Gold Star

The Lindstrom Tool and Toy Company's Gold Star bagatelle, produced in 1934 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is a compact single-player amusement machine typical of the bagatelle games popular before pinball's flipper era. It is known in two catalogued versions — one with a brown-spotted triangular side and bottom apron, the other in green — both dated 1934 on the apron and carrying a maker's label. Both share a distinctive round metal top and a "Figure 8" playfield layout.

Gameplay details are largely undocumented, but as a bagatelle the game likely relied on a simple plunger or tilt mechanism to send a ball around the figure-eight course toward scoring pockets, without the electric or electromechanical features that would come to define later pinball. Its compact 24 x 14 inch cabinet reflects the modest, tabletop scale common to bagatelles of this period.

According to the Encyclopedia of Pinball Vol. 1, Gold Star was a licensed copy of R.H. Osbrink Mfg. Co.'s 1932 game 'Mike & Ike.' With relatively little else documented about its design or reception, Gold Star remains a modest but interesting artifact of the pre-flipper bagatelle era, of particular interest to collectors focused on Lindstrom's output or early Depression-era amusement games.