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Spooky Pinball factory tour 2024! So much space for activities! Pinball!

Don's Pinball Podcast Live Streams (YouTube)·video·16m 47s·analyzed·Oct 26, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Spooky Pinball's new expanded factory demonstrates streamlined production and hints at upcoming game announcements.

Summary

Don from Don's Pinball Podcast tours Spooky Pinball's newly expanded manufacturing facility in Benton, Wisconsin. The tour showcases the company's integrated production workflow from playfield assembly through final quality control, highlighting efficiency improvements, organizational redesigns, and a significant production capacity expansion. Leadership discusses upcoming game announcements and teases new content planned for Pinball on the Beach in February.

Key Claims

  • Spooky Pinball's new facility represents a major capacity expansion with significantly improved workflow efficiency

    high confidence · On-site tour with Spooky leadership; multiple staff members confirm 15-20 minute daily efficiency gains per department

  • Spooky Pinball will debut their next game publicly at Pinball on the Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida in February

    high confidence · Don directly states this during closing remarks; presented as official company plan

  • Every Spooky Pinball machine goes through multiple QC checkpoints including playtesting, overnight rest, secondary morning verification, and pre-shipment inspection

    high confidence · Terry and other staff members describe comprehensive QC protocol in detail during facility tour

  • The new facility eliminated the need for moving machines between buildings and up/down stairs, improving logistics

    high confidence · John Borg and Terry explicitly contrast old multi-building process with new single-floor dual-sided layout

  • Brad Duke (Looney Tunes artist) has a personal copy of Looney Tunes being held for him in Japan

    high confidence · Don observes and remarks on the specific game in the boxing area; staff confirms artist's location

Notable Quotes

  • “This shop is so much cleaner. It's so much more organized. Everything about it is just so much better than what we had before. And that's what happens when you spend 12 months designing it to be exactly what you want it to be.”

    Terry (Spooky Pinball staff)@ 8:11 — Demonstrates intentional design process and pride in new facility; signals major operational investment

  • “The workflow improvements were literally immediate. I mean, various departments literally increasing 15 to 20 minutes each day, which allows you to do more QC because now you have more time to do those things.”

    John Borg@ 14:12 — Quantifies efficiency gains and links infrastructure to quality control capacity; key business signal

  • “I play every single game. I check it head to toe before it goes out. But I'm not the only person doing that. We have multiple departments that handle that.”

    Terry (Spooky Pinball QC lead)@ 10:01 — Emphasizes quality culture and multi-layer testing protocol; addresses customer confidence

  • “So you're marrying a playfield that has been completely checked and tested head-to-toe into a cabinet that has also been completely tested head-to-toe.”

    Terry@ 10:16 — Describes comprehensive assembly QC strategy; highlights quality assurance methodology

  • “A gigantic thank you to Bug, Corwin, Charlie Emery for hosting me down there at the Spooky Pinball compound and also to Luke and the rest of the incredible team there, Tori and tech support, Luke Peters on code, everybody.”

    Don@ 15:42 — Credits key personnel including Luke Peters (code designer); indicates Luke Peters is head of code at Spooky

Entities

Spooky PinballcompanyJohn BorgpersonTerrypersonCharlie EmerypersonDonpersonLuke PeterspersonBrad Dukeperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky Pinball demonstrating confidence in increased production velocity and upcoming announcement with facility tour publicity

    high · Leadership granted full access to Don for extensive facility tour and multiple on-camera interviews; explicit teasing of next game during tour

  • ?

    business_signal: Production capacity and workflow efficiency gains quantified at 15-20 minutes per department daily, enabling increased QC throughput

    high · John Borg states: 'various departments literally increasing 15 to 20 minutes each day, which allows you to do more QC because now you have more time to do those things'

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky Pinball has completed major facility expansion to single integrated manufacturing floor, representing significant capital investment and operational restructuring

    high · Multiple explicit references to 12-month planning, single-floor dual-sided layout replacing multi-building setup, new equipment (test rigs, head cradles), elimination of stair-based logistics

