Tokens Only » WICO

NOS Centipede CPO by Wico?

cnlmoore — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:18:12 +0000

At first glance I thought this CPO was a Willis piece. It has an identifying part number listed in the lower right corner, a common characteristic of Willis overlays. The cpo has die-cuts and appears to be manufactured with a quality screen printing process. However, there is no Willis logo anywhere to be found, and the paper backing and adhesive isn’t by 3M. The part number sure does resemble other Willis part number formats, odd.

So I did some digging through my archives to figure this out. I re-read my 2009 post about The Wico Willis partnership. If you check out the catalog pages in the old post you’ll see another centipede overlay clearly listed, and it has the exact same part number. Well, minus the “00″ at the end, but otherwise identical. So the same part number exists for two pieces of artwork, but why? Here are a couple examples I have of the overlay from the Wico Willis catalog. Some genius decided it was a good idea to trim off the top and bottom, so its impossible to read any identifying marks, but you get the idea. So what’s the scoop on these?

My guess is that sometime after the Wico Willis partnership dissolved, Wico decided to make their own control panel overlays (or maybe they had made them previously, I just don’t know). Wico would have used their own printing company, possibly a vendor they had been working with for awhile and that company just didn’t use 3M paper products. They whipped up their own artwork and just kept the catalog part number on the front. I mean if you’ve already sent out a couple thousand product catalogs with the numbers listed, why change them? Just replace the product with your own and keep selling. Seems reasonable to me.

If you know anything about the relationship between Wico and Willis, or any information about either company, I’d love to learn more. This piece of arcade artwork gets added to the growing archive. Game on!

NOS Defender cpo by Wico

cnlmoore — Sun, 09 May 2010 04:38:40 +0000

That’s right, Wico. The dissolution of the former partnership between Willis and Wico must be complete as the latter is now cranking out their own control panel overlays. Not quite sure if this was a licensed product, but I can’t imagine Wico would bootleg such an item, considering the two companies weren’t far from one another here in the Chicago area. I’ll call this a new old stock item, just made by Wico and not an OEM part from Williams.

The cpo is screen printed with nice die cuts, but on plain white backing. The color scheme is appealing to me, but the mountain range has been done a million times, boring. Overall it is a simple, clean overlay. Not much excitement, but I guess its better than an old worn out original. Not really, but I’ll archive it anyway.

Willis Enviro-Graphics, or bye bye Wico!

cnlmoore — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:00:23 +0000

“Enviro-Graphics, an exciting new concept for the amusement industry. The Enviro-Graphics kit includes all the decorative treatment, signage, and support material required for your arcade, game room or game location. These products are designed and produced by the premier game art company in America – Willis Industries.” A bold statement from a company that the classic arcade collecting community tends to frown upon. But take a look at the brochure and you might think twice.

I had never heard of Enviro-graphics, or known about artwork packages that operators could use to decorate their arcade. I was too busy finding my next quarter for that new game, or waiting for the 6 tokens for $1 special at Aladdin’s Castle. Who paid attention to the décor? I vaguely recall the way my local arcade looked back in the day, with a simple neon exterior, lots of games inside and a pseudo space theme. The atmosphere did contribute to the overall memory, though my strongest memory seems to be of dark and smokey spaces, with lots of flashing lights and sounds! Even so, perhaps Willis had a good idea. Token signs, out of order signs, score boards, event schedules, specials, rules…all things the operator needed to communicate with his customers. The random space scene posters remind me more of the black light posters you’d find at Spencer’s gifts in the mall, along side the edible underwear. The brochure states that the posters were directly screened onto 1/8″ thick foam board, which made them more durable and easier to hang, but is also probably why so few (if any) survive today. Once they came off the wall if you couldn’t store them, they got tossed.

One thing I noticed is the apparent change in relationship between Willis and Wico around the time this stuff was being produced. If you recall my post about the partnership they shared, apparently it didn’t last or just wasn’t working out. Whatever the reasons, the brochure above is a lot different from the unopened one you see below. Dated September 10, 1982 it has the Wico name and distributor information prominently displayed. A few additional pieces of artwork can also be seen on the back. The almost identical brochure above has all traces of the Wico name removed and “Now operators can buy direct from Willis”. Interesting move and even before the industry crash really took hold. If you can shed any light on this relationship or if you have a Willis Enviro-Graphics poster you’d like to sell, let me know.

The Wico Willis partnership

cnlmoore — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:20:09 +0000

If you know anything about classic arcade games, the name Wico should be familiar. They’re the famous makers of the Wico 4 and 8 way leaf switch joysticks, a “must have” for many classic restorations. While they were standard equipment on many of our beloved classics, finding complete NOS Wico joysticks gets harder and harder every day. Those knock off replacements just don’t stack up to the originals. So what does Willis have to do with it? I’ll tell you. While Wico was making parts for games, Willis was making artwork. Lots of replacement artwork for the most popular games. Who wanted to play a game with a peeled overlay? Fresh clean overlays were more likely to get my token, but ops being notoriously cheap, needed an alternative to high cost OEM replacement parts. Willis fit the bill and somewhere along the way the name became synonymous with bad replacement overlays. In the same way that Kleenex became the universal term for tissue. Unjust if you ask me, as much of what Willis produced was of superior quality to the bootlegs that ran wild during the 80′s. Wico must have thought the same thing, because the two companies struck a deal and Wico became the exclusive distributor of Willis replacement overlays.

You can see the different Willis replacement overlays, for popular games of the time, spread out over two pages in this Wico catalog. Asteroids, Pac-Man, Gorf, Berzerk and Space Invaders to name just a few. What a great way for Wills to get their product in front of the operators as Wico was a major supplier of parts to the industry. The catalog also explains the application of the Willis generic graphics, used for converting a game.

The exclusive distribution agreement seems like a sound business decision for both companies at the time. Willis would get widespread distribution and recognition thanks to Wico and Wico would add another product type to their growing list of items; while earning a margin of some type on all sales. Win win to me, but would it last?

Great piece of WICO history in Play Meter magazine

cnlmoore — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:00:54 +0000

I was checking out a link to the blog nocashvalue that Preston posted over at coinopspace, a fantastic forum for arcade game enthusiasts. The link showcases a scanned article from Play Meter which reveals a little history about the part supplier WICO. We all know WICO for the famous 4 way joystick that was used on so many classic games, so it is interesting to learn a little more about the company and its contributions to our beloved hobby. You can read the WICO article over at Preston’s blog. Check it out!