Plus and Minus

The Plus and Minus pinball machine, manufactured by D. Gottlieb & Company in 1935, is a notable example of a Depression-era payout pinball machine. It came several years after Gottlieb's earliest hits like Baffle Ball (1931) and Contact (1933), and represents the company's continued experimentation with payout mechanics.

Gameplay on Plus and Minus features a single ball for 5 cents, with players navigating a compact playfield featuring 14 trap holes and one free-play hole. A distinctive addition is the mint vendor on the cabinet front, which dispenses a package of mints for each nickel played -- a solenoid-operated aluminum device invented by Edmund Fey (son of Charles Fey, inventor of the Liberty Bell slot machine) and more commonly used on slot machines. Fittingly, Gottlieb honored Charles Fey by featuring the words 'Liberty Bell' prominently on the lower apron and in the upper playfield artwork -- which can cause confusion with the separate, differently-designed Gottlieb machine actually titled 'Liberty Bell' from the same year.

The Plus and Minus machine itself appears to lack additional documented theme or artwork details beyond the Liberty Bell motif, which was not uncommon in early pinball designs. Its minimalist aesthetic and payout mechanism make it an interesting relic from the pioneering, coin-payout era of pinball history.