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball on the Beach scheduled for February as Spooky Pinball showcase event for next unannounced game debut

    high · Don: 'Pinball on the Beach this February, which we will be at'; explicit February timeline for next game debut

  • ?

    community_signal: Don's Pinball Podcast maintains strong relationship with Spooky Pinball; granted exclusive factory access and participates in community distributor network

    high · Don granted full tour access, on-camera interviews with leadership; mentions using Mad Pinball distributor; requests viewers support distributor network

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.050

0:00
Hey everybody, Don from Don's Pinball Podcast here, coming to you from the southern regions of my home state of Wisconsin. We're on an adventure today. We're actually out on location. In the pre-COVID days of pinball, a dream was born from a garden shed in southern Wisconsin. A dream that turned into the pinball machine America's most haunted. From that dream, from those embers, the smoke rose and coalesced into a cloud that rained down the birth of the creation of spooky pinball. makers of such fine games such as alice cooper's nightmare castle rick and morty domino's pizza adventure the jetsons scooby-doo texas chainsaw massacre halloween looney tunes and game number 13 so you're right over there right over there the business incubator the white building right there is where it all started.
1:12
Following that, there were expansions which created now a sprawling campus rivaling Google, Epic Healthcare Systems, rivaling the Apple Complex, if you will, Foxconn in China. And here we are on this day in southern Wisconsin where their biggest expansion yet sits up on the hill. And we're going to check it out. So join me as we hang out with our friends at the house that Spooky built, Benton, Wisconsin's own, our buddies, the Spooky Gang. They're probably right in there. Game number 13 is probably right in there right now. We're probably not going to see that today, but let's go have some fun. All right, folks, here we are inside the modern high-tech facility of Spooky Pinball. Within these walls, the games are made, the games are played, and the games are tested. by Head Honcho. Mr. Bug, Coler, and Emery here. What's up, guy? Tested. Memories, pinball, and love being made in this building. How cool is this place? Let's just pan around here for a moment. I mean, look at this. Everything in one production facility. No stairs to jump up and down. You don't have to worry about getting your steps in because it's kind of far from the parking lot. But yeah, let's walk around. Let's walk and talk and show me all this stuff. Look at this. Look at this line of Turner Classic movies. No, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Still a TCM. I prefer this one. But in Ted Turner's tradition, these are colorized. All right, let's continue. Don is actually the most loyal TCM customer because he still owns both his movie tunes and his Texas Chainsaw Massacre. From my cold, dead hands, you will get that game.

  • “I really, I really want to see what's going on. A gigantic thank you... I can't wait for the release of the next game now that the production is, like, on super steroids.”

    Don@ 15:55 — Expresses anticipation for upcoming unannounced game; frames new facility as enabling faster release cadence

  • “Come down to Pinball on the Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida in February for the first public debut of their next game.”

    Don@ 16:07 — Official announcement that next Spooky game will debut publicly at Pinball on the Beach; February 2025 timeframe implied

    • Tech Tori
    person
    Harrison Drakeperson
    Emilyperson
    Jesseperson
    Bugperson
    Corwinperson
    Mad Pinballcompany
    Pinball Heavencompany
    Pinball on the Beachevent
    Pinball Expoevent
    America's Most Hauntedgame
    Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castlegame
    Rick and Mortygame
    Domino's Pizza Adventuregame
    The Jetsonsgame
    Scooby-Doogame
    Halloweengame
    Looney Tunesgame
    Texas Chainsaw Massacregame
  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball operating at production capacity with multiple game titles in active manufacturing simultaneously; no bottleneck signals evident

    high · Tour shows active production of Looney Tunes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and other titles with games ready to ship; no mention of delays or constraints

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Luke Peters confirmed as code designer for Spooky Pinball; appears to hold central technical role in upcoming development

    high · Don credits: 'Luke Peters on code, everybody'; explicitly named as part of core development team

  • ?

