Description: Ten Strike, Evans, made from September 1939 to January 1953 in several different variations, mechanical manikin bowling bowler game. Less than 100 point scoring is shown on backglass using a rotating backlit score reel type device, which projects through a magnifier onto the score glass. Thousand scoring is shown in a conventional backlit lighting manner. Game uses two 1.25" balls and only plays five frames (instead of the usual 10 frames). First generation pre-WW2 (1939-1942) version has a green and yellow backglass with "Ten Strike" at the bottom of the glass. Post-War second generation (1947-1948) version has a green pin triangle with red pins and "Ten Strike" at the bottom of the glass. The third generation (1949-1953) version with light animated bowler man throwing the ball (showing which pins have been hit) and has "Ten Strike" at the top of the glass.

The schematic and patent info for this game is available here.

If you have this game for sale please contact me at cfh@provide.net

Rockola also made a licensed version of 10 Strikes during 1940-1941. The Rockola game was call Ten Pins (10 Pins). Evans also made some other bowling type skee-ball games based on their 10 Strike game, including Ski-Ball (1940) and In the Barrel (1940). Gottlieb also had their Skee-ball-ette (1940).

During WW2, there were several revamps of the game, including Supreme BolaScore (Bowlascore), Valley Speciality Bank-A-Ball, and Mike Munves Thunderbolt.

Evans went out of business in 1955, and the manikin bowler idea (and apparently the "little man" tooling) was bought by Williams and used in their December 1957 "Williams Ten Strike" and "Williams Ten Pins", and later in their 1970 Williams Mini-Bowl, and even Sega's Pro-Bowler (1972). The Williams 10 Strikes (and later games) look completely different than the Evans 10 Strike, other than the mannequin.

If you have one of these games for sale, please contact me at cfh@provide.net