Circus

The United Manufacturing Company's 1952 "Circus" is a bingo machine - a distinctive branch of the electro-mechanical (EM) coin-op family that flourished in the early 1950s. Rather than flippers and bumpers, its playfield is dominated by 25 trap holes. Players shoot balls onto the playfield and try to land them in holes whose numbers light corresponding spots on bingo-style cards displayed on the backglass, aiming to complete winning lines.

Circus offers three cards to play across, along with Spottem, Double Score, and Triple Score features that expand the ways a player can build winnings. These layered scoring options were characteristic of the bingo genre, which rewarded players for risking additional coins to unlock better odds and multipliers. The game's circus/carnival theme dresses the experience in cheerful big-top imagery.

As a product of United Manufacturing Company of Chicago, which operated from 1942 to 1962, Circus represents the bingo side of the pinball family tree - games that were enormously popular in their day even as they existed apart from the flipper games that define pinball today. Little else is documented about its design or production, leaving room for continued research and discovery.