Peppy

Peppy — also known as "Peppy the Puppet" or "Peppy the Clown" in period advertising — is not a pinball machine. It is a coin-operated marionette machine manufactured by Williams in September 1956, included in pinball reference listings only for clarification purposes.

For ten cents a play, the player operates buttons on the front of the cabinet to animate the marionette's hands and feet. Inside the cabinet, a self-winding tape cartridge player provides music, cycling through nine songs; a single play session lasts about ninety seconds. The recorded music was produced by Universal Recording Corporation, with the tape cartridges themselves manufactured by Cousino, Inc. Williams reportedly planned a special Christmas tape cartridge with holiday songs.

As a novelty amusement rather than a pinball game, Peppy offers a curious footnote in coin-op history — a reminder that manufacturers like Williams experimented with non-pinball entertainment devices alongside their core pinball lines during the 1950s.