Arizona

The United Manufacturing Company's Arizona, from February 1943, is an intriguing wartime artifact of the pinball industry. It is not an entirely new game but a conversion of Exhibit's 1941 'Sun Beam': with World War II material restrictions halting new game production, manufacturers like United kept operators supplied by refreshing existing machines with new artwork and themes. As one of the earliest products of United, founded just the year before in 1942, Arizona illustrates how the young company got its start.

The game is a flipperless electro-mechanical (EM) machine, as all pinball machines were before the flipper's 1947 debut. Its playfield carries twelve passive bumpers and a single kick-out hole, with skillful plunging and nudging serving as the player's tools. The American Places theme is a nostalgic nod to the era's fascination with domestic destinations.

An interesting footnote: United's first flipper game would not arrive until 'Wisconsin' in November 1948, and operators of the late 1940s often retrofitted flippers onto older flipperless games like Arizona, with the added flippers frequently ending up in unusual places on the playfield. For collectors and historians, Arizona offers a window into pinball's resourceful wartime chapter.