- gameplay_feature
- Trap Holes ×52
- ipdb.corporate_entity_name
- Peter Betres
- ipdb_id
- 6997
- ipdb.image_urls
- ["https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-1.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-2.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-3.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-4.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-5.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-6.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-7.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-8.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-9.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-10.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-11.png","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-A2.jpg","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-A3.jpg","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-A4.jpg","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-A5.jpg","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-A6.jpg","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-A7.jpg","https://www.ipdb.org/images/6997/image-A8.jpg"]
- ipdb.manufacturer_trade_name
- Betco Products, Inc.
- ipdb.model_number
- 7000
- ipdb.notable_features
- 1 cent play. Trap holes (52). Inserting a penny dispenses a gumball to the player and also drops the steel balls on the playfield to the ball shooter for play. Holds 7,000 gumballs. Game advertised as about 22 inches long, 22 inches high, and 14 inches wide. An owner measured his game to be 24 5/8 inches long, 15 3/4 inches high, and 11 13/16 inches wide.
- ipdb.notes
- This counter game was displayed as a new product at the 1966 MOA Convention and Trade Show held October 28-30 in Chicago by a manufacturer identified as Betco Products, Inc. of Butler, Pennsylvania. According to an article in The Billboard, Nov-19-1966, page 78, an unnamed spokesman for the company explained that this game has several interchangeable playfields, all "keyed toward education subjects." One game board was called "50 States". Other boards showed presidents, birds, or circus figures.
Those playfield themes are suitable for young children, the likely customers of ball gum, while the only pictures we have seen of this game show a playing cards theme, and we presume 5 balls are played to score five cards as in a poker hand, with the playfield having the name "PLAYERS CHOICE", the chosen title of this listing.
The unnamed spokesman likely was Peter Betres (1921-1989) of Butler, Pennsylvania, as indicated on the lower playfield of the game. We don't know of any other game made by him or his company other than the smaller version of this gumball pinball, Model 4000, also introduced at the MOA show. That model, unsurprisingly, holds a maximum of 4,000 gumballs.
In 1975, Betres, by then a hotel owner, who reportedly had an arrest record dating to 1942, mostly on gambling charges, and who reportedly had served brief periods in prison, was one of several men arrested and indicted for conspiracy and arson for blowing up the nearly three blocks long Sponge Rubber Products factory in Shelton, Connecticut on March 1 of that year, causing 14 million dollars� worth of damage to the four-story building, which at various times supported between 1,000 to 4,000 jobs making mattresses, pillows and flotation devices. The FBI had labeled it at the time as the largest arson case and peacetime bombing in the country. Betres was identified as the coordinator of the destruction. In March 1976, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The site is now the Shelton Riverwalk, a large expanse of lawn.
- player_count
- 1
- technology_generation
- pure-mechanical
- theme
- Playing Cards
- theme
- Poker
- year
- 1966