Aku Aku - 1960 Stardust Slot machine

Hi, I just purchased a rare slot machine that once belonged to the Stardust Hotel and was specially made for the Aku Aku room. It was made by the Jennings Slot Machine Company. It's hard to tell in it's current paint but it's a giant Tiki head - you pull the right ear for the handle - too crazy! The award card is original and shows that the jackpot paid on three symbols showing the giant Maoi heads outside the restaurant. I fell in love with this goofy machine but I now need to figure out how it was originally painted so I can finish the restoration the previous owner started years ago. I know that at least a few other have survived but I don't believe they have original paint either. Does anbody happen to have an image showing the interior of the restaurant with these machines on location!? There must've been a stand that went with these as well. This machine was found as an empty cabinet in a Nevada rubbish many years ago and luckily was salvaged to live on. Thanks, AkuAku

Wow! What an incredible find, and how sad that it's been painted over. I hope that whoever defaced it with that horrible repaint job is roasting in a special hell designed for thoughtless morons.

If you can't find the original design documented anywhere, you might want to take it to a professional antique restoration service. They may be able to remove the most recent layer of paint and reveal what's underneath without damaging it.

Good luck!

Weblog: Eye of the Goof

[ Edited by: MrBaliHai 2007-05-06 07:38 ]

By the way, a little googling turned up this article in a back issue of Loose Change Magazine:

"Fruitless Search for World’s Ugliest Slot Machine Leads to Stardust Gem AKU AKU’s nickname is "Tiki God," but any way you look at it, it’s the World’s ugliest slot machine."

The article itself isn't online, but you should be able to order a back issues from the magazine website.

This is indeed one of coolest historic Tiki finds I have seen for a while! I wish I could help you, I have only one Aku Aku interior, it's in the Book of Tiki on page 121, and it does not show the machines, I never even knew these existed. Maybe the color was like the original Eli Hedley Moais outside, stone grey (flecked?).

I also am afraid that any old photos that might have existed have disappeared with the recent tearing down of what was left of the place. I think Mr Bali Hai's suggestion makes the most sense, check with specialists on how to reveal the original layer of paint.

Here's a nice exterior I scanned from a recent room key card--The Moai getting leied:

Welcome to TC AkuAku, what an amazing first post. Congratulations on your purchase. It is not real obvious that the machine is a tiki head until you look at it from that semi side angle. Such a clean, simple design, it will be good to know what the original paint colors were. Thanks for the great pictures, keep us posted on your journey back to originality. :)

There is a magazine called 'Loose Change Magazine', which discusses gambling in Vegas.

The abstract for the May 1997 issue reads, in part:

"May 1997 - Fruitless Search for World’s Ugliest Slot Machine Leads to Stardust Gem AKU AKU’s nickname is 'Tiki God,' but any way you look at it, it’s the World’s ugliest slot machine."

You can purchase a copy of this magazine for $5.50, plus $2.95 s/h. This article may be able to provide you with a lot of backstory around your really neat find.

AkuAku: I've sent an email with a picture of your machine to Bill Kurtz, an expert on arcade mechanisms and the author of several excellent books on pinball and slot machines. He's a super-knowledeable guy and if he can't produce an original photo of the machine, I'm sure he knows of someone who can.

I'll update you when I hear back from him.

A little cleaner scan of Bigbro's picture

Here is the only photograph I have from the interior of the Aku Aku. I got it from an old Stardust brochure that I have. It looks like this shot was taken form the casino lobby looking into the restaurant. I bet those slot machines were right on the other side of that wall.

I have one other resource that I can check. Mr. Tommy Wong is here in Denver and I have been wanting to stop by and visit with him again during the last year, this will give me a good chance to go. He was the head chef when the Aku Aku opened, he may remember something about the machines when I show him a picture. See my previous (highlighted thread) for the story about Mr. Wong.

Great find :D Cant wait to the resto :D

I don't care what anyone says, that's the coolest slot machine I've ever seen. When you figure out the original colors and repaint it, please post new photos.

