Gottlieb

Founded in 1927 closed in 1996
Status: dead
Country: USA

1.1

per year

Gottlieb (formerly D. Gottlieb & Co.) was an Ameri-
can arcade game corporation based in Chicago, Il-
linois. The company was initially producing pinball
machines while later expanding into various other
games including pitch-and-bats, bowling games,
and eventually video arcade games (notably Reactor
and Q*bert and, leading to the demise of Mylstar;
M*A*C*H*3).
Like other manufacturers, Gottlieb first made
mechanical pinball machines, including the first suc-
cessful coin-operated pinball machine Baffle Ball
in 1930. The 1947 development of player-actuated,
solenoid-driven 2-inch bats called "flippers" revo-
lutionized the industry. Players now had the ability
to shoot the ball back up the playfield and get more
points. The flippers first appeared on a Gottlieb game
called "Humpty Dumpty", designed by Harry Mabs.
By this time, the games also became noted for their
artwork by Roy Parker. By the 1970s the company
had begun designing their games with longer 3-inch
flippers, now the industry standard.
Gottlieb was bought by Columbia Pictures
in 1976. In 1983, after the Coca-Cola Company had
acquired Columbia, Gottlieb was renamed to Myl-
star Electronics, but this proved to be short-lived. By
1984 the video game industry in North America was
in the middle of a shakeout and Columbia closed
down Mylstar at the end of September 1984. A man-
agement group, led by Gilbert G. Pollock, purchased
Mylstar’s pinball assets in October 1984 and con-
tinued the manufacture of pinball machines under a
new company, Premier Technology. As a result of
this a number of prototype Mylstar arcade games,
which were not purchased by the investors, were
never released. Premier did go on to produce one last
arcade game, 1989’s Exterminator.

It is known for Q*bert