Over at Aussie Arcade, we’ve been exchanging trivia questions helping to prep Dr John for his Hard Quiz (which has been recorded now, but hasn’t aired yet).
One of the questions was “What pinball and what year had the longest flipper bats and how long were they?”
However, there is some doubt as to whether the correct answer might be Hercules.
I can’t find any data on the actual flipper length. There is a TNT video that shows the flippers close up. They seem to be near 5" in length, but I can’t tell whether they might be just longer or just shorter.
Does anyone happen to know, or have access to a Hercules and could measure the flippers?
@pinballjoe has one at his place. I’m fairly sure those wooden bats are longer than 5 inches.
EDIT: Because I’m really bored, I watched that TNT video. If you pause at 5:50, the cue ball is on the right flipper, almost perfectly at the top end. If we assume this is a standard American cue ball, that’s 2.25 inches. It looks to me like you could easily fit two of them on a flipper with plenty of room to spare, so I’m going to conservatively guesstimate the length of a Hercules flipper bat to be around 6 inches.
I agree, you’d definitely fit two of the balls onto a flipper on that Hercules. If the ball is indeed 2.25 inches, judging by the video, flipper length would be close to 5 or 5.5 inches, I think. But it looks like there are various sizes of balls for pool tables…
My guesstimate from playing the thing semi-regularly for a few years is that the flippers are closer to 6 inches than 5, and maybe a little over. Can get above-the-glass measurements pretty easily per @YeOldPinPlayer.
The Hercules flippers look to be just about 6" plus rubbers by my pocket measuring tape. Didn’t get a chance to pull the glass today, will get actual measurements early next week if possible.
He measured the same one I would have plus his word is Law so there you have it. A couple of our league members work there. We’ll post updated info when it becomes available.
