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Ep 109: Jersey Jack has Harry Potter?!

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 20m·analyzed·May 17, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

JJP Harry Potter license rumor emerges via deleted post; Allentown Pin Fest praised.

Summary

Loser Kid Pinball Podcast episode 109 features guests Christian and Sarah Line discussing Allentown Pin Fest and a major rumor: Jersey Jack Pinball reportedly has or is pursuing the Harry Potter license. Joe Camico allegedly posted a mock-up (using Christopher Franchi's art on a Stern machine) to Facebook over the weekend before deleting it, sparking speculation about licensing negotiations and Camico's involvement in the Harry Potter IP pursuit.

Key Claims

  • Jersey Jack Pinball has the Harry Potter license

    low confidence · Josh Roop and Scott Larson discussing a post by Joe Camico (now deleted) that announced JJP has Harry Potter; Christian and Sarah Line present as guests

  • Joe Camico posted a mock-up of Harry Potter on Facebook that has since been deleted

    medium confidence · Josh Roop confirmed the post was made over the weekend and deleted; mock-up featured Christopher Franchi's art on a Stern prototype

  • The mock-up used Christopher Franchi's artwork and a Stern machine prototype

    high confidence · Christian Line states 'I can confirm that the mock-up that was posted on that Facebook post was indeed Christopher Franchi's art, and that was a Stern machine prototype'

  • Joe Camico has been pursuing the Harry Potter license and has the connections to acquire it

    medium confidence · Josh Roop: 'when we had Joe Camico on our show, he brought up a couple of times that he was going after the Harry Potter license. This was a license that if anyone was going to get, it was going to be Joe.'

  • Joe Camico developed a Harry Potter mobile game

    high confidence · Scott Larson confirms Camico 'did the mobile game too'

  • The Harry Potter license requires special connections to J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros.

    medium confidence · Christian Line: 'a lot of it is speculation, right? They brought it. I know for sure that because that image was made, that it was brought to WB and to J.K. Rowling'

  • Allentown Pin Fest is held at a fairgrounds in Allentown, Pennsylvania and features food, vendors, swap meet, and IFPA-sanctioned tournament

    high confidence · Christian Line detailed description of event structure and offerings

  • Multiple major pinball games were released simultaneously, creating a crowded market

    high confidence · Josh Roop: 'everybody held back for about six to eight months' and then released all games at once, comparing to Braveheart 'hold, hold' scene

Notable Quotes

  • “Jersey Jack has Harry Potter?!”

    Josh Roop (episode title) @ N/A — Episode title announcing the main rumor topic

  • “I can confirm that the mock-up that was posted on that Facebook post was indeed Christopher Franchi's art, and that was a Stern machine prototype that he was going to use to hopefully sell this game to WB as a machine that could be made.”

    Christian Line @ N/A — Direct confirmation of the deleted post's contents and origin

  • “This was a license that if anyone was going to get, it was going to be Joe. And he was going to do it right. And if anyone was going to design it, it was going to be Joe.”

    Josh Roop @ N/A — Establishes Joe Camico as the industry's expected choice for Harry Potter

  • “Woman scorned. That's exactly what I thought in my head. I thought this is a woman scorned. There's some sour grapes.”

    Scott Larson @ N/A — Speculation about Camico's motivation for the dramatic post and deletion

  • “It's been crazy. I don't know. It's been like a thyroid storm level of pinball. All the games released at once.”

    Christian Line @ N/A — Description of market saturation with simultaneous game releases

  • “They could even like draw straws to see who gets to release first. I mean, we can make it fair. Just my thoughts. My two cents.”

    Josh Roop @ N/A — Humorous commentary on manufacturers not coordinating release dates

  • “So sus. So weird.”

    Josh Roop (via Scott Larson paraphrasing) @ N/A — Immediate reaction to the suspicious nature of the deleted post

  • “We live an hour and a half away and we may or may not have been known to drive there just to get a sandwich and then drive home.”

    Christian Line @ N/A — Enthusiastic endorsement of Allentown Pin Fest's pretzel sandwiches

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyJoe CamicopersonChristian LinepersonSarah LinepersonJosh RooppersonScott LarsonpersonChristopher Franchiperson

Signals

  • ?

    leak_detection: Joe Camico posted a mock-up of a Harry Potter pinball game on Facebook featuring Christopher Franchi's art on a Stern prototype, then deleted the post. Post contained JJP (Jersey Jack Pinball) licensing announcement.

    high · Christian Line confirmed: 'I can confirm that the mock-up that was posted on that Facebook post was indeed Christopher Franchi's art, and that was a Stern machine prototype'; Josh Roop noted post was deleted but 'everybody's screen grabbed it'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Joe Camico reportedly pursuing Harry Potter license for pinball; image brought to Warner Bros and J.K. Rowling for approval. Camico has prior Harry Potter mobile game experience.

    medium · Christian Line: 'I know for sure that because that image was made, that it was brought to WB and to J.K. Rowling'; Josh Roop: 'when we had Joe Camico on our show, he brought up a couple of times that he was going after the Harry Potter license'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Harry Potter pinball game allegedly in development by Jersey Jack Pinball, leaked via now-deleted social media post featuring prototype mock-up.

    low · Deleted post by Joe Camico announcing JJP has Harry Potter; mock-up showed Stern prototype with Christopher Franchi art

  • $

    market_signal: Multiple pinball manufacturers released games in rapid succession after a 6-8 month lull, creating market saturation and competitive release timing.

    high · Josh Roop: 'everybody held back for about six to eight months. It's like in Braveheart where they're like, hold, hold... And then they released the Kraken'; discussion of James Bond followed by wave of new releases

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.243

0:00
Oh, we're on another episode. Thanks for tuning in. It's the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, episode 109. I'm your host, Josh Roop. With me, my co-captain, as always, Scott Larson. And Scott, we've had some amazing news. We've got great guests on this evening. I'm hyped. It's been three weeks. It's been a minute since we've been on the mic. we waited especially for these guests because we couldn't get it to work last week and this week it's like no the uh you know the universe aligned and they gave us a hot topic a hot topic for uh by the way if you're not watching the video you totally missed the reason why i went yes um went full captain underpants mode but uh absolutely i'm super excited about this and the uh The news fairies decided to drop a bomb on us over the weekend. So we're going to talk about that. But first, if you're going to get a pinball machine, who are you going to get from, Josh? I've been blowing up Zach's phone this last week, last two weeks, actually, because I've had a couple of games on order.
1:11
Jurassic Park Premium's coming out. I've got an Iron Maiden Pro coming. I've got a Foo Fighters Pro coming. I'm starting to run out of space. I'm going to figure out where to put my Deadpool Pro. I'm like, life is good right now, right? So I always call flipping out pinball. It's Zach Nicole. Many. I actually personally messaged them through messenger. I feel like Zach, uh, it's easy to respond and then, you know, it's easy to stay on track of things. But if you're looking for that game, it doesn't matter who it's from. He, he gets it all. If you want world one, 2.0, you know, it's probably not gonna be likely, but then again, Hey, if you want that secrets, was it the rumor list of Harry Potter? He keeps those lists and he's good at keeping them. So super secret, super secret. But before – enough of that. Scott, why don't you introduce our guest since you're in the same profession. That is true. I am kind of jealous because Christian jumped on the moniker of Dr. Pin.
2:10
I couldn't be Dr. Pin. Copyrighted, bro. Copyrighted. Yeah. 2.0. Trademark hashtag. Did you officially copyright that? Because I think I may steal that. No. Anyway, Christian Line and Sarah Line, two of my favorite people in the world. Christian is a partner in crime in that he sleeps with strangers. And Sarah also teaches fourth graders.
Loser Kid Pinball Podcast
organization
Mrs. Pin's Pinball Podcastorganization
Zach Minneyperson
Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
Allentown Pin Festevent
Pinball Galleryvenue
Jack Dangerperson
Twippiesevent
Bruce Rangelperson
Ron Hallettperson
Lyman Sheetsperson
American Pinballcompany
Stern Pinballcompany
Roger Sharpeperson

