Whac-A-Mole

Whac-A-Mole is an arcade redemption game created in 1975 by the Japanese amusement manufacturer TOGO, originally released in Japan as Mogura Taiji, meaning Mole Buster. A typical cabinet stands at waist height and presents a play area with five to eight holes from which plastic moles pop up at random, along with a large soft mallet the player swings to strike them. Points are scored for each mole struck within a fixed time limit, and difficulty rises as the round progresses, with moles staying exposed for shorter periods and more of them appearing at once. The game was manufactured over the years by TOGO, Bandai and Bob's Space Racers, and in Japan it ranked as the second highest grossing electro-mechanical arcade game of both 1976 and 1977. Whac-A-Mole remains a familiar fixture of arcades, carnivals and amusement parks worldwide, and its name has become a general figure of speech for a recurring problem that keeps reappearing after being suppressed.