Hi Striker rings the bell for entertainment
STORY AND PHOTOS by Jim McCarty
It happens at just about any carnival, festival or fair. A pitchman stands next to a tall contraption with a bell on top holding a heavy hammer. A man comes by with his girlfriend and the pitchman has his mark. He challenges the man to win a prize for his gal by swinging the hammer and ringing the bell.
The strongman takes his mightiest swing to no avail. The marker stops at “Sick Duck.” He tries again and again but only makes it to “Oh No.”
The girlfriend wants to try it. Her first swing rings the bell. Muscles hangs his head in shame, not knowing the pitchman had tightened the tension to keep him from success.
These games — known as high strikers or strongman games — have been around for hundreds of years, entertaining crowds who want to test their skills. The games were made in Germany as far back as 300 years ago. In the U.S. they coined the term “Close but no cigar,” because the prize for ringing the bell was a cigar. Since the 1960s the best ones have been made in Missouri by the Hi Striker Co.
The Carnival Connection
Hi Striker got its start with a retired jeweler named J. J. Fuller. “He met a guy in Rolla who was running with the carnival and had a high striker,” says Alan Sachs, who owned the company before selling it to Cathy Skelton. “And he thought, well, I could build those. So he started building them in his basement. He sold a few, and over the years, he sold a few more. And then he finally got to the point where he would sell 50, and he decided, in his wisdom, that 50 was all that he wanted to build and should be built, because any more than 50 would flood the market.”
J. J. partnered with a man named Jim Hatchet, who continued to run the business the same way his predecessor did. He would build 50 of each part before assembling all 50, and stop there. Eventually Jim wanted a partner and he turned to Alan, who he knew from the Rolla Lions Club.
“Every Thursday, when we meet, he would ask me if I would be his partner in this high striker business,” Alan says. “And I said, ‘No, I’m good where I’m at.’ I was farming at the time, and I just couldn’t see any reason to get involved in whatever he was doing. I tell people how I got in the high striker business was I didn’t say no enough times.”
Alan began questioning how the business operated, and Jim couldn’t answer his questions. That led to Alan taking over the business and introducing several innovations. His first was to rename it Hi Striker. He also developed a kid-friendly version of the game with help from his then 5-year-old son, who tested each variant until he could finally ring the bell.
A Worldwide Following
For 15 years, Alan built variations of his Hi Striker and sold them all over the world — Japan, Mexico, Canada, Europe, Africa and South America. For 10 years business doubled every year. Then he got into making dunk tanks, where a person would sit on a shelf over a tank of water while someone else tried to hit a target with a ball, dropping them into the water.
“I ended up with a really good dunk tank,” recalls Alan, a member of Intercounty Electric Cooperative. “I thought it was the best one around, and a lot of customers said it was, too, and so I doubled my gross again because I sold enough of those dunk tanks that I met the dollar amount for the Hi Strikers.”
His next idea was to put the games on wheels so they could easily be moved from one event to the next. That led to making dual and triple Hi Strikers, typically with different height games or with a kid version and an adult version mounted side by side.
Cathy’s father, who owned Bill’s Custom Welding in Rolla, helped Alan design the trailers for the Hi Strikers and dunk tanks, along with some of the parts. When Alan decided to retire Cathy agreed to buy the business, along with a rental company Alan also owned. She has put her own touch on the games.
“We’ve had several customers ask for lights,” she says of the Hi Strikers. “We’re kind of trying to change things around a little bit and give a few more options to make them a little more modern. But it’s still old time. A lot of people want the old-school look. They do have electronic ones now, but we won’t get into those. We’ll keep doing the old-time ones. They’re great moneymakers for fairs, carnivals, and they’re just good fun.”
Ringing the Bell
And while Cathy isn’t one to swing the hammer, she says her husband, Scott, can ring the bell — until she makes a slight adjustment. “You can make them easy, or you can make them hard,” she says. “You can have some kid do it, and then some big muscle-man guy can’t do it because we’ve raised the tension on it. You’ve got to have the right adjustment. And you’ve also got to hit it just right.”
Years ago, the games featured wooden mallets. Alan made his own on a wood lathe and attached them to wooden handles. But the handles often broke, so he switched to a hard polymer head ranging in size from 5 pounds up to 13 pounds.
Today Hi Striker sells several sizes of the games, including the Mini Hi Striker for kids and adult versions up to 20 feet tall. They will customize them for buyers, which might include the legends on the towers, corporate logos, team colors and even various cartoon backdrops for the kid-friendly versions. One customer — the Major League Baseball All-Star Game — sends its Hi Striker back to St. James to have the backdrop replaced for the new season.
Cathy says a new dunk tank is in the works as well. This one will feature a bucket full of water that tips when the target is hit.
The games go to all kinds of events, Cathy says. “We did one for a raceway. We do a lot for pumpkin patches. We just did one for a construction company. You name it, we do it. We’re in the entertainment business and that reflects on our other side, which is our rental company. We rent inflatables and everything through Party Pro. We also have a dunk tank and Hi Strikers that can be rented.“
Ultimately, the people who buy the products Hi Striker sells make money from them, Alan says. “That’s the thing about the product — it makes money. If you’ve got any kind of crowd it is going to make money because people want to do it. They want to hear that bell ring.”
You can contact Hi Striker at 573-265-2100 and find them on Facebook or at www.histriker.com.
Email Jim McCarty at jmccarty@ruralmissouri.coop.