event_signal: Allentown Pin Fest receives strong endorsement from established community figures Christian and Sarah Line as a must-attend event with strong community atmosphere, vendors, tournament, and food.

high · Christian Line detailed positive experience at Allentown; described as 'like a family reunion'; endorsement of soft pretzel sandwiches and vendor offerings

  • ?

    community_signal: Bruce Rangel and Ron Hallett organizing suicide prevention fundraiser in honor of Lyman Sheets (influential pinball figure). Campaign runs through end of month via PayPal/Venmo.

    high · Josh Roop announcement of fundraiser 'until the end of the month'; can donate via PayPal to 'wizard under the gun or under pressure mode at yahoo.com'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Christian Line (known as 'Dr. Pin') and Sarah Line, former hosts of Mrs. Pin's Pinball Podcast, appear as guests on Loser Kid Pinball Podcast episode 109.

    high · Christian and Sarah introduced as guests; discussion of their prior podcasting history; Sarah noted as creator of toppers; Christian confirmed details of Harry Potter leak

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community response to Joe Camico's deleted post interpreted as potentially vindictive ('woman scorned') rather than legitimate announcement, suggesting internal industry drama or licensing disappointment.

    medium · Scott Larson: 'Woman scorned. That's exactly what I thought in my head. I thought this is a woman scorned. There's some sour grapes.'; Josh Roop: 'Someone has done this man wrong'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Christopher Franchi's artwork featured in Harry Potter prototype mock-up, suggesting professional-grade game design process with established pinball artist.

    high · Christian Line confirmed 'the mock-up that was posted on that Facebook post was indeed Christopher Franchi's art'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Harry Potter pinball license rumor generates significant community excitement and speculation. Considered a 'unicorn' license requiring special connections to J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros.

    medium · Episode title emphasis 'Jersey Jack has Harry Potter?!'; discussion framing Harry Potter as elite licensing opportunity; Christian Line: 'takes a special connection'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Joe Camico positioned as industry's strongest candidate for Harry Potter license due to connections, resources, and prior mobile game development. Compared favorably to Roger Sharpe.

    medium · Josh Roop: 'I feel like this is one of those unicorns that takes a special connection, and I think Joe is one of those guys that might have that'; 'He has the connections. He's got the moolah'

  • ?

    content_signal: Mrs. Pin's Pinball Podcast host Christian Line has approximately 20 hours of unpublished podcast recordings logged over recent years, considering 'Lost Chronicles' compilation release.

    high · Christian Line: 'I probably have about 20 hours that I have logged of just like random ramblings about pinball over the last few years that I just haven't edited and put on here. So maybe at some point I'll make like a Lost Chronicles of Mrs. Pin'

