Nip-It

Nip-It, designed by Ted Zale with artwork by Dick White, was manufactured by Bally in July 1973 as a four-player electro-mechanical machine with a fishing/alligator/swamp theme. With 4,580 confirmed units produced, it was a solidly successful release for Bally, and it holds a specific place in pinball history as the last EM game to feature zipper flippers — Bally would only use the mechanism once more, in the 1981 solid-state game Medusa.

Gameplay centers on the zipper flippers alongside four pop bumpers, a mushroom bumper, two slingshots, four standup targets, two kick-out holes, and two-ball multiball. The signature feature is the 'Balligator,' a ball-grabbing device in the upper-right playfield activated by a dedicated 'Gator' button next to the right flipper, pulling the ball into a high-scoring lane.

Early production units used a molded plastic alligator that would jump out from the swamp reeds to grab the ball, but the plastic kept breaking on location, so Bally switched early in the run to a simple metal bar, redesigning the reed-lane plastic to depict the alligator instead. Only a minority of surviving games have the original molded-alligator version, making those examples especially prized by collectors today.