Are you ready for an episode? Let's call it 211. Let's hit the music and let's truncate this trunk party. Of course by that I mean I have arrived here in Schaumburg, Illinois. I've toured the expo show floor. I've seen it. I've seen the Winchester Mystery House. Worry no more or wonder no more about the mystery. It looks kind of awesome. Let's go. remember back when barrels of fun was the mystery pinball company yeah that must have been three years ago by now it's three games ago it's three games seven beers and 49 shots ago i think if was Was that Alan Jackson that did that country song that told us that? What's up, guys? We are in Schaumburg, Illinois, for the first day, day minus one, of Chicago's Pinball Expo 2025, a year that a couple of days ago I did not think was going to be as hype as it is. But, my God, like the homebrew has taken over an area rivaling the size of Jersey Jack, I think, and it's encroaching on Stern territory. There are some amazing games. Shout out to Ernie and Aaron, Fast Pinball, Homebrew Bros, and everybody else that I walked into just walking the show floor. Monsters, Inc. looks incredible for now. I haven't even fully engulfed myself into all the Homebrew stuff, but what Ernie did with Monsters, Inc. and the electrified magnetic chair rail, I've got to go check it out tomorrow. This is nuts. I haven't got to play anything yet. What had happened was on my way in, we stopped for some food. I needed to run by Guitar Center and pick up some audio equipment because in my haste, of course, I forgot something. I got some Japanese food and then boom, 10 minutes to go. I was able to walk the show floor, set up the booth and everything. The show floor looks incredible. Kerry Hardy was creeping around there earlier. I think he did a Patreon live if you want to see it for yourself. But I got to see it with my own peepers, man. Walking around with my vendor badge, happily taking in all the sights and everything. It was madness going from one thing to another. I'm going to be so overloaded the entire time I'm there. Let me start with this right off the bat. I saw it. I saw Winchester Mystery House. It looks kind of incredible, man. The first one I saw was over at Flip N Out Pinball. It's got a whole booth there. That was crazy. They had a game with some brown paper over the glass. It was like they were going to do a reveal or something later on. That didn't matter because I think I wandered upon the Barrels of Fun booth, and there was like four or five Winchester Mystery Houses all there. All the same trim level. There's only one. There's 525 available. They're sold completely through. I think there's a couple scrapping around out there, but they'll be gobbled up here pretty soon. A hell of a sellout for Barrels of Fun. And I got to say, like now that I've seen the game, ran my fingers along that, what are they calling them? Horizon Evergloss decals that are on the side. It looks pretty, man. It's like glass. Checked out the play field very briefly. Didn't get a chance to play it yet, but on looks alone, I'm fumbling pretty hard here, man. I got to admit, this thing looks great. I talked to some people earlier that had been there and got to play it, and they're very much satisfied with it. My one concern I had, and this will be put to bed tomorrow, so it's barely even worth mentioning, but how tight of a shooter is this game? My problem with Labyrinth was not the sculpts, was not that world that was created beneath the glass highway. It was the fact that to start a mode, you had to go shoot that horseshoe in the back, and all the way in the back there was just a little bit tight. It was a tight squeeze back there. It would take me a couple of shots to start a mode, and then frequently I would enter the modes. I thought the codes in the modes were very innovative. You don't get the bog of eternal stench, which would permanently stain your score if you didn't finish it correctly or you hit the wrong shot. I loved that. But very rarely would I ever complete a mode because of the tightness of all those shots. Now, Dune played much better. Playing that, I was able to actually hit shots and everything, get the worm to rise from the sand and all that business. But the theme of Dune didn't grab me. It didn't get its brown tentacles firmly into me. But damn it if Winchester frickin' Mystery House, of all things, was not completely right up my alley theme-wise. I mean, like, literally. I used to live by this place. we would drive by on the freeway constantly and see the billboards the mansions over there oh i'll take you kids there one day is what we would hear and then you know i pretty much spent all my time in great america whenever i was down in santa clara so i never got to the mystery house itself but like it was always just looming there you know this is crazy to me of all the themes they could pick it was this one from like where i grew up wild wild times so uh here we are at the 2025 25 Expo, and this game had to release now for some reason. My question