Back in the late 80's & early 90's Happ Controls led up by Frank Happ was quickly becoming the main supplier to most manufactures during the video game boom. They were never big on pinball parts mainly because the big three were still active in supplying distributors, and hence the operators. There were too many game specific parts in the pinball industry to go after such a diverse market, and video game buttons were always a "Happ button", that is what we'd call them even back then. Joysticks, steering wheels, shifters and then trackballs were the other big items. As they took over controls in the video game industry, along with coin handling and generic pinball machine supplies and so on, they surpassed Peach State, Amusement Plus, Penn Ray Sales & Competitive products. Their only real competitors were Suzo in Europe and Betson-Imperial along with Wico in the States and Canada. When Wico finally went belly up, most of the reps went to work for Happ.
Happ got purchsed by a huge investment firm in the 2002 or thereabouts and then later, that same firm bought Suzo and whoever else was competition (i.e. Mazzco). Growth by acquisition is hard to compete with as we know. Their big market now is supplying the world's Casinos. Suzo was always big on that in Europe, so now Suzo-Happ has Casino machine supplies as their main market, vending machine parts and the amusement market which according to my rep is important, but the smallest of their markets. So from a family enterprise to huge corp in a matter of 10 or so years, is a powerful thing. Starburst buys all their pinball rubbers from them, amongst other things obviously.
If I got any of these things wrong it is because I am working from memory, not from Wikipedia, or a corporate video. Collective memory beats out one memory alone in almost all cases I would think.
Toujours à la recherche de vos histoires liant Montréal et les machines à boules. Always looking for your Montreal based pinball stories.
I would still like to find the least expensive source of bulk rubber. Happ is one. Seven Star Rubber??? (but no idea wher eto buy).
Seven Star are very rare in north America... No official distributor in North America but it,s the only one to do yellow mini flipper. (Embryon Vector)