"Lucky Loop"
About This Machine
"Lucky Loop" is a rare, circa-1932 pure mechanical tabletop/counter game from Warren Manufacturing Company of Warren, Ohio. Its wood apron presents the game's name in quotes, as "Lucky Loop," and at 29 inches long it was built as a compact counter piece rather than a full-size cabinet game.
The game offers an unusually generous seven balls for one cent. Its playfield holds 11 trap holes in total: eight are ringed with a metal facsimile of an equine horseshoe to help capture the ball, nine are assigned point values from 50 to 1000, and two at the bottom of the playfield are labeled "OUT." The playfield itself is painted orange, with a large green four-leaf clover in both the upper and lower halves, each clover leaf hosting one of the horseshoe-ringed trap holes.
Little is documented about "Lucky Loop" beyond its physical description, including its designer, but its horseshoe-and-clover luck motif and trap-hole scoring make it a distinctive example of the pin-game genre that predated flipper pinball.
Technical Details
- Notable Features:
- 7 balls for 1 cent. Trap holes (11). A metal facsimile of an equine horseshoe is placed around each of eight trap holes to help capture the ball. Nine trap holes are assigned point values from 50 to 1000 points. Two trap holes at playfield bottom are labeled "OUT". The playfield is painted orange and with a large green four-leaf clover in both the upper half and lower half of playfield. A horseshoed trap hole is placed on each leaf of the two clovers. Game measured 29 inches long.