So a guy walks into the shop with a Williams “Big Dick” backglass for restoration and modification. But first some background on this score glass. The art work was originally done by the famous 1970s pinball artist Dave Christensen during the Captain Fantastic era. Christensen, who worked at Bally as an artist, was frankly a sick joker of sorts. And for some reason in the back offices of Bally they had a 1963 Williams “Big Deal” pinball. (This was not unusual, often game manufacturers would buy other brands to do research.) Also about once a month management would have a meeting to check out the new products being developed.
So Christensen did a “one off” porno backglass that took the Williams “Big Deal” into a “Big Dick” game. The original glass is frankly quite pornographic, something way up and beyond any other pinball art ever done (now or then.) To make it a bigger joke in DC’s mind, the main girl on the glass was actually a secretary that worked in the engineering department of Bally! So when the big monthly meeting came, and this Williams “Big Dick” was sitting in the corner (note Christensen didn’t have the “Williams” name on his new glass), all the management big-wigs saw the game and thought it was the funniest thing in the world. It was a huge joke that Christensen got a ton of mileage from, especially since it portrayed one of the Bally employees as the main female character on the glass.
Now if this happened today, law suites would pursue. Well let me rephrase that… this would NEVER happen today. If it did for some reason, everyone involved would be fired, and then Bally sued by the female secretary depicted.
Fast forward to 1998. Herb Silvers remembered the story of the “Big Dick” glass, and contacted Christensen. Sure enough, being the pack rat he is, DC still had the original backglass. So Herb borrowed the glass and re-made four of the “Big Dick” games. Herb did make a full run of the silk screened backglasses though (25 glasses in all, which is mistakenly shown as “250” on the IPDB.) That’s how our customer came upon the original glass, and brought it to us for work. Herb also used an original 1963 Williams Big Deal game with modified cabinet artwork and plastics so that “Big Deal” became “Big Dick” for his four custom pinball games.
Fast forward to present, and our customer wanted the glass modified to have “less dick”, as he put it. I have to say, we’re in agreement with his idea. The original Dave Christensen artwork is, frankly, rather creepy and quite sick. (Working on this in Photoshop was creepy too, but that’s another story…) So what we did was remove the really rank stuff and make it a glass with naked girls only. The customer liked our modification (shown below in original and modified formats.)
We will probably do yet another version of this glass that again takes the “Big Dick” game down one more step. After all even in the “less dick” version it’s still a bit much.
Original 1963 Williams Big Deal backglass.
Original Big Dick backglass, as it came into the shop.
Modified original Big Dick glass after Photoshop.
Our “less dick” modification to “Big Dick.”
Back mask of an original Williams Big Deal.
Back mask modified for “Big Dick.”
