Taxi, Williams, 1988.
Hoo boy is this a 1980s machine.
The framing of this backglass is over the right shoulder of a taxi driver (United States, so he sits on the left of the car) who’s stopped at a red light. As the viewer, you’re presumably either in the back seat or straddling the center console.
The driver is a bit scary looking, like if Rudy from Funhouse became real, six foot tall, and got a job. He’s wearing a red newsboy cap with three buttons on it: MIA/POW, Say NO To Drugs, and a third I can’t make out. He’s also wearing what appears to be green camo with a green patch on the shoulder.
In front of our hero’s tax from left to right, Marilyn Monroe in her famous red dress stands with two green suitcases, Russian President Gorbachev waves while holding a briefcase, Pinbot stands back from the curb, Dracula raises a hand from behind his cape, and Santa Clause is running up the street to wave down the taxi.
Marilyn is not actually Marilyn for the purposes of the game, by the way. Williams had a problem getting the rights to Marilyn Monroe’s likeness, according to the Internet Pinball Database, and the character was renamed Lola for the purposes of the game. Williams modified the art for all but 200 machines that had already shipped, and sometimes she was a brunette and sometimes a redhead. According to the same source, she was named for The Kinks song Lola.
I’m pretty sure that makes her the first official trans person represented in pinball. Good.
The building Santa is running past has a Williams Pinball Palace sign on the corner, and a placard advertising “The greatest pinball games: Cyclone, PinBot, Space Station, High Speed, Bonzai Run, Comet, and Big Guns”. Nice product placement, there, Williams
We can also see the taxi’s rear view mirror which is half painted with the driver’s right eye and ear reflected in it, and half chromed so we can see what’s behind the machine (in this case a wall and part of a basketball game). The car’s hood is of course taxi yellow, the dashboard looks so squared off it could’ve been made of lego brick, and the meter doubles as a jackpot display.
If you look at the other machines tagged 80s aesthetic on here you’ll find that Taxi fits the “we’ll turn any concept into a pinball machine” feel of that decade, which might be why the 1990s were so incredibly dominated by branded properties.