Pop-A-Card

The Pop-A-Card, designed by Ed Krynski with art by Gordon Morison, was manufactured by D. Gottlieb & Company in March 1972. It is an add-a-ball electro-mechanical game with a playing-card theme, and it holds a small footnote in Gottlieb history as the last game the company made using 2-inch flippers at the bottom of the playfield (Gottlieb later used only longer flippers there, reserving short flippers for upper playfields).

Gameplay features include two flippers, two pop bumpers, two slingshots, four star rollovers, two standup targets, and banks of four and five drop targets. Dropping all targets in the bank of four lights the adjacent standup target for WOW for the rest of the ball, while clearing the bank of five lights the side rollover lanes and outlanes for WOW; any completed bank resets at the start of the next ball. Maximum displayed score is 99,990 points.

The Pop-A-Card's design and art are typical of early-1970s Gottlieb wedge-head machines, with a bold playing-card motif and chime-and-knocker sound. It had a confirmed production run of 825 units, and its replay counterpart is Gottlieb's 1971 Drop-A-Card. As a modest, late example of Gottlieb's short-flipper era, it remains an interesting piece for collectors tracing the company's design evolution.