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In 1959
Bally released “Lotta-Fun” for their regular market and made two spins of the
machine, one called “Spot Em” which had most of the features and a simpler
one called “Fun Way” for the Ohio market and these bingos became know as
the “Ohio Dime Games” and as you will see, these guys got quite a few
“Street-Spins” before it was all over.
 
~ Jeffery
Lawton Photos ~
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In 1962
Bally released another bingo that is also grouped with the Dime Games –
“Shoot-A-Line”
~ A Bally Press Page – This bingo had no flyer ~
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~ Phil Hooper Photo ~
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~ The Street-Spins ~
   
   
 
 
~ different hues of blue ~
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~ now check out the score card on the left – very
interesting ~
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~ This was hardly a
few pins here-and-ether either – There were 100s of these things out there
–
  
~ Some more Dime Game Trivia ~
These pins
clearly show us a couple of the tricks being used to work around the laws
imposed on the “multi-coin” bingos.
“Single Coin” became one of the themes of
the day, replay meters were eliminated or fixed to a maximum yield., and
“For Amusement Only” started popping up as a very common slogan. On the
Beauty bingo you see the little white tag above the playing field – I’d bet
dollars-to-donuts that it’s an “amusement only” moniker and they took it
all the way on the sled machine and painted it right into the backglass art
work.
The “sled” theme
is interesting in it’s own right, where on earth did they target this
machine for – Alaska?
We know the
Beauty machine had to be one of the “Fun” games or a “Spot-Em” reworked for
some yet unrecorded reason. These games where the “Ohio Dime Games” that
came out in the years 1959 to 1962. Part of the Ohio ban on pinballs was
the elimination of the “Freeplay Games” – The games with scoring wheels
that racked up and recorded free replays as the players scored 3, 4, and
5-in-line number combinations.
Check out the
Beauty a little closer, one of the machines with no replay meter right? Not
exactly, on these machines they reverted back to having numbers painted in
the artwork that would light up under the right winning conditions. In this
case making up the fringe around the top of the circus tent. An example of
a typical score would be 400 for a 3-in-line. Did the operators / owners
pay out on these wins – I’d be willing to bet some did.
It would be some
time before Bally made any more 6-card games, next on the scene was the
“Red-Letter Games”, the “Futurity Games”, the “OK Games” and in 1971 as the “20-Hole Games” started
appearing we saw a new set of 6-cards with “Ticker-Tape”, “Stock-Market”,
and “Wall Street”
Pretty “fancy-pants” names for a set of bingos –
Makes you want to look at what the markets were doing in the early 70s and
how Bally was making out :)
If you look at
the playing fields for the 6-card bingos I show above, they all have the
deck used on the “Fun Games” so this helps isolate the timeframe some for
us. Look at the “Six Shot” machine for a glimmer. Today as I was looking back
through my files and notes, I noticed that a man from Ohio was the guy
selling the “Six Shot” that sue helps narrow the history of that pin.
I also saw two
notes referencing that one of the trick to legalize these illegal pins was
to remove the “knock-off” switches up underneath the cabinets that were
used to wipe out the accumulated replays when the player went to cash out
for the day. For all you bingo-novices get on your knees and check out the
bottom of your playing field cabinet.
Well some trivia and
thoughts for ya – To let you know, these are
some of the rarer bingo pics you ever find, so enjoy!
Well here’s a real find, even after 10 years it looks
like the “Shoota-A-Line” theme was still being used to mask some of the
6-card bingos – or – did the theme get so popular in some places they
changed this “Ticker-Tape” so it would fit in
~ A link to a “Fun
Way” Dime Game ~
"Fun Way"
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