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Skee-Ball Scions

A Berwyn family keeps the 100-year Shore tradition rolling along.

(page 1 of 4)

There must be thousands of Skee-Ball memories out there, and Joe Sladek has a few of his own. It’s summer in the ’60s in Ocean City, N.J., and his eventual wife, Eilleen, is challenging him to multiple games of the classic arcade alley game that’s synonymous with the Shore.

And she’s winning—every time.

“I hated it, of course,” Sladek says now. “She’s still much better than me. I still can’t beat her—or anyone. But who knew, 30 years later, that I would own it?”

For Berwyn’s Sladeks, Skee-Ball has always been a family affair. The CEO’s son, Michael, is Skee-Ball, Inc.’s vice president of operations, and daughter Eilleen Graham is the company’s marketing director. Her toddler son, Liam, has quite the daily playground, and her second child was due in May. “This is like home,” Graham says. “One day, Liam will start in the plant. It’s how we all started.”

Skee-Ball—the ageless boardwalk arcade game where you roll balls up an incline and into holes for points and tickets—started 100 years ago this year. For the centennial celebration, the Sladeks’ Bucks County plant will make a retro-1920s Skee-Ball machine. Only 200 will be produced, with five set aside as Christmas gifts for the Sladek children and grandchildren. The price for each figures to be about $10,000; they’ll be sold through a yet-to-be-named high-end retailer. The centennial celebration kicks off at November’s International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo in Las Vegas.

Celebrating is out of ordinary for the Sladeks, who’ve always maintained a low profile. “We’ve been very laid-back,” the 62-year-old Sladek admits with a hearty laugh. “We’ve kept our heads down and pounded nails.”

Sladek once worked six 10-hour days a week. But over the past few years, he’s shifted more responsibility to his children and 50-some company employees. These days, he commutes an hour from Berwyn to the Chalfont headquarters, arriving at 11:30 a.m. and leaving at 4 p.m. “When we’re here, we work,” he says. “But I like my vacations, too.” (The Sladeks have homes in Ocean City and Aruba.)

At the plant, Michael explains the production process, which begins with base plywood cut by a $200,000 panel saw that routes surfaces to match specific games. Once the pieces are sanded, primed and painted, the electronics are assembled and installed in the sub-components shop.

Plant production averages about six machines a day, or 30 a week. There were years when it was 16 a day. One machine takes about eight man-hours to build. It travels through five pairs of hands—but the real measure of success is how many hands touch the machine after it’s shipped and installed somewhere around the world. Skee-Ball, Inc. has 100,000 machines—three-quarters of which are Skee-Ball—in operation around the globe, from Siberia to Beijing. Currently, Skee-Ball is the most popular in the Middle East, with South America a close second. “I’ve always said they’re everywhere—like horses--t,” Joe says.

These days, Skee-Ball shares space with newer games like Spin-N-Win, Buzz Off and last year’s Strike It Rich, a timely oil-rig-themed invention. The company’s website lists more than 30 different amusement games, including prize cranes, mini-basketball and a half-dozen Skee-Ball variations.

“I remember playing Skee-Ball as a kid—but everyone says that,” Michael says. “I was in Wildwood for the first time; I was 5 or 6 and trying to win tickets. My first prize was a weight set. I remember carrying it down the Boardwalk.”

Like his father, Michael isn’t much of a player. Nor does he have much of a chance to practice, despite having all those machines at his fingertips.

“The problem is that, once you start playing, it becomes a used game,” he admits.
 

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