A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE
DAVAL MARVEL AND AMERICAN EAGLE
Cover Story ..... by Bill Petrochuk
What was the most popular trade stimulator of all
time? Ask a group of coin-op collectors and the most
likely answer is The Marvel. When visiting the home
of a fellow collector what machine will most likely be
seen? Right again! The Marvel. What coin-op ma-
chine was among the first acquired by most collectors?
Well, you get the idea. Most of us currently have or
have had one and some have built whole collections
around these marvelous wonders.
What made the Marvel and its twin brother the
American Eagle so popular? First, they enjoyed an ex-
tremely long production run. The Marvel appeared in
early 1940. Production ceased during the war years of
1942 through 1945, but came back strong and lasted
until 1952. That is at least nine years of production;
most other trade stimulators only enjoyed one to five-
year production runs. Noted counter game collector
and historian Bill Whelan began collecting serial num-
bers of trade machines before most collectors knew
what a trade stimulator was. He estimates that Da-
val made about 70,000 machines. More than 60,000
of them were post humpback production. One could
conclude that between 25,000 and 40,000 Marvels and
Eagles were produced. Al Douglas and Dave Klein had
been in business in Chicago for about 15 years as the
A.S. Douglas Co. and as Douglas Machine before they
combined letters in their first names and became Daval
in the early 1930's. Scott Industries bought the line in
1948, and then sold out to Comet Industries in 1949,
who continued production until 1952.
When Marvel and American Eagle were first intro-
duced in 1940 they left the humpback style of the Reel
21 and Reel Dice in the dust. The new streamlined look
featured hammerloid baked-on enamel paint and phe-
nol-plastic, slam-proof yellow or red front pull handles.
The biggest improvement over the trade stimulators of
the past was the clock type gear driven governor. This
was the same type of timing device that Mills, Jennings
and Watling had been using for years in their full-sized
slot machines. The replacement of the troublesome
pump type governor was welcomed by operators ev-
erywhere. Groetchen, Daval's major competitor, also
switched to clock governors in their stimulators. Other
improvements of their previous games included a coin
4
agitator to keep the coins spread out in the cash box, a
clog and jam-proof coin chute, and a mechanism that
slid in and out of the cabinet with ease.
Groetchen had re-popularized the token payout of
the early cast iron stimulators with their Ginger of 1937.
Daval copied the token payout slide and tube in both
the Marvel and Eagle. Marvel tokens were good for
one to ten packs of cigarettes, while Eagle tokens were
good for five to 100 free plays. The tokens could either
be dispensed to the winner or retained behind a win-
dow in the visibility version. Machines were created
in the plain gambling model for $32.50, or as gumball
vendors for $34.50, F.O.B. Chicago. By June of 1943,
over-production had lowered the prices to $15.75 each,
or $11.95 each in lots of ten. When the war ended the
price rose to $54.00 for the plain version and $59.00 for
the gumball model.
Marvel was first advertised in 1 ¢ and 5¢ play with
cigarette symbols, and as 5¢ play only with beer strips.
The beer symbols must not have been well received as
production either quickly ceased or never began. The
American Eagle had the standard slot machine fruit
reels and also came with stars, hearts, diamonds, clo-
vers and rings. Machines with numbers symbols are
occasionally found and were also made for export as
well. All machines had three reels with 20 symbols and
10 stops. When three like symbols were lined up the
payout fingers probed the reel disks to activate the to-
ken slide. There certainly is much full-sized slot ma-
chine engineering in these smaller games.
In 1941 Daval introduced the American Eagle De-
fense. This machine had tank, bomb, machine gun, ar-
tillery gun, and paratrooper symbols. These are quite
rare as aluminum became a critical material for war
use and the run was short. Other models included the
Gusher of 1946, which had a hand-load key operated
jackpot on the front, the Gold Award model, first in-
traduced in 1941, and the Comet, which was merely a
Marvel renamed by Comet Industries when they took
over the company in 1949. A non-coin operated model
introduced in 1941 featured a counter on the side to tell
the operator how many plays a patron had made. Metal
award card plates can be found in different sizes and in
either etched chrome or brass finish and with differing