These slots became the club’s icon, getting face time on advertising matchbooks and decal-postcards. They were beefier and better resembled men than Reno Joe, and had two arms and patterned shirtsleeves. To entice people to play the slots, the Las Vegas Club in Southern Nevada, in 1952, commissioned 15 Bandits for its casino. Those boasted gray and white polka-dot bandannas and red slot machines. The same year, LIFE magazine published in its May 18 issue a photo of the five Bandits in Stockmen’s Hotel and casino in Elko, in Northeastern Nevada. They held Jennings Standard Chief slot machines, at the request of Lincoln Fitzgerald, the club’s co-owner and gaming manager. In 1951, the Nevada Club in Reno installed in its bar area four Bandits, ones wearing hatbands bearing the casino name.

The brand of slot machines it used in them also differed occasionally but typically was a Mills or a Pace. (CMC), on South Virginia Street in Reno, hand carved and custom made each one with individual characteristics, it only produced them in limited numbers. However, because Character Manufacturing Co. The showcasing of Reno Joe resulted in numerous calls from Silver State casinos to the manufacturer for large orders of the Bandit. The Mapes’ version garnered the name “Reno Joe.” In some models, they shouted “jackpot” when the bars aligned horizontally. They were one-armed bandits, or life-sized outlaws whose torso was a slot machine and whose arm and gun-toting hand constituted the lever.ĭonning a white plastic cowboy hat, a red bandanna over their lower face, jeans and boots, the men’s eyes lit up in red when a player got a payout. It debuted in the lobby of Reno’s Mapes hotel-casino in the fall and “got a big play from visiting Shriners,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Nov.

A novel, animated gambling device began to appear in Nevada casinos in 1950.

Reno used slot machine