Smack The Japs

Smack The Japs was a wartime-themed conversion kit released by Victory Games (active 1942-1947), designed to convert Genco's 1941 'Ten-Spot' into a new game. Produced during a period of intense American patriotism in World War II, this flipperless electro-mechanical conversion is a fascinating relic of how the war reshaped consumer entertainment, including coin-operated amusements. The earliest known advertisement for this conversion kit appears in Billboard on April 10, 1943, with the last found ad dated February 10, 1945.

As a flipperless game, gameplay centers on Smack The Japs' 14 scoring bumpers, with players relying on skillful plunging and playfield mechanics rather than flipper control, consistent with pre-flipper-era EM design. As a conversion kit rather than a full cabinet, it repurposed the existing 'Ten-Spot' hardware with new playfield elements and theming.

Little additional documentation survives about Smack The Japs beyond its advertising history and its status as a Ten-Spot conversion. Its title and theme are stark artifacts of wartime-era attitudes, and it remains a notable, if uncomfortable, historical example of how coin-op amusements of the period reflected contemporary wartime propaganda.