Texas Mustang

Texas Mustang, designed by Harry Mabs with artwork by Roy Parker, was manufactured by Gottlieb in October 1941. Like virtually all pinball machines of its time, it is flipperless — there is no player-controlled flipper, so the fifteen scoring bumpers on the playfield largely determine how points accumulate as the ball moves through gravity and bumper contact alone.

Its Western theme, evoking cowboys and the American frontier, was a popular subject for pre-war pinball art, and Roy Parker's illustrations lean into that imagery. Gottlieb was already an established manufacturer by 1941, having been in the pinball business for a decade; the well-known rivalry with Williams didn't take shape until a few years later, since Williams Manufacturing Company wasn't founded until the mid-1940s.

Details on Texas Mustang's production numbers and commercial run are not well documented, but as a flipperless, bumper-scored Western-themed title from Gottlieb's early catalog, it offers a snapshot of pinball design in the years just before the flipper reshaped the game.