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Slot History: Where
the Fruit Came From
If you were to pluck a random person off the
street and ask them to draw a picture of a slot machine, it’s likely
that they would (with widely varying levels of skill) draw some sort
of device that had little symbols of fruit on the spinning reels.
There’s a reason that the British refer to slot games as “fruit
machines” – for a while, slot machine play was synonymous with the
wish to line up pictures of cherries and grapes. Even nowadays, the
most technologically-advanced and slick online slot machine sites
still offer titles that are based around fruit… it’s a theme with
classic retro appeal.
You may be interested to know that the first “fruit machine” was so
designed because it paid out player winnings in the form of
fruit-flavored chewing gum! The Bell-Fruit Gum Company sponsored its
very own slot machine, and featured picture of the fruit flavors of
its chewing gum products as the pictures on the reels. Score three
cherries in a row, and you’d win a stick of cherry-flavored gum. The
now-ubiquitous melon symbol also originated this way. Back in the
proverbial “day,” players did not have the option to pay for
millions of dollars at progressive jackpot online slot machines, and
felt that a stick of gum was a pretty good prize! The “BAR” symbol
on slot machines also was first used on a Bell-Fruit slot game.
The slot machine industry took a giant step ahead in 1964 with the
launch of Money Honey, the very-first slot machine to be totally
electromechanical and capable of a large automatic payout without
needing to go to an attendant to collect.
Back to September 2008 Archive.
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SLOTS DATA
