Bally Hoo

Bally Hoo is a four-player electro-mechanical pinball machine released by Bally in October 1969, with a confirmed production run of 2,115 units. Designed by Ted Zale with artwork by Christian Marche, the game carries a lively circus-carnival-music theme in keeping with its playful name.

The playfield offers plenty of variety: two flippers, three pop bumpers, a mushroom bumper, two slingshots, five rollover buttons, two kick-out holes, a right-side ball kicker lane, and a left outlane kickback. Most notably, Bally Hoo was the first Bally game to use an up-post ball saver between the flippers - a simpler alternative to the zipper flippers found on most of the Bally games that immediately preceded it. It was also the first Bally game to use 3-inch flippers rather than 2-inch, advertised on the flyer as new "jumbo flippers."

The manufacturer produced the backglasses in both crystal glass and Plexiglas, and a special version was made for the German market. Some operators later modified examples of the game for 5-digit scoring, and surviving modified machines are known in the USA, the Netherlands, and the UK. For collectors, Bally Hoo is an appealing snapshot of Bally's late-1960s design evolution under Ted Zale.