    • 2:34
    Can I please ask for some context with sleeping with strangers? Okay, we're both anesthesiologists. I was thinking you were still in fourth grade, actually. I thought you were still in your fifth grade, man. And then I put two and two together, and now I feel a little more comfortable about that. But thank you guys so much for having us on. we've been huge fans of you to go forever way back when I think a few years back Sarah sent you some swag and included in that swag was an extra small shirt for your wife that said Womp on it for Mrs. Pin and Scott proceeds to send us a picture of him with this extra small shirt on busting out of this thing and I love the guy ever since I was going full Randy Savage mode. Do you remember the IK? I'm a child of the 80s. So like all the guys who would go the gym rats, they would have, because you had to have a shirt on to work out. They wore the smallest halter tops I've ever seen in the world. They were like these string bikini things that barely covered like four inches of your nipples. I thought you were going straight up Tommy Boy. A little coat. Yeah.
    3:48
    You made it look good, though, man. You did. You rocked it with confidence. You really did. I was a little nervous that you guys were going to say, this guy's a weirdo. Oh, we totally did, but that's right up our alley. Yeah, yeah. You're in good company. You are. We knew we were a little bit safe, though, when you guys were friends with Tealus and Martin Robbins. So, you know, we were a – Solid people. True story. Yep.
    4:11
    Oh, my goodness. Well, previously, Christian has been on the Super Awesome Pinball Show. And Sarah, it's been a while, but Mrs. Pinball Podcast. So what's going on there? Give me some updates.
    4:28
    Hmm, man, we've had a lot of pinball stuff going on lately. I don't know. It's been crazy. We had this past weekend, we went to Malvern, Pennsylvania, which is the home of the Pinball Gallery. It's like our favorite place to go play pinball. The people there are amazing, and they have the best games ever. So anytime we want to go play a new game, that's where we go. It happens to be like an hour and 15 minutes from our house, and we live kind of in the middle of nowhere. So it's really nice that we can, like, head down the road if we don't have the game that we want to play here in our basement. Truth. We keep trying to get her to podcast about this stuff. So it's good that you guys are giving her the opportunity to, you know, get on the mic because I miss it. I know a lot of people talk to her all the time and say she should get back into it, but we both retired from podcasting. So this is an awesome opportunity to get on the phone or the horn and talk about some pinball because we definitely miss doing it. Yeah, we do, man. I've got like every once in a while I whip out my phone because I'm like straight up high tech with the Mrs. Pin's Pinball Podcast. But I probably don't. Do you have to flip it up? No. Oh, okay. It's not the flip. It is a smartphone. Quality is surprisingly good considering the fact that I'm usually talking on it in my car. But I probably have about 20 hours that I have logged of just like random ramblings about pinball over the last few years that I just haven't edited and put on here. So maybe at some point I'll make like a Lost Chronicles of Mrs. Pin. There you go. It would be like a time capsule. I love it. That'd be great. It would be Mrs. Pin's time capsule. I would love to hear your predictions from like four years ago. I probably have some. I probably have some really funny assessments of new pinball machines as well. Yeah. What's cool, though, is that ever since she has stopped podcasting, there are a million podcasts that have popped up and a lot of really strong female voices that were missing when Sarah did her thing. So it's awesome to see that. It's great that there's a lot of representation out there that Sarah kind of, led the charge to a certain extent. I think I am just a trailblazer. Yes, I am 100% pioneer. I mean, they call me the pioneer woman. Actually, apparently. Yeah.
    6:49
    Between the sweet pioneering and those toppers that you make. Yeah. I'm honored when someone says that these should be nominating you for like best topper of the year. Absolutely.
    6:59
    I know. You're not. You're just wearing the product. It's something you make. Let me go get the, uh, the award actually. Yeah, Christian nominated me. I felt like it was very much nepotism, and I thought he was really ridiculous about it. But I did get a – hold on. He's trying to turn on the light, and we're not sure if the batteries are in there yet. You don't even know how to do that, but this is the pinball. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. Last year. That is awesome. This is the only trophy I have ever gotten for anything ever. You have it, so. Yeah. I know. Actually, we won an award and I still don't have an award. So it's just the Joshes. I have talked to Zach multiple times like, dude, I will pay for the award. I just want a physical award so I could actually say yes that we did something. But yeah, he's like too busy selling pinball machines or something. I mean, minor details. You guys got a lot going on. Minor details. Yeah, I know. So yeah, I don't know. other than that, let's see, we went to Allentown, which I know we're going to maybe talk about a little bit later. Um, we've done, we've just done a lot of stuff, played a lot of new games lately. It's been, it's been like, we've been flush in pinball. It's been actually really amazing. Good time to be in the hobby. Yeah, for sure. It is definitely like a thyroid storm level of pinball. I like it. All the cacol means released at once. And you're about to blow your ears off with, uh, you know, with your blood pressure. Cause it's just, Okay. It's like everybody held back for about six to eight months. It's like in Braveheart where they're like, hold, hold. That's right. And then they just pull up their spears. Yeah. Then they released the Kraken. Yeah, they did. We had James Bond. We're all sitting there enjoying Bond, but that was really all there was to talk about for a long time. And now the pinball media has been given a gift with all of these games. They don't coordinate. They should talk to each other. By the way, next week, we're going to release a pinball machine. Maybe you should wait a week or two. Like just a little heads up. They could even like draw straws to see who gets to release first. I mean, we can make it fair.
    9:10
    Just my thoughts. My two cents. Yeah. But listen, we're not complaining. We love it. We love geeking out with everyone else. And it's nice not having to necessarily think about how we're going to talk about it on a podcast. And we can just listen to guys like you, you know, give us your thoughts and soak it all in. as just, you know, bystanders. Pinball, hobbyists.
    9:29
    I want to give one piece of advice, though. You know how you guys said if you don't have the one trophy you have, right? If you're sick of not getting trophies, you can just steal someone's.
    9:39
    Who's this? Jack Danger's Rookie of the Year Award. Oh my god, dude. How did you get that? He was walking... So we co-hosted... We did a bit for Twippy last year. and we walk out and Jack's staying outside and he had like an armful of these because he'd won, you know, whatever. So I just literally grabbed one out of his arm and was like, you have too many of these, I'm taking one. And he's like, okay, have it, bye.
    10:07
    Yeah, yeah. No snickerdoodles. You actually got one. I'm not sure that he wanted to give you the rookie of the year. Maybe it was just like the pinball personality that people watch the most, maybe. Yeah, the streamer or whatever. Yeah, there is always that option, you know. You just grabbed the wrong one. That's exciting that you have that. And he gave you permission. I think I even had him sign it. Yeah, he signed it on the back, too. Oh, there you go. Oh, my God, that's hysterical. That's a nice trophy, man. Holy cow, quality. Yeah, and I don't have that. What the heck? I like the crystal better. You need one on your bookshelf better. Yeah, the crystal is really nice. That's really nice. It's really nice. The pinball awards, they definitely know how to make an award. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, that one's high quality. Yes. Okay, so what do you guys want to talk about first? First topic. Hold on. Before we get into it, I want to hurry and I really just want to announce this because it's friends. We're all friends with them here. Bruce, Rangel, and Ron Hallett. They are doing something right now until the end of the month. So you have until next week.
    11:16
