Thorobred

The 1942 Thorobred is an electro-mechanical, one-ball horse-racing pinball machine produced by Bally Manufacturing Corporation, and it was notably Bally's last machine made before World War II halted commercial production. Its horse-racing theme fits squarely within Bally's long-standing focus on racing and payout-style one-ball games, rather than representing an early first for the theme, which had already been common in the coin-op industry for years.

The machine is a free-play console game featuring an extensive array of 31 trap holes, along with a skill lane option intended for jurisdictions that required five-ball play instead of one-ball. Its model number, 455, is something of a historical puzzle: Bally's own documentation assigns that number to a mint vendor accessory for their 'Sun Ray' slot machine, and it's speculated that wartime disruption may explain why the same number ended up associated with both products.

Period distributor advertising even misspelled the game's name as 'Thoroughbred.' As Bally's final pre-war release, the Thorobred marks the end of an era for the company, arriving just as the pinball industry's manufacturing was about to be redirected toward the war effort.