Pete Feuer, the man whose design and marketing efforts went far in the creation of the counter-top touchscreen boom, died in his sleep on April 8, 2017 at age 74. As the founder of Merit Industries, he and his sales manager Mort Ansky did much to push this class of street game onto the market and up the charts before competition from smart phone games appeared and overtook the touchscreen collections. However, he’d sold his company to Rowe International before touchscreens eclipsed. (Rowe, in turn, enjoyed many good years with this class of game before spinning the Merit division off and then shutting it down.)
“Peter was an amazing guy,” said Ansky. “I lost a good friend. I worked for him for nine years. We sold machines together. We roomed together at some shows. He was great in the design department, a genius at tweaking new games for better player appeal. It’s a big loss,” he added.
Pete is survived by his wife Adrienne, daughters Lindsay, Ashley and Laura, five grandchildren and a great-grandson named Riley. Friends were invited to send contributions in his memory to the American Diabetes Association or to the Shappell Center of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., to which he contributed generous funding during his later years. Rest in peace.