    You can send money to Bruce via wizard underscore mode at yahoo.com. And he's going to donate this to Seward Site Prevention in the name of Lyman Sheets. This is something that we all firmly believe in. And they're spearheading this. And they're saying that the reception has been amazing. And they're going to be talking about it here soon, probably in the next week or two. But we know that you guys are very giving. We appreciate what you guys did with flipping the script on autism. Here's another time to step up and answer the call. And what an amazing cause, too. It really is. And to tie it all back into pinball with Lyman, I think is amazing. There's some really great people in this hobby, which is why we all we all love it. And Bruce Nightingale is and Ron Howlett are definitely, you know, two amazing guys. And the fact that they're setting this up is is awesome. And you guys are in that equation, too, with the flip in the script and what you did for for autism awareness. And it's just it's great to see that so many pinheads are also great people that are willing to help out others. so kudos to Ron and Bruce and kudos to everyone else who's doing similar things I can't wait to hear the update for them I know that Bruce gave us a little bit of an update when we were talking to him because like I said we definitely want to push this out Lyman was such an influential if it wasn't for Lyman I don't know where the state of pinball would be currently now I mean there are certain people that were very pivotal throughout the history of pinball and Lyman's one of them and so to honor him in this way I think is very admirable of Ron and Bruce So, yeah, it's awesome. And on the plus side, I mean, in the modern world, we all get isolated, right? We all get siloed. We all get isolated. And it's pretty likely that you may be the only person in your immediate social group that listens to us. And so if you are feeling isolated, please talk. you know reach out yep there's nothing wrong with going to a therapist there's no there's nothing wrong with reach out and getting help so because the world's certainly better with you in it that's right 100 agree yeah i know we we donated france you donated i'm sure you guys did as well so you know join us all in uh in in helping this really great cause and josh what is the best i mean there's the email is that is that venmo is that paypal like paypal that's paypal Yep. So yeah, go to PayPal, just type in wizard underscore mode at yahoo.com. Um, if you, if you don't use PayPal, you could reach out to Bruce Hallett or Bruce Nightingale or Ron Hallett on Facebook. That's the easiest way we get ahold of them and they can probably figure out some of the way. And I know like when we did flip in the script, someone wanted to send a check. That's just what they wanted to do. I wasn't opposed to that. So we, yeah, so it works. But yeah, a great cause and just, you know, it's sad when someone ultimately succumbs to an illness such as, you know, depression, anxiety.
    14:19
    And if we can just save one person, it'd be worth it. And we, you know, honestly, we have. I'm not going to share the person's name, but someone reached out in the last six months. I was talking, they called me and we were talking and they said mentally they were in a very bad spot. and we had an episode, I can't remember if it was the episode with Jeff Rivera or if it was a different episode, but we did talk about mental health and how he had specifically mentioned what Scott had said. Your mind is a muscle too. You have to take care of it. You've got to work on it and you can't neglect it like you would anything else in your body. And he took that to heart and he got the help that he needed and his life has been so much better. That's awesome.
    14:59
    Yeah, we take for granted that you can really reach a lot of people with stuff. Even as small as a pinball podcast, there are people listening. And, you know, if you can do some good, you know, take the take the chance to do it. Yep. Agreed. So sorry to bring it down. That's not bringing it down. That's actually connecting it to life. Yeah, true. Because that's I guarantee everything else we're going to talk about is way less important than your mental health. And so let's work on your mental health by talking about fun things. Yeah. All right. What do you want to talk about first? Cause I know we have like a big list of stuff and you know, this is like one of those, uh, it's jeopardy. Like pick your category. What do you want to talk about? Listen, you guys are the captains of the ship. We are here just to help out. So you tell us what you want to talk about. We're going to go all in. You were so selfless. I was going to be like, well, loser kids, I'll take Allentown for 500, please. There you go. Allentown for 500. This is why I married him. He's the selfless one. I am really selfish. Yeah. Which is why you became a fourth grade teacher. Right, right. Yeah, okay. All right. I'm sure Cummings are made up for. Have you guys been to Allentown, Pennsylvania for Pinfest? Sadly, no. Have you been to Pennsylvania? Yes. Yes, I have been at Hershey Park, and I rode, I think it's the Grizzly. Is it the Grizzly? The Great Bear. The Great Bear, but close. Oh, the Great Bear. Okay. Yeah, I think my bone, I think I have like chronic pain in my back from this thing that was built in like by pioneers i think i i'm not kidding i think george washington like he he he is the one who built it himself after he shot down the cherry tree i don't think you're thinking of the right one it's very smooth but i kid you not there is one there will i do remember one because it was through all these woods and we don't have wait okay we don't have roller coasters to go through woods out in utah all right well listen they're in the er when i was a resident there at Hershey Medical Center, we would have people come in and they would legitimately have like cervical injuries and neck pain and back pain from a few of the roller coasters at Hershey Park, one of which goes from like zero to 60 in zero to 70 in like a second. So you're sitting there and if your head's not up against this thing, you literally smack your head back as it shoots you off. So lots of, you know, lots of dangerous man being in the medical profession has scarred me for a lot of things. Trampolines. Grapes. Monkey bars. Grapes. Seriously. Grapes. See, monkey bars I'm okay with. We actually have a trampoline that's in the ground. I probably wouldn't put it in, but we bought a house with it, and the kids like it. Yeah, I know. You've got to take some risks, but ATVs, definitely no. No kids on ATVs. Hay holes. They wouldn't know the hay holes. Hay holes? Is that good for something? No, literally a hay hole in a barn. the hole that they throw the hay down. Are you serious? All the kids fall through. We have a Stoltzfuss trauma scale. So Stoltzfuss level one trauma is where you have a buggy injury because these are like little metal coffins that they drive around. We are so off track. We're totally off track. Let's go back to pinball.
    18:13
    Is there a pinball machine in the back of this buggy? Can Amish play pinball? I don't want to disparage any... Because it is electronic, but they all have cell phones. So could this play – It's gambling. Pinball is a devil. It's gambling? The devil. Oh, 100%. No, it's not gambling, is it? Oh, I think it's gambling. I just think it's electronic, so you can't really use electronics. This is us talking about a religion I have no idea about other than watching Harrison Ford and Witness in like 1984. I learned a lot when I visited – because we went to Amish country and we went to a restaurant. I learned it's very like interpretational per family because I'm like, we're in this restaurant. and I'm like, it's all lit by lights and they've got fryers for the fried chicken. And I'm like, so I guess it all just really... They could have a pinball machine. Come on. Yeah. What about the Fire and Brimstone pinball machine? Let's get that out. Totally, totally. We could definitely go into this forever, but I can tell you that there is Amish and then there's Pennsylvania Dutch. And the two are different, but similar. So you might see someone who's Pennsylvania Dutch and think that they're Amish because they're dressed similarly. But then they bust out their Motorola flip phone and you're like, okay, that's not Amish. That's not Amish. So I bet you anything you were probably in some kind of a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant. Agreed. Ah, there you go. Don't be my guest. Anyways, but deep in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country is a little town called Allentown, Pennsylvania. And the only time we ever go there is for the Allentown Pin Fest every year. Yeah, it's held in a fairgrounds, which is amazing. They have this money farmer's market right across the street from where they hold it. And the star of the show by far are these soft pretzels that are basically a sandwich. And in the soft pretzels are like these amazing foods like chicken wings, bacon, ranch. Like Reuben pretzel sandwich Anyway the food is on point Chicken wings with bones or bones No Okay All right Like buffalo chicken wing dip Okay. All right. Okay. So basically chicken nuggy dip. Yeah. Yes. Definitely. So anyway, the food is on point and then you go across the street and it's a pinball, uh, extravaganza. They've got tons of pinball machines on the floor. They have a swap meet and like a flea market. That's, you know, one of the best of, of any of the shows out there. Tons of vendors, tons of vendors. They have a great IFPA-sanctioned, I think it's a Stern Pro Circuit, pinball tournament that Greg Pavarelli ran this year, and he did an amazing job. And then you have all of the distributors come, and they bring the best of the best. So all of the most recent games were there. We got to try out all the goods, except for maybe, I think, Scooby we missed, but we hit that up later at Pinball Gallery. Yeah, we played that at Mother. We got to play all of the new releases and hang out with pinball friends, and that's what it's all about at these shows. Definitely. It's awesome. It's a great show. So if you haven't been, you've got to go. Okay. We weren't jealous at all. Yeah. I mean, I feel like coming across the country for the Allentown Pin Fest might be a stretch. But if you could coordinate a vacation with the Allentown Pin Fest. To hang out with us? It would be one month worth it. You guys, open invite, guys. How many open bedrooms do you have downstairs?
