Hi-De-Ho

Hi-De-Ho was manufactured by the Pacific Amusement Manufacturing Company of Chicago (trade name PAMCO) in January 1937, during the company's brief 1932-1937 existence. It is an electro-mechanical, single-player game from pinball's pre-flipper era, when machines were played by launching balls onto the playfield and letting gravity, pins, and scoring holes decide the outcome.

Hi-De-Ho is a payout machine, part of a category of 1930s games that rewarded winning play with coins. Payout pinballs like this one occupy an interesting place in the game's early history, blurring the line between amusement and gambling equipment in the years before flippers transformed pinball into a game of skill.

Detailed information about Hi-De-Ho's playfield layout, artwork, and designer has not survived in the historical record, but as one of PAMCO's final products it stands as an artifact of pinball's formative Depression-era years.