Hit The Japs

Hit The Japs is a historically significant World War II-era pinball offering from Victory Games, designed by Harry Mabs with artwork by Roy Parker. Released in October 1942, it was not a new machine but a conversion kit: with new pinball production halted by wartime material restrictions, companies like Victory Games sold kits that transformed existing games — in this case Gottlieb's 1940 'Gold Star' — into fresh attractions. Its blunt, aggressive title reflects the nationalist sentiment and wartime propaganda culture of its era, and it stands today as an unvarnished artifact of that period.

The gameplay is classic pre-flipper fare: five balls for five cents, with twenty passive bumpers scoring points as the ball works its way down the playfield. As a flipperless game, player skill was expressed mainly through the plunger, with the bumper field doing the rest. Victory Games advertised the conversion in Billboard from late 1942 through early 1945, spanning most of America's involvement in the war.

As a wartime conversion carrying a patriotic theme, Hit The Japs illustrates how the pinball industry adapted to survive when it could not build new machines, and how the era's conflicts spilled directly onto the playfield. It serves as a tangible — and sobering — connection to the period when pinball was cementing its popularity as entertainment for the masses.