Surf Champ

The 2-player version of this game is Gottlieb's 1976 'Surfer'. On the lower front of the backbox are painted two horizontal stripes. The flyer game and a Sample game shown here each show a blue stripe above a yellow stripe. Other games show a yellow stripe above a blue stripe. This may have been a change during production or a correction by the cabinet maker. For many years, the production run quantity had been reported for this Model 386 as 1,070 units. Reportedly, this number had come from Gottlieb records. We had contacted Wayne Neyens who said his old company records also indicated this 1,070 quantity. However, users have long commented that they have seen more examples of 'Surf Champ' back in the 1970s (and subsequently) than one would expect to have seen for a game with a production run quantity of 1,070 units. We then received company documentation first obtained at the 1996 public auction of Gottlieb assets held in Bensonville Illinois. It detailed sales numbers for games made during 1976-1978. For Surf Champ, it showed the sales numbers broken down by distributor and it showed a grand total of 10,070 units. This appears to be a rare instance of a typographical or recording error having occurred in other Gottlieb data. With that said, we have again increased our confirmed production run quantity to include 273 Sample games produced in 1976 that were not part of the 10,070 per handwritten documentation identified by Wayne Neyens as coming from Bob Malvasio, a draftsman for Gottlieb whose initials RHM can be found on schematics. Price to operator: $1195 FOB Chicago, per newsletter from authorized distributor dated October 1976.