is why I was perfectly positioned to purchase a game back in the days of the Dune release. Now that was just that release at the same time as Kong. That was not a long time ago. That was like April, right? When was Pentastic? I was out of Pentastic, New Robert Englunds. I went down to Florida. I went out to barrels and played Dune and then Kong was released while we were there. and then I think I flew up to Chicago and went and played Kong at the media day for that. So it was all the same time. And, you know, I went ahead and got Kong. It was Elwin. It was supposed to be completely phenomenal. It had an innovative layout and everything. You know the shots and the layout were like this is really cool Look at all the things you can do with it There like an upper play field but it down in the regular area And look there a little target with Gary Stern on it Isn't that cool? Like, it was fun. It was fun, but for whatever reason, it just didn't tickle the cockles hard enough. And then I went ahead and got it sold and out of the way. My point is, if this Winchester mystery bastard would have dropped when Dune dropped, I would have been snatching it with my little claws and everything. So why couldn't that have happened? right now I just got myself another house I'm paying off some debt you know um I can afford a game but it's really not like the most uh a fiduciarily responsible thing to do so I was like you know what this is this game looks great you guys enjoy it I love what they're doing for only 500 great make it a cool game this art looks incredible looks so much better than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland it's an original design and then it's got Carl D'Python Anghelo here uh he may be I don't want to put too much pressure on the dude, but this is a tournament player that's quite profound. I'm sure he's pretty resistant to pressure. But does Barrels have an Elwynn now? Is that where we are? There's so much hype surrounding this. The perfect storm. The phone was back. You've heard it. You've heard it. I've seen it. And I can say now, if you've pre-ordered this game, I think you're good, man. I think you're good. I don't know that we're going to see a ton of people just dropping the deposits later on like we're seeing with Alice or some other games. uh i think they'll be dropping deposits maybe for slightly more than what they paid for them man uh this game looks great just on the graphics alone and then i love the layout the pedigree that's in there um you know i'm cautious about the code only being 25 but mr sunshine himself carrie hardy just listened to him again and he had reiterated that uh you know some of the shots he was having trouble with or some of the the first instances of some code issues have already been mitigated so he kind of saw he was getting some pressure there some pushback and he's like whoa it's not as serious as all that guys um and then you know listening to my boy Russell do talk about how he was playing the game shooting it the ball went behind that Peppers ghost glass straight out of the haunted mansion I love that and then like the spider web projection popped up there like in line with where your ball was like it was trapped in there I haven't even seen this in person and I'm like really excited about it. I was a little bit bummed going by the flipping out booth when I saw there was just one game there and I'm like man this game is going to get some lines. It was in the same spot on the show floor as Alice was last year. This time though I saw like at least another four maybe five over at the barrels booth so I don't think it'll be a problem getting your hands on this. It looks cool man. This is as close as we're going to get to a Haunted Mansion pinball machine probably ever, and definitely not for at least a decade, because that is a hard license to nail down. Guys, if you know anybody at Disney, hook a brother up, man. Let me get in there, and it works. I don't care who makes it. I want somebody to make a Haunted Mansion machine. Until that happens, this is it, man. The kooky haunted house with the cool shots in it, the interesting platter diverter. Even though the Seance multiball call-out is a bit cringe, I think the kids would say it's a little 6'7", if you know what I mean, and I think you do. I think the whole package hopefully will come together. It's got potential. It's got potential. Remember back in physics in eighth grade, we talked about kinetic energy and potential energy? Well, if Colin has the kineticist, I'm the potentiist, right? Right now, this is full of potential energy if it's managed properly, and that's the question I have to the game itself, and it will be answered tomorrow. So I just wanted to cut this show and get my first thoughts out to everybody. Seeing the thing, rubbing my greasy nacho-stained fingers along it, the Evergloss, I'm digging it, man. Call it a rad cow, call it your mama. I love this when it comes to pinball. $13,000 Stern machine, didn't even have the foil accents on the