Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee was a pinball machine designed by Harry Williams for the Williams Manufacturing Company, with a playfield drawing dated March 1959, but it was ultimately never produced; a later handwritten note on the design documents marks it "Cancelled. Never Made."

As planned, the design featured two flippers, three pop bumpers, and four passive (dead) bumpers, along with a distinctive pyramid arrangement of nine kick-out holes stacked 2-above-3-above-4, resembling an inverted bowling-pin layout. This kick-out hole configuration would have added an element of unpredictability to gameplay had the machine reached production.

While little else is known about this specific design, it stands out in Williams' archives as one of the rare instances where draftsman Harry Mabs' name appears alongside another known designer, Harry Williams himself, on a playfield drawing - Mabs typically drew and signed off on his own designs. As an unproduced prototype design, Spelling Bee offers a glimpse into games that never made it to the arcade floor.