Glickman

Glickman was a Philadelphia firm that built its entire pinball business around one idea: converting other manufacturers’ games into something new. The company’s earliest known titles, Poko-Lite (1937) and Treasure (1938), were reworked Bally machines — new backglasses, fresh paint, reconfigured playfields sold under a different name.

When major manufacturers halted pinball production during World War II, Glickman filled the vacuum. Between 1942 and 1944 the company produced twenty titles — including Red Heads of 1942 (1942), Fan Dancer (1942), Combat (1942), Sailorettes (1942), and Anti-Aircraft (1944) — all built by fitting older machines from Bally, Genco, Chicago Coin, and Gottlieb with new backglasses, Bumpers, and repainted cabinets. Glickman eventually sold the conversion kits alone, letting operators refresh their own floors without buying a complete machine.

It was a niche business, but one perfectly suited to wartime scarcity — and Glickman’s prolific wartime output makes it one of the best-documented examples of how the amusement industry adapted when new parts and materials were impossible to get.