decal, let alone a rad cow. Jersey Jacks over here around the corner in Elk Grove Village slapping rad cows on games, making them awesome. Putting matte textures on them for their wizard editions, where they're CE editions. Wizard editions has the Radcals on it. It's six times more the cost of a decal. But I mean, isn't it kind of worth it? Isn't it kind of worth it? The only thing I'm going to have to do, I forgot to do this, guys. I ran out of time. I barely made it here myself, let alone with all my equipment. I came here with about 85% of what I planned to bring here. I wanted to 3D print a coin return and a coin slot and embed magnets in them and just go stick it to the door on the barrels games. I think I may still do that. And would it be funny to offer that as a mod? So if you have a barrels of fun game and you want a way to cosmetically add the coin slots, the extra ones, so it doesn't look like you're playing a game with one shoe, maybe get at me. Maybe I'll do that just as a service to the community. I'll make them available. That'll be my new chicken bucket. Will be my falsies. I'll call them the falsie coin slot for your barrels of fun game. just to bring that symmetry back into harmony. That's what I think it needs. Oh, my goodness. I can't wait to see everybody tomorrow. This is going to be wild. I'll probably be there at 8 a.m. So the booth itself is set up. There's two tables. I swear to cripes, I hope there's power there. There was supposed to be power. We'll make sure there's power there. And then the toppers will start arriving. I have in tow my X-Men topper, which has been spoken for, so somebody will be taking that home at the end of the show. to date I still have my King Kong barrels of bananas topper that will be available you know my toppers I try to keep them balanced between cost of materials cost of time but still keeping them like you know budget friendly so I sell them for around $450 or so given all the time this Kong topper took a lot of time just to put together just to make let alone like to engineer and get it to work it got awesome cob led lightings in there it interacts with music and a game and it has separate leds that interact with the GI of the game It super fun Uh, ask the fellowship, uh, the pinball group over there in Bellingham. They're digging it. So I made one for them. I have refined the design a little bit and improved upon it. And I have made a second one. And given that this thing took me like a week to fabricate it, I don't know if I'm going to make any more of them. So there is one that's available and I'm just going to do, best offer, man. I don't want to take this thing home with me. I mean, I will. If my best offer is 60 bucks, I'll take it home. But if you want it, maybe let me know. And let's just entertain some offers, man. Because it comes on a powder-coated plate that'll bolt directly on your Stern machine. Put it on whatever machine you want. It'll hook up to basically anything. Put it on D&D if you want to. But the thing looks cool. Come and check it out. Come and check it out. It'll be awesome. And hopefully there's some more because I do have a ton of things to give away. So bring in the homebrew topper. I know you're looking at in the corner of the room like, should I really bring this in? I don't want to be embarrassed. Dude, bring it. Take a prize home with you. I made a bunch of trophies. You'll get yourself a trophy as long as there's not more than like 20 people to enter this thing. It's going to be super fun. And I think there's just this is I could feel it, man. This is going to be a good show. There's just like creativity flowing everywhere. The homebrew area, if you remember from last year, years before, it seems about four times the size now. It's incredible. We got the Bash Pinball Podcast is there. They've got a booth right next to Roger Sharp. He's got a booth. What is he doing? Is he signing action figures? He can sign my forehead. I'll go play Ninja Eclipse with him again. I ran into Chris Turner. He's over there with three Merlin's Magical Arcades, one of which is still available. Two have sold. And there's a Ninja Eclipse over there. Probably the nicest guy in the show floor you're going to run into. Speaking of running into the nice guys, shout out to America's own David Fix. I went over to the Bumper Blast event earlier today, got my ticket, got myself up there, and got to sit at the round table with the mustachioed man himself, Mr. David Fix. He's doing well. He's doing well. We exchanged some stories. We got all caught up. I do have a David Fix-inspired T-shirt for sale from the booth. We're custom printing them, so just come up with your size. And as long as it's in stock, pick a color, and we'll make it for you. We're taking suggested donations to help cover costs. I've got to pay for this dang booth I got. But other than that, it's going to be the cool thing of the show. I think I've got enough supplies to make 30 or so. So let's sell these things out, man. I have other designs