Hi, well... thank you to everyone who took the time to reply to me!! You guys rock. Just to let you know I'm a specialist coin-op machine restorer and have been all my life. My parents were machine operators before I was born in '69 and they were also antique collectors, so we always had a crazy house. I started restoring machines on the school holidays from about 10, then left school at 16 in 1985 to start full time.

I've discovered many original finishes hidden under newer paint, though from my first quick look at these castings it did appear they were stripped first. I only purchased the machine on Sat afternoon, along with 8 other unrestored machines, and as I'm busy working for another collector at the moment I've had no time to investigate the machine very much *** I just went to take some more photos and quickly noticed that there is old grey paint over-spray on the interior of the rear wooden case! I also noticed that there is newer wooden side veneeer added afer the grey paint was applied. So this says that someone decided to renovate this machine at a later date with the red/blue paint and wooden sides to look like most standard slot cabinets. Imagine a row of 20 of these things painted up completely stone fleck grey!!!! Awesome

I also noticed that there's a hole for the overflow of coins in the base of the cabinet. So once the front jackpot has filled up the excess coins would normally flow into the base of a machine into a cashbox. But with this hole the coins had to drop further into a sub-base of some kind. So there was definately a matching stand for this machine, but what???????

I have come across one image of another Aku Aku machine that was sold at auction in 1989. While it does have a theme to it you can't tell that it's a head, so I don't believe it's right either. It has a random jungle camo background with some stylized shapes next to the nose. I found that photo in a 1989 Loose Change by chance a week before I found the machine, (having never known the thing existed, how's that for synchronicity?!) I was instantly interested in it as I'm a fan of Tiki design/culture.

As the machine was originally found without a mechanism I was very lucky that it still has it's original award glass, because this shows what the reel strip symobols once were. The previous owner found the correct 50c mech for this machine but it obviously has the standard fruit symbols used on most normal machines. I have a kick arse photo printer so I can make my own replacement strips using the award glass as my template.

what a fantastic find

Very cool looking machine. The award glass is fantastic. I have to agree-- a row of these, all side by side would be quite a sight!

Hi again, forgot to mention in the previous posting that the Loose Change magazine article from 1997 was partly written about this surviving machine. I only just got to read the article today and it claims that less than a dozen were made. Only two surviving machines are pictured, mine and the one I've shown above that was auctioned in '89. The article claims that the other example is how they were painted, but they don't say how they know that. Anyway it does have a larger photo of the other machine so if I can find out it was like that for sure I'll have something to base mine on. Thanks, AkuAku.

I must say that the tatoo patterns do look like 60s Polynesian Pop graphics. but it seems that the painter did not understand the classic Moai forehead/recessed eyes concept, and painted the eyes left and right of the nose. That missinterpretation is understandable, because the designer totally messed up on the forehead, making it flat and not protruding, like it should be.
I guess there's only so much one can do to alter a slot machine before it becomes unpractical.

I realize I don't know as much as most about these things, but it looks more like a suffering bastard than a moai, at least to me. It would also be kind of ironic if it were, at least in my opinion.

The Trader Vic "Suffering Bastard" (a Tiki revival term) was based on the Moai design.

Oh.
I guess if I took the time to actually read your book instead of just looking at the pretty pictures, I might have learned that? :blush:
I guess I'll just go sit in the corner and be quiet, maybe some reading? :wink:

I have come across one image of another Aku Aku machine that was sold at auction in 1989. While it does have a theme to it you can't tell that it's a head, so I don't believe it's right either. It has a random jungle camo background with some stylized shapes next to the nose. I found that photo in a 1989 Loose Change by chance a week before I found the machine

That's no random jungle camo background! That's the correct paint job your looking for! It's seems BigBro and others have figured this out but not realized you've missed it.

The stencils are from the top on each side:

Eyes:

and then some tattoos below them along the cheeks,

with the nose stencil in the middle, see the nostrils?

