Champs

Champs, manufactured by the Stoner Manufacturing Company of Aurora, Illinois in May 1938, is an early electro-mechanical payout pinball machine with a Sports - Horse Racing theme, part of Stoner's "Aristocrat" series of games. As a payout machine, Champs dispensed winnings directly to players based on game outcomes, rather than awarding free replays — a common design for coin-operated amusements of its era.

Dating from 1938, Champs predates the invention of the flipper by nearly a decade, so its gameplay relied on the mechanical and chance-based elements typical of pre-flipper pinball: players launched balls into a playfield without any player-controlled paddles, with scoring and payouts determined largely by where the ball came to rest. The machine's console cabinet design was a notable format choice, distinguishing it from the countertop or upright cabinets used by some contemporaries.

Little is documented about Champs beyond brief mentions in Billboard magazine issues dated May 14 and May 21, 1938, and even those apparently lacked descriptive text about the game. As one of the earlier Stoner "Aristocrat" releases, Champs offers a window into the horse-racing and payout-machine traditions that predated the coin-operated amusement industry's shift toward free-play pinball.