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Did any Groetchen Imp ever-- EVER-- fool ANYONE into believing it's a RADIO?!?

Who cares! I find the radio cover to be a great & interesting talking point of the machine. Lets not Forget in that era how well known were radios.

Not to forget..........How many Bartenders or Cigar Store owners would have had a radio on the counter?
Apparently the slick designers of these imitation radios thought that law enforcement officers were blind.
The best one of all, is the Rock-Ola "Radio Wizard". Now that looks more like a radio than any of the others.
It would have faked you out even more, if they had put a couple of fake knobs down below. It is sort of a
'Blah' machine, when it comes to design, but is quite different, and there are not a great number around.
The one I bought many years ago, is totally original, and is painted smooth brown, where as most of the
others I have seen, are wrinkle brown or tan.

Think you haven't seen pages 70 and 71 of Automatic Pleasures (available from Amazon) which features two photos from the 1930's of the full scale disguise via factory made 'hideaway cabinets' deliberately designed to look like free-standing radios but actually concealing full scale slots- one pic features a 1933 Mills Extraordinary- quite convincing when closed, complete with buttons. Have any survived? They'd be a great addition to any collection

I read somewhere that it's not that the police didn't know that these were gambling devices, but gave them an excuse to look the other way.

I heard a story once where a sheriff had received a call complainant aboout the volunteer fire department's annual casino night fundraiser. The sheriff called up the fire department and told them of the complaint and said he'd be over in an hour or so to "check it out".

automaticpleasures wrote:Think you haven't seen pages 70 and 71 of Automatic Pleasures (available from Amazon) which features two photos from the 1930's of the full scale disguise via factory made 'hideaway cabinets' deliberately designed to look like free-standing radios but actually concealing full scale slots- one pic features a 1933 Mills Extraordinary- quite convincing when closed, complete with buttons. Have any survived? They'd be a great addition to any collection

First of all, I have enjoyed all your books. Secondly, I would love to find one of those hideaway slot cabinets,
disguised to look like a floor radio. That would be more period, as they didn't have tiny radios the size of
an "IMP" in those days. So who would they have been trying to fool with them? Surely not the law.

I'd like to see an example of any production radio set at the time (circa 1940-1950) that wasn't at least-- at least-- twice the size of an IMP. They had to be, to hold the vacuum tubes, wiring, and other components, since transistors weren't even invented until 1947-48 and didn't attain even nominal production levels until several years after that. There's no cord, and if it was supposed to run on batteries, it would likely have to be even bigger. So, from a distance, anybody at the time with half a brain could see that an IMP couldn't possibly be a radio. Getting a closer look makes matters even worse: it's painfully obvious that the stamped-and-painted "radio dial" flap is exactly that, and that this dummy tuner is faked so poorly that they didn't even bother putting any sort of indicator on it, not even a painted-on one. Also, where's the speaker? Is it supposed to be located behind the solid-thick, die-cast louver-like pattern winding along the bottom front and left side? Did any radios ever actually look like that? And are we to suppose the pegs sticking out to the right are volume and tuning knobs? The punchline is that many if not most IMPs advertise themselves as a "Ball Gum Vendor" right on the front, barely half an inch below the fatuous fake-flap furtively fabricated to fool the fuzz. I think Bill put it best when he said that these faux-radio designers must have believed that all law enforcement officers were blind. I'd bet you'd have better luck "disguising" your car as a cement truck!