I'm kind of bemused by Gottlieb calling this one "Hi Dolly," instead of "Hello, Dolly!," the musical that came out the year before, which this table is clearly based on.
Did they deliberately switch up the name because they thought it somehow sounded better? Or was the game unlicensed, therefore necessitating a name variation?
Based on games like
Beat Time, I'm inclined towards the latter. But it also seems to suggest that pinball makers were able to skate this stuff through on the 'parody / tribute' angle simply by changing a few details. For example, the original story was set during the turn of the century, with "Dolly" being a widowed, NYC-based matchmaker. In this game however, the era is now semi-modern, and Dolly has become a showgirl working the telephone.
It also seems kind of funny to be doing pinballs based on musicals in the mid-60's. Now forties and fifties I could sort of see, but how many theatre-goers in the sixties were playing pinball?
Then again, there's always the 'pretty blonde' factor, which never did need much of a pretext(!)