    announcement: Spooky Pinball's next game (Game #13) will have public debut at Pinball on the Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida in February

    high · Don states in closing: 'Come down to Pinball on the Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida in February for the first public debut of their next game'; implies imminent announcement

  • ?

    product_concern: Spooky implements intentional overnight sitting period in QC protocol, suggesting previous issues with immediate verification missing defects that surface after thermal cycling or component settling

    medium · Terry: 'it's very important that you let a game sit overnight. It's like a gremlins thing or something'; followed by secondary QC verification in morning

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky Pinball positioning Pinball on the Beach as primary venue for next game announcement rather than traditional expo or direct media announcement

    high · Don: 'Come down to Pinball on the Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida in February for the first public debut of their next game'; indicates deliberate community-focused reveal strategy

    • 2:57
    I'm loving it. Multiple ramps. Look at these. Look at these orange darlings. All right. So, so, so how does this, where do we start with this place? I think we should start where production starts, where they start putting together the playfields, they start putting together the cabinets, and it's all the way down at the very start of the production line, because that just makes sense. We're nearly there. Yeah, that's genius. Is this the off-gassing boxes? Off-gassed. Lots of gases being off here in spooky pinball. So yeah, we start down here with our playfield boxes where we have a bunch of Looney Tunes sitting in here. There's a bunch of Texas chainsaws sitting in here. They're so new. The playfield assemblers will come over. They'll grab a blank playfield. These have already been inspected before they go to the production line, but they'll still inspect it again when they pick it up. I dig it. I dig it. So they pick it up and they walk right over here to the playfield assembly area. So we get over to here where Jesse is assembling all of the physical pieces of the playfield. So he's tossing on all the coils, all the light boards, all the switches, all the lights. All the goodness. And he looks darn good while he does it too I sure do I mean look at this snappy outfit I dig it brother It Tom pinball podcast For class enough to join much better than I did So yeah they do all their assembly through here And if you look around us, we're just completely surrounded by nothing but really awesome parts that are organized in these awesome clear bins and the gray bins as well. All of our pinball light parts.
    4:31
    What's next, Terry? entire bins full of targets and switches and the rubbers and the light bulbs or light boards that we design here and manufacture here. I want to jump and play in those bins. I want to play in that bin. I want to pet that dog. So the playfield assemblers get done with their assembled playfield. They actually pick it up and they set it on this nice the playfield wire or grab an assembled playfield. They set it down like here and then yeah they wire it all up. They got all the coils, all the switches, all the lights, everything wired up and ready for the next station. How cool we can start from right there and then boom with wires.
    5:15
    What's next here guy? So after they're done wiring the playfields they get set back up onto the rack system. And then we have our play tester slash final assembly crew who will take them off of there and they put it into this amazing item here, the Spooky Pinball test rig. This is my favorite thing in this whole new factory is these test rigs. They're so cool. They do so many different things. As you can see, they assemble the entire game out onto this test rig. But what's nice about it is the fact that you can rotate it. So if you take a look here, Drake here is working on the bottom side of the playfield. He literally just rotated the rotisserie around so he could do some soldering, tweaking some things on the bottom side of that playfield.
    6:01
    And the entire front of these function is all the same controls as an entire pinball cabinet. So all these buttons, you have the flipper buttons so you can actually play the game and flip the flippers, but you have your menu buttons, your volume buttons, your back, your start, your launch ball, all in this control panel in the front here. And, yeah, every day they set a new play field on there. They build it out. They run all their tests on it. And then they actually can play full games of pinball on these test rigs, which is exactly what they were designed for. And on top of that, they have this wonderful feature of the light-up feature.
    6:39
    Love it. Can I get one of those for my car? Yes. Isn't that in Wayne's World or something? Yeah. I bet in TD it would get me, I think.
    6:50
