Officer, This isn’t a slot machine!

It’s a gum vending fortune teller with buttons to test your skill with a sign telling you how much will come out before you play & a note on the machine saying “no gambling allowed”!

From almost the very beginning of slot machines being used in the United States, they have had to disguise themselves as something else. In today’s world of casino’s with thousands of slot machines lined up it’s almost unbelievable that there was a time when a slot machine in a normal public place had to be disguised, at least to the strict letter of that law that is.

The image above of a very rare Watling Big Six cast iron machine is a classic early example of a machine utilizing a gum vender attachment. Watling didn’t just decide to add this vender on the side as a nice gesture to players. They did this to hopefully slip this machine into an area where a straight gambling device may have been illegal, but one that gave the player a stick of gum or roll of mint for every nickel played then made it a vending device – it just happened to payout money as well.

While most anyone could see past this technicality, when it comes to the law, this changed things and put these types of machines into a gray area of legality. From the turn of the 20^th century into the 1930’s slot machine manufactures were not only bolting on gum venders to their machines but also adding other little features that further confused law enforcement.

 During the teens the Caille Brothers Company made a beautiful slot machine called the Victory Bell. One feature shown in the photo above to the left of the reels is something called a “future pay” option. Every time the handle was pulled you could look at the window and would either see the word NO or numbers, such as 4. If there was a number showing, then all you had to do was put another coin into the machine and that many coins would drop into the payout cup!

What was happening was the machine would delay any payouts until the next pull of the handle. The machine would show how many coins were coming out of the machine on that next pull. The theory was, the player walking up to the machine knew in advance if any money was coming out of the machine – hence the name “future pay”. This little feature also forced a player to put another coin into the machine to get their winnings from the previous pull – tricky idea for sure!

Most of the slot manufactures offered the future pay options for their machines in the teens and nineteen twenties. Today when a machine with the future pay option is found, in many cases the mechanical components have been removed. Operators and players alike probably became annoyed by it or the machine no longer needed the feature to operate in an area.

Mills Baseball Restored By Nations Attic.com

Mills Novelty during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s made a machine shown above called the Baseball Vender Bell. This machine really went all out to disguise itself as a baseball arcade game rather than what it was – a slot machine. This beauty was restored by Nations Attic in 2011 and is a true classic for both slot machine collectors and baseball fans.

This slot machine hid itself behind a brightly painted baseball field. A player would put a nickel in, pull the handle and wait for the baseball images on the reels to stop. Once the machine stopped, the player would look at the future pay window to see if their next play would give them any coins, they could also play a simulated game of baseball by moving the players from base to base on the play field below. The score outs and innings could also be kept track of for players wanting to complete an entire nine inning game (hope they had a lot of nickels). This machine didn’t stop there, it also vended mints. By turning the handle at the lower front right an entire roll of mints would drop into the payout tray – how nice of Mills! Not to be out done, Mills also had three buttons at the top called skill stop buttons. The player could actually stop the reels early exactly when they wanted too in an effort to use their skill to play the machine!

So, to summarize, in 1930 you walk up to this machine and drop a nickel in. You pull the handle, then test your skill with the skill stop buttons, check the future pay window to see if you won anything (in the future), then turn the vender knob for a roll of delicious mints (in reality they were nasty), then figure out what sequence of events just happened in the simulated game of baseball you are playing.

To say the least it would take an entire corporate law firm to legally figure out if this machine was a gambling device, mint vender, fortune teller, baseball game or skill device – which is exactly why Mills and other companies loaded these machines up with gimmicks during the early 1930’s!

The Watling Scale Company even put on their Treasury slot machine a little sign cast into the machine – NO GAMBLING ALLOWED ON THIS MACHINE. Just below that stern warning was a second message which we will decipher for you

“by the way, if you deposit a second coin into this gambling device before pulling the handle in hopes of winning the jackpot and bringing home a pocket full of buffalo nickels, your extra coin will be returned to you so you can gamble again”.

American history is full of examples of enterprising entrepreneurs figuring out a way to get around goofy or strict laws to provide the public with a product or service they greatly desire. Slot machines, a true American invention, are no exception!

Jennings Little Duke With Gum Vender & Fortune Reels