Bazaar

Bazaar, manufactured by Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO) of Chicago in July 1937, is a fascinating one-ball payout machine designed by Bruno Radtke. Rather than a conventional pin game, Bazaar is a gambling-style machine built around a genuinely unusual piece of engineering: a stainless steel playfield that is electrified during play. When the steel ball strikes a bumper spring it closes a circuit, advancing the "bumper score" that is projected in the center of the mirrored backglass.

Play costs 5 cents for a single ball. Pushing a coin into the coin slide lights anywhere from five to ten numbers on the "Make" side of the backglass (the words "or Over" count as one of the ten possibilities), while payout odds are lighted on the "Take" side. A kicker in the lower playfield sets up back-and-forth ball action with the spring directly above it, and a payout is awarded when the player's total bumper score corresponds to one of the lit "Make" numbers.

The machine wears an amusement park and carnival theme in keeping with its name. Radtke's mechanism was significant enough to patent: Patent No. 2,184,866 for a "Game Apparatus" was filed July 29, 1937 and granted in December 1939. In October 1937, ESCO followed up with a 2-ball model of the game. As a rare surviving example of the electrified-playfield payout genre, Bazaar is a valuable piece of gaming history for collectors.