As the years have moved on, so have the advancements in the slots gaming world, especially when it comes to the online world of slots gaming.  But there is one area of slots gaming which has changed very little over time and that is the symbols like those used on fruit machine slots.  A lot of which have changed very little since they were first introduced into the gaming world in the first place.  Let’s have a look at some of the most popular gaming symbols and what they mean when it comes to playing slots.

The Original Slot Symbols

When the first-ever slots game was created and released to the work in its physical form back in 1895, Charles Fey, the creator set it up to have five symbols across the three reels in play.  These original five symbols were the diamond card suit, the spades card suit, the hearts card suit, the pair of horseshoes and the bell.  The horseshoes were incorporated into the slots game because they were considered to be the symbol of luck and fortune, whilst the bell was used as it represented the name of the first-ever slot which was the Liberty Bell.

Lucky Sevens

The number seven has not always been involved in the game of slots either on the physical slot machines or online but as time has moved on, they are increasing in their popularity.  Though the number seven has always been considered to be lucky in the gaming and gambling world, there is no specific reason as to why the number seven is used, but it has brought a great deal of luck to many gamers through the years.  Whilst playing online slots, you will notice that there are not many horseshoes or pairs of horseshoes as the majority of these have been replaced by number sevens instead.  Perhaps they are considered to be just as lucky but we will never know the full reason as to why the sevens appeared in the first place.

Fruit Symbols

The reason as to why fruit symbols appeared on slots machines is an interesting one and is probably not the reason you might expect.  After just a couple of years of slot machines being released into the public space, they were banned officially and this was upsetting to many people.  Therefore, the creators of slot machines decided that they could find a way around this ban and set up a new variation of slot machine that would not get them into any sort of legal trouble.  Instead of using the stereotypical symbols such as the card suits, bells and horseshoes, all of the symbols were replaced with fruit symbols.  

The stereotypical cash prizes were replaced with sweets or bubble gum, the flavour of which correlated with the fruits aligning on the slot machine.  Though the concept of these so-called “vendor machines” was thought to be a new concept entirely, the process behind winning sweets or bubble gum was exactly the same as an original slot game as you had to spin the reels.  These were big hits across the US and the UK.