Automatic Age

them and finally translate them into
the actualities of everyday life.
Men, Money and Materials. These
are the three basic needs of a pros­
perous business, someone has taken
the trouble to point out. To these
three essentials let me. add Man­
agement. Without Management
the best laid plans become
hopelessly involved. Ray
Moloney was not lacking
in financial backing or
sources of m aterials.
He did need manpower
of the righ t kind.
Among his acquaint­
ances experienced in
solving sales problems
he found James M.
Buckley who saw eye to
eye with him in apprais­
ing the potential business
to be built around the new
pin-gam e idea. From that
point it was not long before Jim
Buckley, already well known to job­
bers and operators in the coin-ma­
chine industry, was planning the pro­
gram that gave Bally a nation-wide
distribution almost overnight.
One of the first steps was to see
what could be done to improve the
game itself before jumping into pro­
duction. Then the game needed a
name. Not just a name, but some­
thing with snap and life to it, some­
thing current, something infectious—
something that suggested fun, hilarity
and good times. In short, something
with a kick to it. Walking down the
street one morning with two of his
acquaintances, Mr. Maloney noticed
the lively, colorful display that a
news dealer had made of copies of a
then new magazine. It was Ballyhoo.
Everyone had Ballyhoo on his or her
lips at the m o m e n t . Everyone
seemed to be reading it— privately if
not in public— and getting a big
© In ternational A rca d e M use um
Plenty busy here noivadays build­
ing GOOFY, the new season’s game
sensation.
enough quota of belly laughs out of
each issue to keep the magazine’s cir­
culation driving ahead to new peaks
each month. “Ballyhoo! There’s the
name for the new game,” it came to
Mr. Moloney. “And there’s the color
scheme, too, for the playing board of
the game or I’m a Chinaman.”
That’s how the most popular pin
game of 1932 gots its name. That’s
how the game’s attention-provoking
play board got its brilliant, colorful
make-up— from the magazine cover.
The company name, too, came via the
same process. The last three letters of
the word, Ballyhoo, were, simply
dropped and you had Bally which is
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