ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
I
Assistant Editor
he little wooden man
has been boozing it
up. Now he's alone, in.
a dark cellar.
Pop! Out of a barrel
jumps a ghostly figure. Zap!
From around the corner
comes the devil. Zing! It's a
spooky old skeleton in the
doorway.
But maybe moralizing
machines aren't your style.
So what about the kindly
old grandmother who
dispenses fortunes like "You
are an impulsive person,
given to exclaim in ecstasy if
things please you"? Or the
massive old poster inviting
viewers to see films
"Exposing the Sex-Mad
Maniacs of the Underworld"
and the execution of the
Lindbergh baby kidnapper,
Bruno Hauptmann? Or a
carved wooden doll purpor-
ting to be real, live Siamese
twins?
"Hurry, hurry! Step right
up and see the Siamese
twins!" calls Marvin
Yagoda, owner of , this in-
comparable establishment.
He points to the doll, more
than 70 years old and only
slightly chipped.
"It used to be on display at
what we call a 'ding show' —
they would always ding you
on the head for a couple
more bucks," Mr. Yagoda
says. " 'Help support these
poor children. Help them get
a college education.' Most
people were so far back they
couldn't see it wasn't real."
Meet Marvin of Marvin's
.
Marvelous Mechanical Mu-
seum. Wearing American-
flag suspenders topped with
a dime stuck on a safety pin
— "It's my dime-on-pin. Get
it?" — he's part Peter Pan,
part P.T. Barnum. Ten years
ago he opened the
Mechanical Museum, home
to hundreds of pinball and
fortune-telling machines,
talking animal displays and
carousels. He's been the
darling of children, yeshiva
students and businessmen
alike ever since.
It all started in the late
1950s, when Marvin Yagoda
was a student at the Univer-
sity of Michigan. He saw a
nickelodeon one afternoon,
"and I decided I wanted one
for myself. That set me on a
search."
It didn't take long to find
his first nickelodeon, then
another and another. "Then
I just went crazy," he says.
"I had 13 nickelodeons in my
home. There was no room to
move."
But that didn't stop him
from buying the slot
machines and the self-
playing violin.
"I like odd and bizarre
things," Mr. Yagoda ex-
plains. "I don't like the or-
dinary. I like the extraor-
dinary."
After he opened Marvelous
Marvin's, Mr. Yagoda had
plenty of space for his toys.
Finding them is easier than
one might expect.
"A lot of these things are
stored in attics and
basements," he says. "Peo-
ple actually want to get rid
of them."
He also finds them in col-
lectors' books and picks up
many when traveling to
England. Most of the
"working models,"
mechanized displays that
's wonderful. 's marvelous, 's Marvin, ..the man behind a museum like no other.
50 FRIDAY, MAY 8, 1992