    So, yeah, these guys are all jumping in between the games here, doing various tests, bottom side, top side. They're actually getting pretty close to the end of the day here as far as the assembly goes. I mean, you can see they've got all the plastics out, the sculpts on, the ramps in. Everything's looking super nice, super sexy. It's about to get run through by Drake over there. He's going to go through. He's going to play all of these games. and then they're going to get approved before they go into the official cabinet that they belong in, which we can walk over and show that now. So aside from all the big stations where the people are working on the full play fields and the test rigs, there's also a ton of assembly going on here. As you know, we do a lot of our manufacturing in-house. And something really cool that's being worked on right here is the backboards for each of the games. So getting wired up, getting tested, having the plastics put on. These will be going into some Texas Chainsaw Massacres tomorrow, I can tell, because the shoot is gray, not yellow. Emily here works on all of the different sculpts in the game, assembling plenty of cool things there. And she has the pleasure of going through these bins down here of these sculpts, of opening one up to just this whole bucket full of Wile E. Coyotes wrapped in plastic and meat grinder mechanisms, the rockets, the freezer girl Pam stuck in the freezer. So lots of really satisfying, cool organization going on that we desperately needed. This shop is so much cleaner. It's so much more organized. Everything about it is just so much better than what we had before. And that what happens when you spend 12 months designing it to be exactly what you want it to be Well would you look at that I think the gang is all here Gangs are here Zoinks
    8:30
    So over in this department, we have our cabinet guys who spend every day. They get your cabinets decaled up, put together. They start wiring them. They get the shaker installed. They get the knocker installed. They put the head on the gang and they assembled the head. And this is another really cool thing that we upgraded in this new factory that we didn't have before. and it is our cradle for the heads for them to work on. So what they do is they take the assembled head, this black head here, set it down into this cradle system, which we specifically built for this building, and beneath them is all of the parts that need to go in the heads. So your little board for your light kits that go in there, the knockers that go installed to the head, lights on the back, all these things right beneath them to set in. They can work on it at a comfortable level where everything's nice and visible, easy to access. When they're done with it, they can just pick it up, and it goes right on to one of these cabinets here. So today we're doing a test of chainsaw massacres. So, yeah, when they get done building these, they're in this track system. At the end of the day, they literally take them, and they just slide them down. This is from here to the next stage of quality control.
    9:37
    There is so much quality being controlled right here. I dig this rail and track system. Everything's on its own little cart here. Just rolling on down the line.
    9:47
    The play fields have been checked. The back boxes are loaded. Final assembly is happening. And then you're coming down here to the end of the line, where you touch each one of these, correct? Every single one of them, yeah. I play every single game. I check it head to toe before it goes out. But I'm not the only person doing that. We have multiple departments that handle that. So when those guys on the play testing race, they pull those play fields out, they come over. They set that into a cabinet that already got its whole QC process done. So you're marrying a plate field that has been completely checked and tested head-to-toe into a cabinet that has also been completely tested head-to-toe. Those get put together, and then we have a whole crew of people that follow up from it there, starting with Tech Tori here, who's working on something. Involved matchmaker here. Tech Tori. At the desk. I recognize you from some Facebook posts. Yeah. Make sure you tip your tech on the H-ment, on the weekends.
    10:44
    We'll put the Venmo here. We'll put the Venmo in. We'll add it to the box. Tip Tori. She works every nights and weekends during the week. So she works until 8 p.m. during the week taking your tech calls. And then on the weekends, also Fridays, Saturdays, she follows basically the same hours as Chip Blake. Oh. You have a hard time remembering it. So tip your tech who is sacrificing all of her weekends to make sure that you. And she's doing it all without an indoor player either. so so after they give the play fields over here and everything gets hooked up tech tori is actually the first person to go through them at that point making sure everything's neat clean working she has a large large checklist that she goes through uh head to toe every single game and then another person follows her and then i follow her after that and i play it once it gets my stamp of approval the game actually sits overnight because it's very important that you let a game sit overnight. It's like a gremlins thing or something. But you let the game sit overnight, and then another person comes in