and things too. So if you want to come by the booth and pick something out, it's fun, man. We'll make it right there in front of you like I'm a pastry chef or something doing crepes. Not only we're doing t-shirts in your sides. It's going to be cool. So that's super fun. What else happened today? We got Kong accessories. How did Stern releasing an accessory package for the newest Keith Elwin game out there become like the least interesting thing that happened today? Or at least this weekend. Man, I love that they did this going into Expo. That was great. I know they released the Venom accessories right before TPF, so we got to see that swollen testicle shooter rod that even though I don't have venom anymore and I know people are giving me feedback that I talk about venom all the time I still kind of have a soft spot for the silly little game and I bought myself that $200 shooter rod don't tell my wife just to have it because it's a big black swollen pulsating alien orb thing and I just had to have it man I had to have it it makes me it makes me happy I keep it in a drawer I don't take it out and play with it very often but when I do look at it I'm just it's one of those things I'm just glad I have it somewhere because it's so silly it's so silly well here we are again major show right arguably the biggest show of the year as far as like industry um and we got a slew of accessories so how are they well they they must have had extra gongs laid out laying around shout out to uh canada's pinball podcast made that joke uh so they went the john wick approach of taking the token and making that the shooter rod sure now i get it for john wick like this was a movie prop we've already used it in the game it's already approved uh the licensor has already said that this art is okay to use let's just make that the shooter rod i get it but for kong shouldn't this have been like a big monkey fist or i don't know a banana come on man i made a banana um it could have been a banana it could have been a monkey fist it could have been a palm tree but instead it's the same gong is in the game I get it. I want to go put my hands on it. I'm sure it was there at the show, but I was very short on time. It was like 10 minutes before they kicked us out. So I was running around playing Supermarket Sweep trying to see everything before the buzzer. But we'll go check it out first thing in the morning tomorrow. I'm going to get in before the show opens because my damn vendor. I love my vendor badge, man, whenever you can get it. So I'll be there. I think I might have a couple of extra. Let's see how drunk I get. So it looks fine. It looks fine. I think it's $200 and something. I think the armor is 270. The armor is standard powder coat, stern color, and it's monkey chains. The thing is, with this whole gong thing, they didn't have to follow anybody's style guide. Like, they could have thought out of every box and did, like, a whole bunch of bananas or a monkey paw holding a banana or, like, a banana peel or something. You know, I'm just spitballing here. So it's chains. It makes sense, especially when you get to the topper. It's $270, which of course is too many dollars. However, I got to think Stern has to make this thing. Stern has to go get them cut, get a powder coated. That's got a cost. That's going to be more than just getting the wholesale premium armor from wherever their supplier is. So there's got to be a markup there. And then what? Do they add like to it And like that what they making on these things You know they selling them for Is it costing Stern like So then you know with some shipping and then they add a markup on it and then that's kind of where they arrive at it. Yeah, and silly me. I'm thinking, well, I can have armor made and powder coated cheaper than that Stern. And it's like, well, yeah, but I have to go, you know, collaborate on the design, get the stuff cut, import it into the country, take it to a powder coater, drop it off, buy some powder to handle that, figure out what I want the design to even look like, what color I want. And then, yes, I can get that done for less than $270, but it's not exactly free of a time investment. This, you could just call up your distributor, Jeff at MadPinball.com, Corbin at MadPinball.com, tell them I sent you, and say, hey, send me the slew of accessories, and then you just put your phone down and wait for it to show up, and then you just put it on. So there is something to be said about the value of convenience. But yeah, there it is. Is that worth it to you? I don't know. I wish it was powder-coated a different color. Whatever. I had some armor made that looked like the LE, and then I did gold with black underlay, and I think that was really sick looking. So for a premium, there's a lot of gold in the game. I think a tarnished kind of gold powder coat really works. You could still get this stern armor and take it to a powder coat or have them blast off that black and do it whatever color you want and then pick your reflective foil paper from Michael's, the craft shop, get creative with it, and make it your own. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that? Let's go to the topper. So apparently they had extra monkeys left over. They did the Godzilla thing again where they already have this sculpt. It's approved. It's already made. We've got crates and crates of them. Throw it up there. We'll make the monkey dance around. I like that they put the chains on them. That was something that some modders had already been putting on the monkey in the box. So, yeah, you chain the monkey up there. There's a big marquee. I love the RGB lighting effects that are in there. The best part of this topper is going to be that kinetic motion of having, I guess, another Kong that's up there. It would be silly to put this on the Pro, right, because the Kong in the box is stationary, and the one up on top is going to be dancing around, juking and jiving. So, yeah, I get it. I can see it. I can see it. You can change the marquee to whatever letters you want. I'm sure some people are going to have fun with that, and I'm sure it's not going to go sideways at all. This topper with the dancing monkey in the chains is $1,400. And, I mean, like, at least it's not $17. At least it's not $17.99, right? I would feel a little more worse about that. It's $1,400, $13.99. The best part of this topper is going to be, like all of other Sterns, first-party toppers, the interactivity you get with the lights and the game that can't be replicated easily at all. I did see the Electric Playgrounds Kong topper. That thing was around $800. And I think it achieves a lot of that same kind of kinetic satisfaction there that this one does for about half the price. So it kind of depends on what your market is. Do you want nothing but first-party stern toppers? Well, there you go. It's right there. Do you want to save some money with something cool with some projection effects and stuff? Then you can come in at the $800 level here with the Electric Playground. I believe they're still making these things. Do you have $400 kicking around? You just want something that looks like a cool crate of bananas with two monkey arms on it with all kinds of interactive cool lights. Then you come by my booth and you grab this before someone else does, man. Only two have ever been made. Probably only two are ever going to get made. And I got one here on the show for you can take with you today. Go bolt it on. How about that? So I think we have each price point covered. You know, I'm not getting rich off these things. I make them for myself. I make them for my customers when I send them the game. I decided to make another one to bring here to show off. I think the damn thing's cool, and I'm probably going to go put it on Star Wars if nobody buys it from me, because I just like looking up at the monkey fists in the box of bananas. It makes me smile. It makes me smile. So there's going to be a ton more of this coming. We're going to get to play things for the first time. I touched a predator today, which is a crime that I was able to touch a predator. And that flip in the script, instead of the predator touching me, I'm touching the predator. I got to touch Predator way before Cengiz did, which is like a crime against humanity, man. This is like the man that loves Predator more than anybody else that's being loud and vocal about it. And the poor guy can't even get his hands on one, and there was a bunch of them here. Aaron Davis was taking it road tripping around the U.S., man, so that's fun. So tomorrow, I'm going to go play Winchester Mystery Castle probably first off. Then I'm going to go play Predator, and then I'm going to hang out in the homebrew area, and then the show is probably going to close. I'm not even going to leave that area because there's so much going on there. Bring in your toppers. If you come to the show, make sure you get a raffle ticket. Vote for your favorite one. We'll be tallying them up and giving away prizes, like seriously cool prizes donated from Stern, donated from Electric Playground. Thank you, guys. You guys are awesome. Donated from the Missing Pin Company and others. And we're going to give away at least one play field to somebody that just votes in it. So Saturday at 1 p.m. is the time that we're doing that. it's gonna be super fun man i'm excited about this expo uh if you see me let's go hang out uh let's grab some nachos let's grab some drinks i'm gonna grab probably a diet coke because man daddy's tired it's load-in day tomorrow man let's go as always that's don's pinball podcast at gmail.com you know how to get me over there Head up on the Discord. You guys find me there as well. I think I have a TikTok maybe. Who knows? YouTube.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast for all the latest live streams and such. Also, Patreon.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast. We're doing live streams there. Email jeffatmadpinball.com, code WAP. Get yourself some stuff. Who wants a David Fix shirt?