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Fruit Machines: Their Rise and Fall

Years ago, one familiar sound inside an English pub, above the chatter of the patrons, was the sound of reels being spun as someone played at the fruit machine. Today, you'll be hard pushed to find one anywhere.

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Image source: Billy Hicks / CC BY-SA via Wikimedia Commons

Introduction: Fruit Machines: Their Rise and Fall

Unless you’re both English and a boomer, you probably have no idea what a “fruitie” was. There was once a time when you couldn’t go into any pub and not hear the mechanical sounds of the reels being spun as someone shoved coins into the fruit machine. In fact, there was a time when fruit machines were by far the most common form of gambling on the UK mainland. Then along came “fixed-odds betting terminals” (FOBT’s) and that sounded the death knell for the extinction of the tried and trusted fruit machine.

Rise of the Fruit Machine

The traditional jackpot slots machine was a US invention in the late 19th century. As it’s popularity grew, so did its audience spread and before you could say “can I have more change” the devices had made their way across the pond into the UK. Though they proved to be very popular from the get-go, being the UK, there was any number of restrictions placed upon there use and setting. As time progressed, the government introduced various laws that oversaw all aspects of gambling. These included casinos, and casino slot machines. this was also the period where pub games were made available to customers.

Either by accident or by oversight, the law allowed pubs to host gambling machines, providing there was a “skills-based” element. This was open to free interpretation. As a result, companies that developed games were quick to seize the opportunities to provide gambling machines outside of the traditional casino environment. Simply by adding “Hold” and “Nudge”, they cleverly introduced the notion of skill being involved. Hold is when you literally stop one reel from spinning, whilst re-spinning the others. Nudge lets you bump one or more reels so they can move position.

Nudge and hold added enough “skill” to these games that fruit machines became legal almost overnight. Also, game machine manufacturers were always on the hunt for new markets outside of casinos. So now, they could grow exponentially with demand from pubs.

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Fruit Machines Ruled UK Gambling Market for Decades

Fruit machines proved to be an instant hit throughout the UK. Of course, by placing them in pubs, it added an extra activity, which coupled with alcohol, meant that there was always a never-ending cue to play. It also helped that the “marketing” gave the impression that you could win, provided that you had the skills. Both hold and nudge helped boost this idea. but of course, it goes without saying that there could never be enough “skill” to circumvent the house edge. But as gambling machines were a newfound source of fun for the majority of people, there was a constant belief that winning was just a matter of skill, of nudging and holding at the exact right point during the gameplay.

On the whole, the vast majority of fruities used a combination of elements from both slot machines and arcade games. Rather similar to casino slots but with a touch of skill added into the mix for flavor. Within a year, literally every pub in the UK had at least one of these noisy but popular machines, hoovering up the small change. This state of affairs lasted over two decades. And even with the introduction of full-on slot machines, the fruities continued to hold their own.

FOBT’s Enter The Market

In the early 2000s, video slot machines started to enter the marketplace. Though they were indeed popular, the fruitie still remained the mainstay of pub gambling. The thing was that video slot machines were really the fodder of casinos. And few pub customers were also regular casino punters. On the other hand, you could find fruities just about everywhere, and not just in public houses, but at sports centers and many non-gambling businesses. But in 2001, FOBM’s started being introduced into sports betting shops in the high street. These machines are similar to both the traditional slot machine and the fruit machine. In fact, they even look the same, with similar designs so as not to alienate customers coming from more traditional machines.

This worked well, as gamblers instantly felt at home with these new machines. One of the main selling points of these newer devices was that they could house any number of games within the same machine. So it was an instant space saver. You could play blackjack, bingo, roulette, slots and virtual horse racing, and all without moving your feet. These FOBT’s became an instant hit. Betting shops couldn’t roll them out fast enough. And very soon, the UK was full of them. Pubs took a huge hit as income dropped from gambling. They could no longer compete.

Gamblers Quickly Take to FOBTs

A gambler’s gotta gamble. So with this flooding of the market place with these FOBT’s, UK gamblers went nuts. It’s true that in order to play you had to make your way to a betting shop, but they certainly did in thousands. In fact, such was the demand, that these machines began causing social problems. Players were losing so much money, and on such a regular basis, that the government dubbed these machines as the “crack cocaine” of gambling. Everyone was looking for jackpot winning tips and tricks. Eventually, parliament took action. They passed a law that limited the number of FOBT’s allowed per shop. This sounds all fine and dandy on paper, but the betting companies were not going to be taking this lying down.

Within weeks, betting businesses were renting any vacant venues and converting them into betting shops. Not that you could actually place any punt there, it was just a means of having more FOBT’s in play. And so the fruit machine went the way of the Passenger Pigeon and the Dodo. Unloved and unwanted, punters preferred the new electronic games as opposed to the archaic fruit machine.

Fruities Are More Like Regular Slots Today

There are still some fruit machines remaining in the UK gambling scene. But they’re no longer just fruit machines but have evolved into something newer. Traditional fruities had 3 to 5 reels and 1 to 20 pay-lines and just some other very limited features like a nudge and hold. Seeing them now is like looking at dinosaur bones in the British Museum. Modern fruit machines do boast many more features such as expanding wilds, random wilds, free spins, and more pay-lines. But they remain the sad ugly sister that no one invites out. She getting old and bitter. The thing was, that fruit machines were already a kinda offshoot from slots. And slots are still with us, yet fruities struggle to find relevance in today’s gambling space. That is unless somehow they’re engineered into a slot machine.

Will These Games Be Around in the Future?

Who knows the answer. They have evolved of a sort and certainly, today’s fruit machine is a very different beast from one’s of yesteryear. But they’re now almost swallowed up by the design of slot machines. In some respects, only the fruit symbols tell us that there’s the heart of a fruit machine ticking within. We think that soon these morphed versions will be de rigueur, and you’ll be able to find the old fruit machines at auctions or on eBay, rather like classic slots machines are sold to collectors today.

Fruit Machines: Conclusion

Fruit machines really had their hay-day thanks to a loophole in UK gambling law. By added in nudges and holds, they were able to claim that the gambling machines did require a certain level of skill to increase your jackpot winning chances. This was, of course, a stipulation of the laws of the time. As a result, there wasn’t a pub in the UK that didn’t have at least one of these noisy and addictive apparatus. They were wildly successful, to put it mildly. The income generated was to make many a pub landlord a happy one. But as technologies advanced, the fruit machine gradually got left behind. FOBT’s came marching confidently over the horizon, and with a year, the old spinning reels had become obsolete.