Carnival

The Marvel Manufacturing Company's Carnival, released in February 1947, is an obscure single-player electro-mechanical (EM) pinball machine from a short-lived Chicago manufacturer. Marvel operated only from 1944 to 1948, producing games during the post-war revival of the coin-op industry, and surviving documentation on its machines is scarce.

Very little is recorded about Carnival itself: beyond its manufacturer, date, and electro-mechanical construction, details of its playfield layout, artwork, and rules have not been preserved in the available records. As a game built months before flippers were introduced to pinball, it would have belonged to the flipperless tradition that defined the mid-1940s.

That very obscurity is part of its appeal. Machines from small post-war makers like Marvel offer historians and collectors a window into a crowded, fast-moving moment in pinball history, when dozens of Chicago companies competed for the coin-op trade.