Ball Shooter Gum Vender

The Ball Shooter Gum Vender, manufactured by Gatter Novelty Company of Philadelphia in September 1926, is a pure mechanical skill game with a pinball-style playfield, predating the electro-mechanical pinballs that would follow in later decades. Its purely mechanical design relies on gravity and manual operation rather than any electrical components.

A distinguishing feature is its gameplay: players receive five shots for just one cent. The machine's small backbox is filled with gumballs and topped with a marquee, combining the skill game with a vending function -- a novel pairing that set it apart from straightforward scoring games of the period.

Gatter Novelty Company was short-lived, preceding the later Gatter Manufacturing Company and going out of business amid the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Little further information survives about the Ball Shooter Gum Vender's designer or specific rules, but its combination of skill play and gumball vending makes it a distinctive artifact of 1920s coin-operated amusements.