Thistledowns

Thistledowns is an electro-mechanical pinball machine from Bally Manufacturing Corporation with a horse-racing theme, released to production on October 19, 1938 as Model 303. It follows an earlier related release, Model 277 'Thistledowns,' which had come out on August 15, 1938.

The game's name and theme almost certainly reference Thistledown, the well-known horse racing track in North Randall, Ohio, which had opened in 1925 and was a prominent part of American horse racing culture by the time this game was released. As a 1938 electromechanical machine, Thistledowns would have predated the invention of the flipper (which did not appear in pinball until 1947), so gameplay relied on other period-typical mechanisms such as bumpers, targets, and skillful plunging rather than flipper control.

Beyond its release dates and theme, few further details survive about Thistledowns' specific rules or artwork. As an early Bally sports-themed title from the pre-flipper era, it offers a glimpse into how pinball manufacturers tied games to popular contemporary pastimes like horse racing even in the medium's earliest years.