Bingo Novelty Manufacturing Company

Bingo Novelty Manufacturing Company holds a footnote in pinball history as one of the very first manufacturers to produce pin games commercially. Operating from Chicago, the company produced eleven Pure Mechanical games between 1931 and 1933 — the industry’s absolute infancy, when the entire medium amounted to little more than a craze for inexpensive countertop bagatelle boards.

The company’s namesake game, Bingo (1931), was among the earliest commercially manufactured pin games, appearing during the same explosive months that saw Gottlieb’s legendary Baffle Ball ignite a nationwide mania. Subsequent titles like Banner (1932) and Big Broadcast (1933) continued in the same vein — simple, gravity-fed games designed for countertop placement in drugstores, cigar shops, and candy stores. These were not the sophisticated playfield designs that pinball would become; they were the raw material from which an industry was being improvised in real time.

Bingo Novelty’s production ended by 1933, before the adoption of electric scoring, solenoid-powered bumpers, or any of the other innovations that would transform pinball from a passing fad into a permanent fixture of American amusement. The company belongs entirely to pinball’s origin story — a brief, chaotic moment when anyone in Chicago with access to a woodshop and a supply of steel balls could become a pin game manufacturer, and dozens did.