in the morning, and they play each of them again. They check everything head to toe again, and then it is okay to go out the door and into a box. So this area right now, these are Tori's games for today. Going through these Looney Tunes, these Texas Chainsaws. Some days it's all of one or the other. Some days it's mixed up. I like a day that it's mixed up. I like getting a flavor of everything in my day. But yeah, going through these, testing everything, hitting the checklists, and overall doing our very best to make sure that your quality experience is what you could dream of. So after all the QC processes are done over there, the game gets wheeled over to our boxing department where they add all of these fun things like your apron magnets, your interior graphics, the armor on the game, the finishing touches to a spooky game that just really make it look like a spooky game. Your back glass gets put in. And once they done with all that the game all cleaned up Guess what Another QC check Someone goes through it head to toe checking every aspect of it before the head officially gets folded down and it gets set onto a pallet and then into a box it goes.
    12:47
    So after it goes into the boxes and they're palleted up, they're ready to go to you. They get taken over here by a pallet jack. And then we have this whole sea of games right here that are ready to get shipped out to their customers. This one's going over to the UK, actually, Pinball Heaven. Thank you for your support. This one, check this out. This is actually the Looney Tunes artist's game. This is his personal Looney Tunes. Brad Duke, guy behind all the artwork on Looney Tunes. His game is sitting in a box that's ready for him. I think he's in, like, Japan right now or something. So waiting for him to get back. Another game from Pinball Heaven. Great distributor. And, yeah, just this whole sea of machines ready to go out the door, ready to go to you, or ready to go in this giant green trailer and get taken to a show like Pinball Expo that's coming up or Pinball on the Beach this February, which we will be at. So, yeah. So, John, what do you think of our new factory? Dude, this place is nuts. I mean, I can't think of anything else you would want in a production line. I know one thing you don't want is that staircases. No more staircases. We have to lug these things upstairs, downstairs. None of that no more. I mean, it was great for everyone's shoulders. They all had super jacked shoulders. But, yeah, no more carrying play fields up and down stairs. No more different buildings between processes for like cabinets and play field assembly, anything like that. All on one dual-sided line where everything is kept under a very watchful eye right next to each other. Apartments right next to each other. It has to save so much time from like each little step. Yeah, the workflow improvements were literally immediate. I mean, various departments literally increasing 15 to 20 minutes each day, which allows you to do more QC because now you have more time to do those things. So every aspect of it has been a major, major improvement. We're absolutely loving it. It seems like the longest time period ever is waiting for a game that you've ordered, waiting to get it. So anything that expeditiously expedites that will be exceptionally appreciated.
    14:44
    And also it's just more visually, everything about it is more visually appealing, like this wall of play fields that we get to stare at each and every day behind us. just some places some places they end the tour with the wall of microwaves we got a wall of the playfields yeah yeah not that there's anything wrong with microwave stores slightly less radiation
    15:03
    but like yeah but they're going from from populated to wired i know what i'm doing in your break room before i leave
    15:13
    it's definitely a warm one out here in wisconsin but winter's right around the corner and as the fall sets in and we transition to the snow time not only are we going to switch our tires out for the snow tires we're also going to get our pre-order deposits ready because i think they're cooking up something pretty cool back in those sheds back in those wisconsin sheds i really i really want to see what's going on a gigantic thank you to bug corwin emery for hosting me down there at the spooky compound and also to luke and the rest of the incredible team there Tori and tech support, Luke Peters on code, everybody including the distributor network that is serving to get these games out to the people. I can't wait for the release of the next game now that the production is, like, on super steroids, but hopefully without the painful side effects. If you want to get yourself a game, check them out at SpookyPinball.com. Come down to Pinball at the Beach in St. Petersburg, Florida in February for the first public debut of their next game, or reach out to a local distributor. JeffAtMadPinball.com is who I use. but go out through the network and get yourself one of these quality built affordable fun games for your home location arcade pizza parlor put it in your ex-wife's house anywhere you want they got a flavor for everybody so thanks again and I can't wait to come back