    21:26
    My family can just crash there. We have a guest suite upstairs. So we've got a queen bed, two couches, a suite with your own bathroom. Wow. And then we have a Murphy bed in our basement with all the pinball machines. And in the guest room, there's a fridge with snacks and drinks. Coffee maker. That's right. Is it like a mini bar situation where if you take something out and put it back, then it charges your room? Yes. For you, it is. Just only for you.
    21:53
    No, but you guys have an open invite, obviously. But yes, it's a great place to go. It's a great show. There's a lot of competition out there. but this is a really one of the, one of the shows that I think you should try at least once. It is like a family reunion. Yep. Like in the best possible way. It's just, it's just, that is the best part of this show is that everyone goes. And so even if you can only go for one of the days, like it is just, everyone is there. All, all the people, uh, everyone, except for the losing kids. Except for you guys. All the important people go to Allentown. Yes. Yeah. Well, this year it wasn't, I was going to say this year, It wasn't on Mother's Day, so that's a perk too. I know. That's okay. I celebrated Mother's Day by hanging out with pregnant women. Oh, you're on OB? Well, that's kind of appropriate, right? 34 hours. All right. Well, a lot of mothers. I thought you were talking about like your wife and I don't know. Who else? That's what I was – oh, no. Okay. It would be a miracle of God if my wife were having a baby since she's had a hysterectomy and I've had a vasectomy. Oh, you guys went double protection. I like it. Well, it was kind of a – hers came after mine.
    23:02
    I got you. Got it. We all get older. This podcast is sponsored by Manscaped. Yeah, exactly. You know what? You got to keep your pinball smooth, I guess. Yes. You're tying. I like it. Yeah.
    23:21
    You guys said this was a clean show, all right? Yeah, it's a clean show. I swear Manscaped sponsors everything. Like, watch a Peppa Pig on YouTube Kids and Manscaped comes on, you know? Okay, you need to edit your search history if you're getting that. Oh, right. I'm questioning. I swear the demographic, they're like, it doesn't matter who the demographic's for. It's just any dude over the age of 18, you know? Yeah, and you're watching Peppa Pig. Got it. Well, because my kids. Daddy Pig? You guys all get it. You all have kids. You get it. you don't want to go watch Moana for the 20th time, but someone's just obsessed with singing the Ocean Song, and so you have to watch it again.
    24:04
    We've all been there, man. It's you that's obsessed with the Ocean Song, right? Yes, that's why I call it the Ocean Song, because I can't remember the name of it. That's how obsessed I am with it. You might be thinking about The Little Mermaid, too. You might just be confused. so you're telling me Allentown's definitely worth coming to and enjoying at least once it is it's no TPF it's no what's the one in Chicago that's huge thank you and obviously Texas is huge too this is a great show in terms of just hanging out with people all the games you want to play are there and of course there's the pretzel sandwiches So you have to factor that in. When we say they're good, like we live an hour and a half away and we may or may not have been known to drive there just to get a sandwich and then drive home. Is it on the same path as like the pinball palace that you go to? Or is it different? No, it's sort of ish. It's like a diverging fork in the road. Because apparently you live like just over an hour away from everything. Pretty much, man. Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, like if we're talking major cities, more like two and a half, but like Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C., we're kind of in the middle of all of it. Hey, just like me. Yeah.
    25:29
    I'm in the middle of nowhere. You're not even close. You're where dinosaurs are. My major city is Salt Lake City, and it's three hours away. Yeah, we're known for our dinosaurs. Oh, wow. That's cool. Yeah. Sarah loves a good dino. I do. They're my favorite animal. They're fun to store. We have the longest collection of dinosaur bones. It's a quarter mile long and it's two stories tall.
    25:52
    Wow, a dino wall. Yeah, it's a dino wall. And when they filmed Jurassic Park back in 1995, that is where they collected the bones from was our location. Wow. That's pretty cool, man. That is cool. It's a claim to fame. Yeah, and they discovered the Utahraptor out in this area. Because a Velociraptor is actually the size of a chicken. I don't know if you know that. I did not know that. No, I didn't either. That's why the closest living relative to a T-Rex is actually a chicken. A chicken. That's why I'm terrified of them.
    26:27
    That's why they attack me like they're the highest on the food chain. Yeah, exactly. Are you seriously terrified of chickens? No, I'm not. You're scary. No, all right. I had a buddy in college who was scared of cows. So it's not out of the realm.
    26:42
    It's still bizarre. It is super weird. The cow can definitely roll you. Oh, yeah. I'd be more worried about the cow.
    26:49
    Okay, so Allentown, you're saying thumbs up? Thumbs up. Pretzel sandwiches and Allentown. I think I'm sold on this, Scott. We've got to figure this out next year. You guys can come together, and we'll all hang out. We'll go to Allentown Pin Fest. Yeah, and then you can tie it into a bigger trip like New York City, Philadelphia. You could go do some historical stuff. Oh, yeah. Do it all. Hang out by Gettysburg. Yes, Gettysburg is only 45 minutes away, so you could literally do that too.
    27:21
    Sorry, are we going to tackle the elephant in the room here? Because we've got to get to that. All right, all right. Chomping at the bit here. All right. Okay, for anybody who is listening to this podcast, they understand what we're talking about. random post over the weekend was joe cam and cal saying basically just announcing out of nowhere that jjp has the harry potter license and i believe he posted like a mock-up which had like a stern machine in it was it was kind of bizarre for so many reasons so sus so weird yeah and and the now everybody's screen grabbed it yeah but the post has since been deleted however when i saw the only thing that came up like i had like that question mark thing that you know on role-playing games when the the person has like i have a quest for you and has a question Right. I like seriously, I just wondered. Why?
    28:31
    You know what I thought? First thing I thought, woman scorned. That's exactly what I thought in my head. I thought this is a woman scorned. There's some sour grapes. Yeah, that is exactly what I thought. I was like, dang, what the heck happened to Joe? what happened. That was exactly what I thought. Someone has done this man wrong. And that goes to the point that when we had Joe Camico on our show, he brought up a couple of times that he was going after the Harry Potter license. This was a license that if anyone was going to get, it was going to be Joe. And he was going to do it right. And if anyone was going to design it, it was going to be Joe.
    29:14
    So we all thought that would probably happen if we ever had a chance He certainly has the history, right? He has the connections. He's got the moolah. And I would even say more so than Roger Sharp. As much as I love the guy and he's a high-powered dude who can get licenses, I feel like this is one of those unicorns that takes a special connection, and I think Joe is one of those guys that might have that. And he did the mobile game too, right? Correct. So he's been down this road. Yes. So Cameco, he posted online. and he takes it down. That just adds additional flames to the fire. And I can confirm that the mock-up that was posted on that Facebook post was indeed Christopher Franchi's art, and that was a Stern machine prototype that he was going to use to hopefully sell this game to WB as a machine that could be made.
    30:11
    And beyond that, a lot of it is speculation, right? They brought it. I know for sure that because that image was made, that it was brought to WB and to J.K. Rowling, and they were trying to get that passed by her because she's forever. The rumor is that she has been totally anti-pinball because she thinks it's a gambling device or she associates it with bars or places of ill repute. And so I think that they probably, through that and through Kamiko's actions, got them to lighten up a little bit and to loosen up with the chance to make this a pinball machine.
    30:50
