Sky-Rocket

The Sky-Rocket pinball machine, produced by Chicago's Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO), commemorates the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition - the World's Fair held on San Francisco's man-made Treasure Island to celebrate completion of the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay bridges. The backglass depicts the Bay Bridge alongside the fairgrounds, and while no confirmed manufacture date survives, the tribute theme places the game's production between 1939 and 1941, before Treasure Island became a Naval Station ahead of America's entry into World War II.

As an electro-mechanical (EM), single-player machine, Sky-Rocket offered five balls for five cents - an accessible price point for players of the era - and nine spring bumpers to bounce the ball around the playfield.

Little else is documented about Sky-Rocket's specific designer or artist, but its celebratory fireworks-and-World's-Fair theme, grounded in a real, dateable historical event, makes it a distinctive artifact of pre-war American pinball.