Overview
As part of D. Gottlieb & Co.'s "Fairytale" series, Alice in Wonderland was one of the first pinball machines to be released with flippers, and had a production run of 1,000 machines.
Designer Harry Mabs invented pinball machines with flippers almost by accident. He wanted to put a switch on the playfield that moved a bumper when the ball rolled over it. While testing the game, he wired that moving bumper to be controlled by himself instead of by the playfield switch. When he discovered how fun it was to control these moving or flipping bumpers, he decided to let the player control them by putting buttons on the side of the game. This was to revolutionize the pinball industry, and by introducing that element of control, transformed a game that was mostly determined by luck, to a game that was mostly determined by skill.
The first pinball table to be released with flippers was "Humpty Dumpty" in October 1947, and Alice in Wonderland, released less than a year later in August 1948, features the exact same playfield layout, but with different artwork.
