Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails called 'pins' and had hollows or pockets which scored points if the ball came to rest in them. Today, pinball is most commonly an arcade game in which the ball is fired into a specially designed cabinet known as a pinball machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps, and other targets depending on its design. The game's object is generally to score as many points as possible by hitting these targets and making various shots with flippers before the ball is lost. Most pinball machines use one ball per turn, and the game ends when the ball(s) from the last turn are lost. The biggest pinball machine manufacturers historically include Bally Manufacturing, Gottlieb, Williams Electronics and Stern Pinball.
Mr. Potato Head is an American toy brand produced by Hasbro since 1952. It consists of a plastic model of a potato "head" to which a variety of plastic parts can attach — typically ears, eyes, shoes, hat, nose, pants and mouth.
A marble is a small spherical object often made from glass, clay, steel, plastic, or agate. They vary in size, and most commonly are about 13 mm in diameter. These toys can be used for a variety of games called marbles, as well being placed in marble runs or races, or created as a form of art. They are often collected, both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colors.
Hungry Hungry Hippos is a tabletop game made for 2–4 players, produced by Hasbro, under the brand of its subsidiary, Milton Bradley. The idea for the game was published in 1967 by toy inventor Fred Kroll and it was introduced in 1978. The objective is for each player to collect as many marbles as possible with their toy hippopotamus model. The game was, at one point, marketed under the "Elefun and Friends" banner, along with Elefun, Mouse Trap and Gator Golf.
Think Fast is an American children's game show which aired on Nickelodeon from May 1, 1989, to March 30, 1990, with reruns airing weekly until June 29, 1991.
A glossary of terms, commonly used in discussing pinball machines.
Madballs is a series of toy foam balls originally created by AmToy, a subsidiary company of American Greetings in the mid-1980s, later being revived by Art Asylum (2007–2008) and Just Play, Inc. (2017–2019). The balls incorporated gross-out humor and each was given a character synopsis and an odd name. The toyline expanded into a franchise with comic books, direct-to-video cartoons, and a video game for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64.
The Addams Family is a pinball machine released in March 1992. It was designed by Pat Lawlor and Larry DeMar and released by Midway. It was based on the 1991 film of the same name, and features custom speech by the stars of the film, Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia. It is the best-selling solid state pinball machine of all time with 20,270 units sold.
Littlest Pet Shop is a toy franchise and cartoon series owned by Hasbro and currently under license with Basic Fun!. The original toy series was produced by Kenner in the early 1990s. An animated television series was made in 1995 by Sunbow Productions and Jean Chalopin Creativite et Developpement, based on the franchise.
Army men, or plastic soldiers, are toy soldiers that are about 5 cm (2.0 in) tall and most commonly molded from low-density polyethylene plastic, which makes them durable and flexible. Unlike the more expensive toy soldiers available in hobby shops, army men are sold at low prices in discount stores and supermarkets. Army men are traditionally solid green or tan and almost always dressed in modern military uniforms and armed with 20th-century weapons. 'Jumbo' army men are a less common secondary scale with 4.75-inch (12.1 cm) soldiers made by the same process.
The Pokémon Trading Figure Game is a collectible miniatures game similar to HeroClix. It was designed by Pokémon USA and based on Satoshi Tajiri's Pokémon media franchise.
Buckaroo! is a game of physical skill, intended for players aged four and above. Buckaroo! has been published by several game companies such as Ideal Toy, Milton Bradley, and Hasbro.
Gator Golf is a children's miniature golfing game. It was released in 1994 by the American game company Milton Bradley. In the game, children take turns putting into the mouth of a motorized plastic alligator figure, which then flings the ball off its tail and spins around, creating a new challenge for the next player. Gator Golf's commercial tag line was "Gator Golf - what could be greater than playing a game of golf with a gator?" It was released again in 2008, then in 2009 under the "Elefun and Friends" banner. It was then re-released in 2019 by Goliath Games. The game was then re-released again in 2020 by Toy City in the UK and its name was "Gator Golfers".
Merchandise for the Thomas & Friends franchise has been produced to capitalize on the success of the television series Thomas & Friends. Whilst merchandise was produced alongside due to the popularity of the first of The Railway Series by the Rev. W. Awdry since 1945, and the original broadcast of the television series in 1984 in the United Kingdom, large numbers of manufacturers have sought to produce Thomas-branded items after the television series was broadcast in the United States and Japan.
The Flintstones is a pinball game released by Williams in 1994 and based on the movie of the same name which is based on 1960–1966 animated television series of the same name. This machine is not to be confused with another pinball machine, a redemption game, based on the TV series and also released in 1994, manufactured by Innovative Concepts in Entertainment (ICE).
Schaper Toys, or W.H. Schaper Mfg. Co., Inc. as it was originally known, was a game and toy company founded in 1949 by William Herbert Schaper in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. "Herb" Schaper published a variety of games but was best known for having created the children's game, Cootie. In 1971, the company was sold to Kusan, Inc., and began operating as Schaper Toys, a subsidiary of Kusan, Inc. In 1986, Schaper Toys was acquired by Tyco Toys, which sold the rights to Cootie and three other of the company's best-known games to the Milton Bradley Company. These games are still being sold.
During 1999 and 2000, Burger King and the Consumer Product Safety Commission held an effort to recall plastic containers resembling Poké Balls in the United States after it was determined they presented a suffocation hazard.
Shovel Knight is a platform video game developed and published by Yacht Club Games. Development was crowdfunded and the game was released for Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and Windows in June 2014. It was ported to OS X and Linux in September 2014, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One in April 2015, Amazon Fire TV in September 2015, and Nintendo Switch in March 2017. Shovel Knight is inspired by gameplay and graphics of platformer games developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Toys-to-life is a video game feature using physical figurines or action figures to interact within the game. These toys use a near field communication (NFC), radio frequency identification (RFID), or image recognition data protocol to determine the individual figurine's proximity, and save a player's progress data to a storage medium located within that piece. It was one of the most lucrative branches of the video game industry especially during the late 1990s and 2010s, with the Skylanders franchise alone selling more than $3 billion worth over the course of four years.
