Whiffle Game

The Whiffle Game is a hand-built, non-commercial home model created in December 1930 by 35-year-old carpenter Arthur L. Paulin for his young daughter, Lois, after he came across an old bagatelle game while cleaning out his barn (the Encyclopedia of Pinball suggests it may have been a British-style Corinthian bagatelle, since the Whiffle playfield layout was copied from that lineage). Lois and her friends enjoyed the game so much that Paulin brought it to a local drugstore run by druggist Myrl A. Park.

There, salesman Earl W. Froom took interest, and — after Park suggested adding a coin mechanism — the two, along with bookkeeper William B. Howell, formed a partnership in January 1931 that became the Yohio Manufacturing Company, set on turning Paulin's homemade toy into a commercial coin-operated game. That effort led directly to Yohio's first commercial release, 1931's 'Old Jenny (Whiffle)'.

As a Pure Mechanical (PM), single-player home model, the original Whiffle Game predates flippers (introduced in 1947) and any electromechanical components. Though modest in origin, this handmade prototype is a foundational artifact in pinball history — the direct ancestor of the Whiffle lineage that helped spark the broader coin-operated pin-game industry of the early 1930s.