    And from there, it gets murky, right? So if Joe was able to get this and he was able to actually, you know, get them to agree to it, then you would think, just intuitively, he would bring that to Stern. and Stern would make the game, especially because the mock-up was made on a Stern pinball machine. So that had to be their approach. Now, how it got from Stern to Jack Winary, there is the mystery. And I don't know if anyone fully knows why. I don't know, man. Jack, he is a wily dude.
    31:23
    I could see. Again, I thought first women's scoring, and then I thought, oh, man, Jack. Yeah. he's shown that he can sneak in there and grab stuff. So maybe he came in and he sniped that license before Stern could act. Maybe Stern had the license. We all know, you know, we've talked to Franchi on our show about Prince. He tried to get that license and they wanted some absurd number for licensing fees. $1.5 million. That's right. So you would have to imagine that Harry Potter would be more than that, right? So we know Stern has been notoriously smart from a business standpoint, you would say. say in terms of keeping their bomb low and keeping their costs reasonable. They have had some machines like Elvira that have been expensive machines to work that license in, but you would have to imagine Harry Potter would be way higher than all of that stuff. So maybe they just passed on it and then Jack Winery swooped in and picked it up because they have angel investors that have a lot of money and might be willing to take the risk.
    32:26
    Maybe these angel investors could invest in me. I know, seriously Sponsorship, sponsorship deal right here One thing I want to point out too because you guys have talked about this on Super Awesome Pinball Show Gomez has talked about it on multiple podcasts doing mock-ups for a pinball machine is not uncommon because there was a lot of questions like well, if JJP got it, then why is this Stern mock-up happening? This is very common this is how they got James Bond I remember the Goldfinger one was floating around for a while if you've ever seen that artwork that's what they do is they take a pinball machine, they do a mock-up of it just to shoot it over. So that kind of diffuses some of that. You've got to sell it to the people who hold those licensing rights. And they have no idea about pinball. They probably have an idea about video games. They probably have an idea about even mobile games and even slot machines. But pinball, everybody thinks of Captain Fantastic from 1978 or something. Right. So the reason why I'm talking about this like it's a done deal is that just talking to Kamiko in the past, it doesn't seem like he is a troll. He's not so he's a straight shooter. Like he says it like it is. Right. So he you know, I don't think it's an April Fool's post. I don't think he's he was kidding. I think he was serious. So, you know, I do think that Jersey Jack has this license. And that to me is awesome because I know for years I've said this is a dream theme of mine. And if anyone gets it, I want it to be Jersey Jack for a couple of reasons. But I think they'll do it justice. It's just a huge, a huge title. And man, there's going to be some serious expectations. It makes me really nervous, actually, because I am such a huge Harry Potter fan. I have read all of the books to like every class I've ever had. I've read the series a billion times. I've seen all the movies. I've done it with my kids. I've done it with my students. I just feel like this is such a huge, huge undertaking. I mean, and we were even just talking before we got on here about, okay, are they going to just take one book? Are they going to do the whole shebang and just make it overall the series? Because you could make 50 pinball machines out of this series. Yeah, or three machines maybe? I don't know. Will each one have like a different, same game, but like different mechs so that it's like representative of all of the different books. I feel very nervous about this. Yeah. I mean, I feel like if, if they're truly going to try and cram seven books worth of material into a single game, you know, getting a, you know, a ridiculous amount of code into a game is something that Jersey Jack is pretty good at. So they might be the best person to do that. Um, and then, okay, but why?
    35:14
    That's my question is if, okay, we, we're diverging a little bit, But you have seven books and eight movies. Yeah. And the question is, do you would you really want to put seven books worth? And the books just got longer and longer. Yes. Like the last one was about three to four times longer than the original. Yeah. And and so like I it seems like way too much. It would be like doing every single Star Wars in one pin, including Clone Wars, including like the crappy mini – like baby Jedis that are on Disney Plus. Right. Mandalorian. Mandalorian, yeah, that was awesome. But putting that all into one game. But I don't know, Josh, what do you think? Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Sarah. Sorry. I feel like too, that if you are going to tell this story, which is, this is about the story to me, right? And the pinball machine has to tell that story. You have to start at the beginning. You've got to. And that first book is so much, God, there are so many ways that you could, you could take the first book and have so many different mechs and, and modes and, you know, different multi balls. And, oh my God, you could go so many different ways. Josh, I want to hear your thoughts before I go into more details. What do you think, man? I'm not opposed to covering the whole eight movies. And the reason being, when you think of the eight movies, obviously you could get rid of Deathly Hallows Part 1 because that's pretty much them setting in a tent. Camping in the woods. Yeah, so it's like, okay, there's one movie out the window. And to your guys' credit, like you said, Mandalorian had a pinball machine that covered the first full season, and those episodes were all an hour long, and they had, what, eight episodes? So there's eight hours worth of content. So I don't think it's as hard to cover eight movies, especially one you're pretty much discarding anyway. That's a great point, man. Because you're all going for moments and really because that's what pinball machines live off of. Look at Godzilla. How many movies did they cover for Godzilla? I think the Godzilla price tag is going to be significantly cheaper than the Harry Potter price tag. And you also have to remember – We're taking price off the equation right now. But licensing too. I mean, there's a reason why when Rush released their set list and there are 17 songs on there. However, two of those songs are literally half albums because it was a bargain price because you only had to pay one licensing fee. And you got 30 minutes worth of stuff. It's got wait. Wait until they take the sorting hat and they cut it into little swatches of cloth and they stick that under the glass. It's going to be through the roof. well and and mark silk does do the voice of the sorting hat there's that asset as well i just want to throw that out there i would love to see mark involved but back to the point of it my my honest my so i was i was talking to some other people in a private chat about this my nervousness is is it with this being this far out because really eric just released his game the rumor is next is steve richie with elton john if that holds true or not then mark seiden's gonna release one i highly doubt they give the newbie the harry potter license i really doubt it um and then eric's up again my guess is it's going to go to eric i mean i hope so especially with and i don't know frenchy will do the art for it but it seems like with him doing godfather and with how well received it was and there being a good relationship there i think he's the man to do the art so you do you you have eric and you have frenchy teaming up but my concern is we're so far out. We saw this with Toy Story that we heard the rumor for so long that there just became such wild ideas of what it should and shouldn't be. And by the time it finally rolled around, people were disappointed because it was Toy Story 4 and it didn't meet the expectations of what they had in their mind. You're going to never reach those expectations, right? I mean, this is a property where I don't know if anyone is going to be truly happy with everything that's in this game. But if anyone's got a shot at it, I think it's Eric because he's got the game design prowess. He's got rules knowledge. He also has a mechanical engineering background. He can make some sweet mechs.
    39:41
    And I do think that there is a lot of room for magic, and JJP can certainly do that. And afford it. Yeah. So I know of anyone in pinball, the number one person who is the most excited about this is Jeff Patterson from Twip. Yes. Because he has been insanely looking forward to this game. So I reached out to him when this rumor hit, and I said, hey, man, did you hear about this? And that preceded about 25 minutes of just straight texting back and forth about all this stuff. But he gave me a list of things he wants to see in this game, and they are brilliant. So I want to share them with you guys, if you don't mind.
    40:20
