Green Pastures

Green Pastures, manufactured by D. Gottlieb & Company in January 1954, is a single-player electro-mechanical game with an unusual sporting subject: croquet. Designed by Wayne Neyens with artwork by Roy Parker — one of the great creative pairings of Gottlieb's golden age — it was produced in a confirmed run of 750 units.

The layout features two flippers, three pop bumpers, and two kick-out holes, but the clever twist is in the rules: the bumpers on the playfield must be hit in a set order, mirroring the sequence of passing through wickets in a real croquet game. It's a neat example of 1950s Gottlieb design translating a game's actual rules into pinball scoring logic rather than simply borrowing a theme's imagery.

The title itself had cultural currency at the time: "The Green Pastures" was a 1930 Broadway play, a 1936 film, and enjoyed a Broadway revival in 1951, just a few years before this machine appeared. With Parker's artwork and Neyens' sequence-based rules, Green Pastures is a charming and somewhat offbeat entry in Gottlieb's 1950s catalog.