Sweet Hearts

Sweet Hearts, released by D. Gottlieb & Company in September 1963, is a single-player electro-mechanical pinball machine built around a playing-card theme, with art by Roy Parker and design by Wayne Neyens, one of Gottlieb's most prolific designers of the era. Gameplay features two flippers, five pop bumpers, two slingshots, two standup targets, and a gobble hole, with a maximum displayed score of 1,999 points and a replay wheel that tops out at 15.

Sweet Hearts holds a specific place in pinball's technical history: it was the last Gottlieb EM game to include a gobble hole, a feature that -- across the entire industry -- would appear only once more, on Williams' 1964 'San Francisco,' before disappearing from pinball design for good. 4,450 units were produced.

While playing-card themes and gobble holes were both long-established elements of Gottlieb's design vocabulary by 1963 rather than new inventions, Sweet Hearts is notable as marking the end of an era for one particular mechanical feature. Beyond its production details, little else is documented about the machine's design or reception.