    Time Turner ball save where the ball reverses course and returns to the flipper via a magnet I think that genius For a mode with Dementors you have all the lights go dark gray and they move slowly towards the flippers and there's one shot that's lit for Expecto Patronum. I think that's great, too. Physical Ball Locks, and then you have to use Alohomora to open the Ball Locks and release your balls from multi-ball. a ball enters an apparate shot and then a knocker sounds and a stage ball comes out instantly from the other side of the play field he really has I said dude I have to use these I have to tell the loser kids about this because I think these are great ideas and then the flippers are like your wands and different shots are different spells as you go through different modes so Jeff Patterson I hope they use some of the great ideas those were great ideas I'm wondering is it going to be so Mandalorian they had basically five missions right so is it going but each book has a whole bunch of different missions and so how would you possibly select let's just say each book probably has five missions in each book right I think you'd have to break it down if you're going to take all of it though you would have to you'd have to take the big goal or the big problem from each book and somehow just incorporate the main ones you know like instead of the goblet of fire being the whole every single mission that he has to go through to fight the dragons and all that other stuff you just have to do the goblet you know you couldn't break it down to the minutiae because you're not going to have enough room on the play field well you could even you could even this big you should do two games at least yeah I agree with you, man. I think you could easily do three games. But they wouldn't. They wouldn't. So let's be realistic. I think they're going to do one game. I think that that's an obvious thing. So who knows? Maybe the licensing is going to narrow it down and force them into one path versus another. So that could be one way to speculate how this goes. But if Jersey Jack did get it, I feel like just in terms of their budget and the amount of money that they put into making the machine look incredible and amazing, it does have the most potential to live up to my imagination. I mean, the other question is, do you use the actors from the movies or like the books when they first came out, they had illustrations of what they all look like? Could you use a animation? It would probably be too expensive. They're never going to get Emma Watson. No way.
    43:02
    And I will say that another issue is, and I actually highly recommend a podcast. It's called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rollins. and it's it's really interesting because it does tell issues uh outside of the books and there is a little bit of tension between uh between the actors in her camp and so i don't know if they would be able to to find find a balance but i highly recommend that podcast if you if you're looking for another podcast to binge on it's really good um yeah i i just think the asset that load would be so expensive that it just would be impossible. A lot of the actors have passed away since they've made these movies. Yeah, true. A lot of them have died. Yeah, Hagrid's gone. Yeah. Hagrid, Snape, Dumbledore. Snape is gone. Dumbledore is gone. Like, there's a lot of them that have passed away.
    43:59
    Maybe they can get Gandalf. Do you think they can get Ian McFarlane in there? He's in everything else. Why not, right? I mean, who knows? He lends his voice very well. Yes. you shall not pass no okay josh i i'm waiting for you to jump in josh i haven't i haven't heard your take on this so i i don't know i just see it's it's an uphill battle it's going to obviously it's going to be an evergreen title i mean i i just don't see how it's not like look at star wars with stern the the pinball community itself might not be a huge fan of star wars but they're still making at least one run of those a year because of the demand coming out of locations and this is just one of those things like it's a theme everyone loves right yeah and how does an operator do you pass on this this is one of the most if not most recognizable license to date right now it's a draw it's a draw huge they will have a an upper tier model obviously right that's going to be absolutely ridonkulous in terms of price so you like 15 000 for a ce right now, I think it's going to shatter that ceiling. This is easily 20. At least. 20 possibly more. That's a car, guys. I mean, holy cow. Okay. Here's the question.
    45:18
    In or out? We're 100% in. Oh, that is up for debate. Right, right, right. What I will say, though, is it will be very hard to pass this up. The only issue is do I go for the top tier, you know, insane model? I. There's no I in team. This is a we. Listen, that's true. That is true. But Sarah is giving me a 10. She's giving me a 10. That's like a half a fourth grader salary right there. I know it is. It's like half a year. Sarah's working like 90 days of the school year just to pay for that game. This is true. If I break it down to the number of hours that I have to spend with 25 nine-year-olds, you are not going to be willing to trade with me. Okay. So we have a 10 pinball limit in our house. So you have to have, um, you have to sell some to get one and we have 10 right now. So it would have to probably be, you know, a couple of games sold to, to convince her to get this. But, um, hopefully there will be different tiers. And I usually am just as happy with the Ellie than I would be with the CE, which is going to be still expensive. My heart, my thing is I have a really hard time buying something or even putting my name on a list for something before I've seen it. And we have done this one other time before with Wonka. And for me, Wonka was like as dream theme as Harry Potter. I was so excited. I was all in. I was like, I don't care what it costs, put our name on the list. We're going to get a Wonka. And I just remember that reveal. And I, I think I cried.
    46:51
    You were definitely a little bit less enthused than I was. I was just, my expectations in my heart were so big. And then we saw the game and I was like, oh man, I just felt so let down. And I am just very guarded from that happening again, because I feel like this is another dream theme for me. And I just want to see, I don't know if I would want to design this pinball machine. I know. Because it is high pressure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, Josh, in or out?
    47:25
    I don't know yet. Like I was saying, we were doing the math, right? It's another 24 months at the very least before it even shows. That's at the very least. If it's Richie, that's another nine months. That's 33 months. My son will be driving by then. He'll be in high school. He can go pick up the game. He can drive to pick it up. It's hard to tell. There's going to be two Owens up in that time. You know what I'm saying? I'm getting more and more of like I want to play the game more than I want to enjoy the theme. I mean, Godzilla has proven that time and time again. So I'm still – I'm out until I see it. That's how I feel. No, I agree with that. Okay. Well, then you need to make a phone call. I am a – I need a spot on the list. I am actually – I am a child of Star Wars. Like it came out in like the sweet spot of my growing up. Like the first episode came out when I was three years old. So three until nine years old. That was when Star Wars came out for me and the real Star Wars movies, not the crappy money grab movies. Okay. So when those came out, that was my dream thing. So when I heard Stern was making a Star Wars game, I said, put me in for an LE. I want that game.
    48:43
    And when it was released and I looked at it. Yeah. And I backed out. I mean, because it wasn't what I it's it did not meet my expectations. And to be fair, I've played it a few times and I don't I don't like the game. Yeah. And I would hate it if I bought it just for the theme. So I'm in the I need to play it or see it first to find out if it meets my expectations of what Harry Potter would be. And I'm not also a – I'm not a huge Harry Potter guy. Like I read the books. I appreciate them. I watched all the movies up until the fifth one. and when the kids were like beating these special forces wizards by like an after school club where they learned how to like crochet and make wand trinkets. I'm like, are you kidding me? There's no way. So that was where it lost me on that one. But it's, I don't know. So it's a challenging thing to me. I could totally do it. I also have a feeling that And I hope this doesn't sound bad. It will.
    50:02
    It will. Godfather, it feels – it's a beautiful game. The way that they presented it in the lights, it felt a little bit like it would fit right on the floor. Yeah, for sure. And Wonka was the same way.
    50:18
    Yeah. And so that vibe was like this looks like something that would be in kind of a vibe of a slot machine or a ticket redemption or something. And I'm not sure that's really what I'm going for personally. But I know that I'm not every demographic or every market.
    50:39
