so, two specific machines acted to set me on the path to permanent pinball degeneracy. These were both to be found at the York Hotel in downtown London directly across the street from the CNR passenger train station. The first was the Wizard released by Bally in 1975:





A very well designed game, it sold over 10,000 units which smashed Bally's previous production record of 5254 for a pinball machine. I had the game completely mastered and built up a total of nineteen free games on a single quarter one afternoon before I succumbed to fatigue.

The other game was in the other room by the old fashioned greasy spoon lunch counter attached to the York Hotel. (How I miss those greasy spoons now!) It was the Royal Flush machine which Gottlieb released in 1976:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF5uccdQzQ#

I had my best run ever on this machine one afternoon. I'd hit everything and I had the machine lit up like a Xmas tree. I was already up to five or so free games but I wasn't even targeting the free game hole. My timing was so good that I was hitting the silver ball hard enough to propel/bounce it right off the glass and I just wanted to keep hitting. And then believe it or not but a hippie watching me with astonishment leaned on the machine so hard that he tilted it thus ending my best run of all time. I wanted to belt him!

So no, I've never needed drugs or alcohol. Pinball, model kits, comic mags, gum cards and other baby boomer kids' stuff, muscle cars, and rock music and stereo equipment were all it took to set me on the path to ruin. I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

[djmadden99]

That Hepcat sure plays a mean pinball!

[Hepcat]

Be afraid, be very afraid of my pinball wizardry!



My pinball skills are held in such high renown that I've gone on from being a feature in certain machines:



To being the actual subject matter!

[Mike Scott]

Those your machines? They must take up a whole room!

[Hepcat]

No, no, sadly I don't have any pinball machines yet. But I have the rest of my life to rectify this failing!

Someday as well I'd like to make a trek to Las Vegas to check out this Pinball Hall of Fame which would be paradise found to any pinball buff.

Here as well is a great site for locating pinball machines:

PinballMap

Individual specimens of these three classic woodrail machines could until recently be found right here in Toronto!

[Mike Scott]

No, no, sadly I don't have any pinball machines yet.

So, do you take your cat to the local pin ball hall? 

[creaturefan95]

[marsattacks666]

No, no, sadly I don't have any pinball machines yet. But I have the rest of my life to rectify this failing!

Someday as well I'd like to make a trek to Las Vegas to check out this Pinball Hall of Fame which would be paradise found to any pinball buff.

Here as well is a great site for locating pinball machines:

PinballMap

Individual specimens of these three classic woodrail machines could until recently be found right here in Toronto!

Hepcat.
Since I am a former resident of Vegas, I would have been a great tour guide for you and your visit Las Vegas. The Pinball of Fame is definitely a must-see, and witness the greatness.

[Hepcat]

Interesting that cover artist Carmine Infantino ripped off Howard Purcell's monster from this 1966 issue of Sea Devils:





Sadly #31 is one of the few Sea Devils comics I lack in my collection.

[creaturefan95]

Interesting that cover artist Carmine Infantino ripped off Howard Purcell's monster from this 1966 issue of Sea Devils:





Sadly #31 is one of the few Sea Devils comics I lack in my collection.

I don't think Purcell swiped Infantino's monster. Both are pink but one features antenna while the other has horns and tusks 

[Hepcat]

Purcell's monster came first; Infantino's was nine months later in 1967.