Globe Trotter

Globe Trotter, manufactured by D. Gottlieb & Company in March 1938, is a single-player electro-mechanical (EM) game from the pre-flipper era of pinball. Built during the 1930s, when Gottlieb was already an established name thanks to earlier hits like Baffle Ball, it reflects a period of rapid experimentation as manufacturers began adding electrical features such as scoring circuits and kickers to what had been purely mechanical pin games.

As with most games of its time, play would have centered on launching balls onto the playfield and letting skillful plunging and nudging determine where they came to rest, since flippers would not appear in pinball until Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty in late 1947. Little documentation survives about Globe Trotter's specific layout, artwork, or rules.

Despite the scarcity of information, machines from this period are valuable windows into pinball's formative years, and Globe Trotter stands as an artifact of Gottlieb's output in the late 1930s, a decade before the company helped transform the game with the invention of the flipper.