Cabana

Cabana, produced by United Manufacturing Company of Chicago in March 1953, is not a conventional pinball machine but a bingo machine - a flipperless game type that flourished in the early 1950s. On a bingo, the player launches balls into a playfield of trap holes, hoping to land them in patterns on a bingo-style card displayed on the backglass, with lines and combinations determining the payoff in replays.

Cabana's playfield features 25 trap holes feeding a single main card, supplemented by 2 Super Cards that offered additional winning opportunities. United was one of the major producers of bingo machines during this period, competing head-to-head with Bally in a market segment that was enormously lucrative for operators.

Little is documented about Cabana's artwork or any tropical theming its name suggests. As one of the many bingos United turned out in the early 1950s, it stands as a representative artifact of a fascinating and often overlooked branch of coin-op history.