    And so this may be one of those games. I'm not – I'm probably not getting it. And that's fine. I mean, I think the one thing that Harry Potter will always have for it is a built in market. This is not like Galactic Tank Force where you have to sell people on the theme. This is a theme that, you know, the vast majority of people are going to like. And guys like Scott, I mean, there's plenty of people out there who are not going to be all in on this, just like there are people out there who are not in on Toy Story. But it's a it is a killer license. There are very few licenses out there that are like Star Wars or Harry Potter that just have an insane fan base, rabid fan base, that will probably buy things sight unseen or who don't know a lot about pinball, who will just be in on it strictly because of the theme. Yeah. Well, and I wouldn't be opposed to if they even did what we've seen with Jurassic Park, what we've seen with Godzilla. Really what Keith's been doing of you get put into the world versus you're following the storyline of the movies. So, I mean, there's so the problem is, is we don't know any direction. We just know it's Harry Potter. We know nothing more. Exactly. And so this actually begs the question, it releasing now, we know it is not coming anytime soon. Yes. Right? Fair. Is that fair? Can we agree that we're probably not going to see it for at least two years? I think you're right. Yeah. Okay.
    52:04
    Okay. So does this leak help or hurt pinball? Was it a brilliant move or was it a drunken test? All press is good press, my friends. Is that what you're trying to say? All press is good press. I mean, listen. That's true as well. Is it though? Because sometimes if you release it, and this is kind of where Wizard of Oz got into this, Hobbit got into this where they released it and people were excited and then kind of the moment passed and then they had a hard time. That's like pinball in general though, right? I mean, you see any game that releases regardless of the theme, there's a super hype right before it comes out and people are either crazy for it or against it. And then within a week or two, the hype is dead um this is different this is harry potter is like a completely different category than foo fighters then iron maiden then rush then godzilla this is this is a unicorn title and and so having that release like okay i'm gonna put it out there this is bad for pinball this is terrible because I know some people say, oh, great, fine, just buy a machine, then you can sell it. Okay, I'm one of those guys that hate selling games. And it's not that I'm really super attached to the game. It's just selling a game is such a pain in my rump. Yeah. Because trying to find, like, someone who's like, okay, we all know what this is worth. If you want to come pick it up, great. If you don't want to pick it up, fine. But I don't want to go through the hassle of listing a game and getting people like, well, would you take 35? It's like buying a car. Yeah.
    53:52
    Right. And it's like, I hate it. My mother's on hospice. Can you please take $1,500? Yeah. Ooh. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's out there now. That was a negotiating tactic that legitimately happened. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, you're serious? You're leveraging the passing of your mother to ask for $500 off? I mean, that's super messed up. $1,500? Yeah, that was messed up. That's super messed up. Tell me – Going through a rough time. Tell me though – Please don't. Bring it back to why this is bad for Pindle and how it affects pricing and that sort of thing. Okay.
    54:26
    Okay. How does it – okay, one, license. I guarantee this was not approved by the – and licensors are very jealous, right, of how they control the message and when it gets released and when – okay, some licensors are more. Maybe Bob's license. Okay. All right. So definitely Bond. Okay. However, you don't – when you put out this unicorn title, it's not available for two years. Yeah. And then there will be at least four or five Stern games that will be available.
    55:04
    There will probably be two Jersey Jack games that will be available. Oh, yeah. I think it's bad for Jersey Jack. Yeah. Probably.
    55:12
    Yeah. And people are like, well, I was thinking of buying Godfather, but would I rather have Godfather or Harry Potter? Well, I think I'd rather have Harry Potter, and so I'm not going to buy the Godfather machine. And Jersey Jack machines, typically, they really shot for the moon in raising their prices. And I've said over and over again that Toy Story, I think they miscalculated the market and miscalculated the draw of Toy Story 4. Yeah. And my personal feeling is that their sales significantly suffered. And so people are buying them, and then three months later, they're selling them at $2,000 losses because they're trying to move the game. And so people are like, well, I'm not sure I want to take that. So I think it's really bad for Jersey Jack because their games are hard to leverage. Sterns typically hold their value. I'm not sure. Sure. If you're looking at it from a business standpoint, yes. I mean, it's definitely a hit. But Joe's a business guy. The guy prints money. So this should not be an emotional move for him. This should be a casual business move. This was a drunk post, man. The equivalent of a drunk post. His emotions were very tied up in this, I imagine, because he had been working on this for so long, right? A woman scorned. When Jersey Jack takes the title from him, he no longer has the glory of getting it. And if he doesn't have skin in the game anymore, it doesn't hurt him.
    56:47
    And I don't think it hurts Stern. And Hamiko also has enough money that he can get away with this stuff. Honestly, it's not going to impact him all that much.
    56:56
    But it will affect business relationships. It's certainly not going to make the Jersey Jack people happy. Yeah, but you know what? They just took this game out from under him. If that's really what happened, I'm sorry. That affects business relationships too. And we can understand why he would be upset about that. But honestly, Scott, I mean, pinheads in general are always attracted by the new shiny. I've heard this theory time and time again that people will wait to buy. But we have seen people just throw money like crazy. Some of the people who are so wealthy in this hobby, they do not care. They will buy literally everything that comes out whenever it comes out. And they don't feel the same way that you and I do about selling games where you hate doing it because you just don't want to do it, they just sell it. And they can probably take a loss on it, and it's not a big deal. So I think when Harry Potter comes out, it's going to be such a huge seller. And pinheads for the next two years are going to forget about this until it pops back up, and they're going to be buying everything else that's coming. I mean, this market is not slowing down, at least from a new inbox standpoint. No, I mean, and you think about the fact that every game that Elwynn has made has been amazing,
    58:05
    and people are going to be buying those games too. I feel like this is potentially bad for Jersey Jack, only because if you are going to only have one Jersey Jack machine, then maybe you do want to wait for Harry Potter. But I do think that... But Jersey Jack now has a million designers, right? So if they start to lose interest, just like in Toy Story, if they start to lose interest in that and sales slump, they just release a new title. Move on. I have no doubt that they have two or three games in the, in the, you know, the shoot ready to launch.
    58:39
    So, and that brings up a really good point as well, because when the first person, like when we first heard this, it was like, it's a drunken text and it's, it's terrible for everyone. Like it's going to take a hit to the pinball industry and people are going to hold onto their money. But I actually think it was kind of a brilliant move on Joe's part, whether if it was a drunken text or not. And the reason being is, is I haven't heard much hype for Venom. and we know Venom's the next one coming. It was supposed to be here last summer. Everyone's like, why was it Aussie? Random Aussie and Todd McFarlane mashup at the Stern booth in Comic-Con was totally normal. Yeah, totally normal. Yeah. It's weird.
    59:17
    And so regardless if Venom was going to be a big hit or not, I don't see this announcement affecting that. And we're all going to really not care because L1's in the pipeline after that, right? Like based off of designers that have released product, L1's up after that, right? So it's just – I don't – I know people saying like it takes money off the table. But really, we're back to pre-COVID times where the hit – as soon as it comes out, it's a hit. It's good for maybe six months. Then we see the slump off. And so does this really, with this announcement hitting right now, the only thing it's really going to affect is Venom.
    60:00
    And I just don't see it doing that. The other part, too, is Harry Potter is such, I mean, we've seen this with JJP for a while now. They do usually a kid theme and then like an adult theme and then a kid theme and an adult theme. I just don't see Harry Potter affecting the sales of Elton John. You're two different demographics at that point. Okay, you're dealing with grandpas, and grandpas have grandkids. True but grandpas are more than likely going to buy them both because they have the expendable cash where our families are probably not going to be buying Elton John and Harry Potter because I don know about you but Elton John was fairly old when I was in high school I don know about you guys but we only a decade apart Way to rub it in. Yeah. No, Elton John. You called us all old, man. That's what I'm saying. Definitely. