Caille Brothers | Cabinet Style Mickey Finn

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The conventional ‘platform style Mickey Finn’ has been a favorite of collectors for decades. The Caille catalog shows both the platform and the cabinet style Mickey Finn machines. Influenced by the rumor of there being only one surviving original cabinet style tug-of-war machine, Papa and his team decided it would be more interesting to reproduce the cabinet rather than the platform style. The cabinet style requires bolting the machine to the wall to prevent it from falling onto the player. This complication might be the reason why there is only one cabinet style in existence, as opposed to several platforms. Caille subsequently produced a free-standing version.

 

The cabinet style shares many of the characteristics of the platform style including the devil’s head, the front body casting and the tug-of-war theme. Inside the front casting, the devil’s head appears in the front window if a player scores 750. The character on the dial of the cabinet version has a closed mouth; it has an open, smiling mouth in the platform version. The top marquee on this version depicts a strong man from the turn of the century encouraging the player to insert a coin into Mickey Finn’s bow tie.

 

Read more in No Tampering! A Guide to Papa's Re-creations.