Lucky Stars

Lucky Stars, manufactured by the Genco Manufacturing Company of Chicago in December 1935, is a single-player game from the first wave of electro-mechanical pinball. Genco, which operated from 1931 to 1958, was one of Chicago's established coin-op makers, and in the mid-1930s the industry was just beginning to add electrical features, such as powered scoring and payout mechanisms, to what had been purely mechanical pin games.

Lucky Stars is classified as an electro-mechanical machine, placing it among the early games to incorporate electricity, though the specific features it offered are not recorded in the available documentation. Like all games of its era, it predates both the bumper and the flipper, so play would have centered on launching balls and letting them find their way into scoring positions with the help of a well-timed nudge.

Very little is known about the machine's design, art, or theme beyond its manufacturer and production date. That obscurity makes Lucky Stars more a historical curiosity than a landmark, but it remains a small piece of the story of how electricity transformed pinball in the mid-1930s.