Magic

The Magic pinball machine, manufactured by Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO) of Chicago in December 1948, comes from the earliest years of the flipper era, just a year or so after Gottlieb introduced player-controlled flippers to pinball in 1947. Its magic-themed name may nod to the era's popular song 'It's Magic,' a 1948 Doris Day hit from the film 'Romance on the High Seas' that was nominated for an Academy Award.

The game offers 5 balls for 5 cents, with two flippers, three compression spring bumpers, four passive bumpers, and three kick-out holes rounding out the playfield. This combination of early flipper technology with ESCO's bumper and kick-out hole design gave players a lively, fast-paced ball action typical of the format's rapid evolution in the late 1940s.

Little is documented about the machine's designer or its specific artwork beyond its magic theme, which was a popular motif of the period. As an early ESCO flipper game, Magic offers an interesting snapshot of how manufacturers across the industry were adapting to the new flipper mechanism in the months following its introduction.