Of course the mouth is where the money comes out.

This is all laid over the stone fleck grey paint, so there's your answer! :wink:

[ Edited by: RatTiki 2007-05-11 20:31 ]

The camo paint version is certainly not original to when the machine was manufactured in 1960. For starters there's no wear to the handle or any other parts of the cabinet. And after 10 to 15 years or more of use the paint would be distressed. Also it's clearly been hand painted in a rough fashion and the graphics have been done with a card stencil. And I've never seen a factory made slot machine that didn't have a professional finish from new. I found the time to peel off one side of the new wood veneer from my cabinet and sure enough all that was showing was grey paint. But what I'm not sure about is what if anything was painted onto the castings. The eyes were certainly never supposed to be down on either side of the nose. The eyes look like they're where the award card and reel window are. Also the payout cup isn't the mouth as there's a mouth cast into the cabinet right above it. AkuAku

Hey there, been awhile. I'm back in Australia now with this machine safely sitting in my workshop. One of the first things i did on unpacking this piece was to strip back the red and blue paint to see what was going on underneath - well, not even a spot of any other paint there, just a burnished finish to the alloy surface. I'm pretty well certain the castings were left just like this from new, without doing anything it's already a grey stone looking finish. I also stripped off the layer of added oak side veneer, which shows the grey painted finish underneath. I tracked someone down in the US who can make me a perfect set of replacement reel strips using the award glass artwork, though still haven't found the time to organise that......give me a break, I currently own just over 100 other vintage coin-op machines all needing at least this much work or a lot more!!! And after a lot of time spent searching the net I've still not found any photos of these machines inside the AkuAku resataurant. Very frustrating to say the least. There has to be images out there somewhere.....................................................I did find photos from Thor Heyerdahls book, Aku Aku "The Secret of Easter Island" and after seeing images of the complete stone carvings, head and body, it seems to me that the reason my cabinet has shoulders down on the sides is that the missing stand was the matching body! akuaku

Wow, stripped this way, it looks better than ever, the closest to an Easter Island head it's ever been. It's so weird that they put that thin mouth under the nose, while the coin spout in itself would already have provided a perfect mouth.

Here is a recent post that is a great line up of the Aku Aku exterior changing over the years, showing how the A-frame got enveloped by the expansion of the Casino (not that that is gonna help you with finding any machine-in-situ photos):

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=1845&forum=1&start=15

And you really think there was a body-type stand for those? That would be pretty wild.

Here a pic of a modern, post-Tiki Revival slot machine, not very creative...

Hey - one thing I forgot to mention was that I figured out that the payout cup and base wood have been converted on my machine. If you check the other one out with the camo paint it has a super minimalist squared off tray below the mouth that matches the rest of the machine, and then a shorter wooden base sticking out the front. And if you look at the first photos I added of my machine last year you'll see this dorky looking rounded payout cup. I think that whoever re-vamped/modernised my machine at a later date chose to make a new and much larger casting to stop coins flying onto the floor. While I like it when that happens, and it does on most machines I've restored to a small extent, the original payout as shown on the other machine has the lowest lip I've ever seen. So coins would've flown all over the place. I plan to mock up a replacement in wood and bondo so I can have my foundry cast a new one. Once it has the smaller cup in place the cast mouth above makes a lot more sense. akuaku

Hey, it's been a while since I checked on this thread, and WOW! You've done an incredible job of restoring this vintage mechanism. I think the burnished metal looks terrific.

Here is a picture of the Aku Aku slot machine as it looked when on location at the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas.

WOW!

Awesome!!! Thanks for posting...

Cool! Still amazes me how the paint job - while in itself not bad - pretty much ignores the sculpture concept (x-ept perhaps for the nose) …the execution of which was pretty cryptic to begin with. :) But because of that, it could have used some graphic help to bring out the intended features. Something got lost in translation there.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2015-03-29 17:28 ]