Strange Bird ! (...Well Joust...)

Muel

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Well, I don't know if this has happened to anyone else before so I thought I'd post it...

I started to srtip a Williams cab to restore a Joust.

An operator at some point had this cab painted black and had another game in it.

I could see it was previously a Joust by the raised outline of the Original Joust logo.

I started to strip the black paint - and it bubbled up within 5 seconds with Jasco Premium Remover! I was starting to unveil the former brown Joust artwork! Yea!

...but wait, I put on a 2nd coat of stripper and continued to scrape off the factory Joust paint... to unveil... Robotron 2084!! Whoa! I realize that this is the typical cab shape for Robotron, but.. it was previously a Joust.

Unfortunately there is too much physical damage to the cabinet to keep the artwork and I will continue on to restore this as a Joust. I'll be starting on the Bondo and wood filler tomorrow.

I was wondering if anyone else has come across a converted cab like this...
 

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I'm suprised that the Paint Remover didn't eat thru the Robotron finish. Williams obviously used a different type of coating product for this.

I am tempted to leave it as is... but... there's some major cab damage that needs fixing, split wood, gashes, missing chunks.

"Joust, the wannabe Robotron!"
 
It is the ultimate MultiWilliams side art :D

That is really odd. Does the Joust art look factory? Maybe someone stenciled Joust over a Robotron cab? Not sure why that would happen.

Definately something I have not een before.

Chris
 
That is a Robo cab. Joust did not have a straight line on those front edges, waist to floor.

Game manufacturers needed to stay in front of the demand curve. Guessing when it would taper off was not easy. Repaint was a lot cheaper than build new from scratch.

Cool find! Thanks for the pics.
 
As the Major said, it is uncommon but not unusual to get cabinets with non-standard paint jobs. I have a Robotron shaped cabinet that turned out to have a Stargate paint job under the black paint. I also had a Joust cabinet that turned out to have Robotron paint under it. Near the end of the run, it was not unusual for Williams to just grab whatever cabinet was handy to finish an order just so they didn't have to order a bunch of the previous game cabinets. There were probably minimum orders for cabinets so if they just needed a couple to finish out an order, it was easier to just grab the next model cabinet and paint it. Also at the start of a run they could run out of the new cabinets and just go grab one of the old ones and repaint.

As I said, uncommon, but not unusual.

ken
 
I've personally had two different Joust cabinets......where I could see Robotron art peeking out from under the Joust art.

Edward
 
Interesting!

There were probably minimum orders for cabinets so if they just needed a couple to finish out an order, it was easier to just grab the next model cabinet and paint it. Also at the start of a run they could run out of the new cabinets and just go grab one of the old ones and repaint.
 
I have a Joust which is just painted solid brown, maybe it had sideart before I got it. When I started to strip it, I found Robotron underneath. I only did a 4" square and left it as is. The control panel was drilled for Robotron but filled and redrilled for Joust, probably at the factory.
 
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