Feature by Frank Legato

Blondie Hits the Slots
Bally brings the 70-year icon of the American family to the casino floor

The development team at Bally Gaming knows, that these days success in high-profile slot games usually means draping them in a theme from the archives of popular culture.

For its new release in the "Thrillions" multisite progressive slot network, Bally Gaming follows up its "Betty Boop" series with the launch of a new series pulled from the funny papers: Meet the "Blondie" slot machine.

The most enduring icons of popular culture are those that have changed with the times. For Blondie, the internationally renowned comic strip created by Chic Young in 1930, changing with the times has been essential to survival.

Seventy years after its inception, Blondie is more popular than ever. Through King Features Syndicate, the comic strip currently appears in 2,300 newspapers, in 35 languages and 55 countries, with an estimated readership of 280 million. Yet, twice in its history, Blondie faced the very real possibility of extinction. In both cases, it was saved when its creators updated it to fit the times.

The first crisis came when the Great Depression hit. Young introduced the strip's main character in 1930 as "Blondie Boopadoop," a ditzy, '20s-style "flapper" with a full stable of boyfriends-one being Dagwood Bumstead, the son and heir of wealthy railroad tycoon J. Bolling Bumstead. Early gags revolved around Dagwood's ineptitude as a wealthy playboy-he would get lost in his own mansion, his polo pony would stop to eat grass in the middle of a match, and he invariably stumbled in his pursuit of Blondie.

By 1932, the worst year of the Depression, readers were in no mood to follow the antics of a bumbling rich playboy. Newspapers began dropping the strip. Chic Young responded by transforming Dagwood's character into Everyman, by having him fall in love with Blondie and marry her-a first for comic-strip characters-in defiance of the wishes of his stuffy parents, who promised to disinherit him and leave him penniless as a result.

The revitalization of the strip was complete when the nuptials took place in a much-anticipated comic on Feb. 17, 1933. After saying "I do" to Blondie, Dagwood was forced to get a job and struggle through life while raising a family-just like millions of Americans. Blondie would rebound to become the most widely read comic strip in history. The characters transcended the newspapers with 28 motion pictures (the 27 sequels, starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake, would set a record for the number of movies in a series that stands to this day). Blondie earned a permanent place in the national psyche.

The comic strip again fell on tough times when creator Chic Young died in 1973. Over 600 of the 1,600 newspapers carrying the strip immediately dropped it when Young died, even though he had been grooming his son, Dean Young, for more than a decade to take over the franchise.

Dean Young rescued Blondie by again updating the situation of the characters, replacing the classic housewife-and-dominant-male relationship with a modern marriage partnership. He transformed Blondie into an independent woman-an entrepreneur, in fact, who in 1995 opened her own successful catering business (a stroke of genius from a marketing standpoint, by the way-the opening of Blondie's catering business, in a strip on Labor Day 1995, yielded feature coverage in Time, Newsweek, Working Mother, Life and People magazines, as well as worldwide television and radio coverage).

With Blondie back on top, Dean Young is repeating the cycle-two of his daughters now work with him and artist Denis Lebrun on the strip.

Blondie Slots

Nowadays, of course, all of your really important cartoon characters have their own slot machines. Perhaps that's why Dean Young, when approached with the idea by Bally Gaming, was so enthusiastic-not only agreeing to let Bally license the name and images, but offering to help in the creation of the slot games themselves.

"Both Dean Young and Frank Caruso, the creative director for King Features Syndicate, have had a lot of creative input in the design of these games," says Pam Howatt, vice president of linked games at Bally Gaming. "We tried to stick with existing themes; the popular themes like Dagwood crashing into the mailman and Blondie spending money."

As it did with Betty Boop, Bally is kicking off the Blondie series with three reel-spinners. "A video version of Blondie is in the works now as well, planned as a late-summer release," she says, adding that the success of the Betty Boop reel-spinners prompted the decision to go with reels first. (She says no decision regarding video has been made on that Thrillions series, since the reel-spinners are still as popular as ever.)

The appeal of Betty Boop is hit frequency-both in the primary game and in the Thrillions multisite progressive jackpot. According to Howatt, that formula will be repeated for Blondie. In the primary game, players will notice that a hit of some kind occurs every three spins on average-a frequency unheard of in most single-payline, reel-spinning slots. Moreover, the bottom jackpot on each of the three games is a return of the bet, so unlike multiline video, there are no "hits" in that frequency that result in the credit meter going down.

While working multiline-video-style hit frequency into a reel spinner drops the overall payback percentage down under 90%, it's a good tradeoff; you still have the shot at a frequent big-money jackpot, but unlike most big-money progressives, smaller hits keep you in action while you go for the big prize.

The frequency of the Thrillions progressive jackpot also returns with the Blondie series. "Our goal was to have a very believable, hittable jackpot," Howatt says. "With 500 games on a link, the top jackpot should hit every three days, at an average level of around $43,000."

Thrillions, unlike other systems, is a multidenominational progressive link. Nickel, quarter and dollar slots are all linked to a single jackpot. The nickel denomination games have a five-coin maximum bet; the quarter games, three coins; the dollar games, two.

Two of the three initial reel-spinners in the series use a program similar to the hit Bally game "Roaring '20s," with the familiar free-spin bonus feature. "Blondie's Big Spender" is a five-coin buy-a-pay game with a generous pay table. Various bar combinations (as with Roaring '20s, they are various configurations of bars and blanks rather than matching bars) work with two "7" combinations (150 coins for three 7s scattered anywhere on the reels; a meaty 4,000 coins for three 7s on the payline) and a special "Blondie bar" combo that pays 1,000 coins. Three "Blondie" game logo symbols pay the progressive prize, which resets at $25,000 and is paid in one lump sum (no annuities).

In addition to the normal pay schedule is a three-panel Blondie comic strip, relating to the Blondie-shopping theme. If you line up the three panels on the payline with maximum coins wagered, it pays 30 coins and activates the bonus respin feature. The RNG picks a random number of respins. As on Roaring '20s, the reels spin wildly in different directions, landing on the same three panels and paying another 30 coins, up to nine additional times-a payout of up to 300 coins. You'll notice that this respin feature, like everything else in this game, occurs with great frequency. There's constant action in the primary game.

"Dagwood's Big Dough" is very similar to Blondie's Big Spender, except that the hit frequency is a bit lower, the re-spin feature yields 20 to 200 coins, and the theme (and comic strip bonus trigger) involves Dagwood watching a chef flip pizza dough.

"Blondie's Meal Ticket" is a bit different. A two- or three-coin multiplier, the random bonus feature involves the famous "Dagwood Sandwich." One, two or three sandwiches on the payline yields a random mystery jackpot. At max coin, one sandwich pays three to 30 coins; two pay six to 90 coins; and three pay 15 to 300 coins.

Otherwise, the primary game is very similar to Bally's "Blazing 7s," in that there are four separate "7" combinations in the paytable.

The other special feature in this game is wild symbol-a picture of Blondie and Dagwood substitutes for all other paytable symbols except the Thrillions progressive jackpot symbol.

According to Howatt, all three games were submitted in November for licensing in Nevada, Mississippi, and in all of the Native American casino jurisdictions. Final licenses were pending at press time, but the games were expected to be up and running by the end of January.

Don't miss these-the theme is irresistible, and the games themselves once again prove that if any manufacturer can breathe new life into the reel-spinning slot genre, it's Bally Gaming.