Flying Champ

The Flying Champ, manufactured by Western Products, Incorporated in July 1941, is an interesting artifact from a distinctive corner of coin-op history: the one-ball horserace payout machine. Rather than the multi-ball, score-driven amusement pinball of later decades, games like Flying Champ gave the player a single ball per play with the outcome tied to a horse racing theme and automatic payouts - a gambling-adjacent format that was popular in the years before World War II.

The machine is housed in a console cabinet, a furniture-style format that sets it apart from the standard four-legged pinball tables of the era. Its horse racing theme was a natural fit for the payout format, letting players back their luck one ball at a time.

Design-wise, the Flying Champ reflects the straightforward look of early-1940s coin-op equipment. No designer credit is documented for this machine, and Western Products itself operated only from 1938 to 1941, making Flying Champ one of the final games from this short-lived Chicago-era manufacturer and a snapshot of the payout-game business just before wartime production halted the industry.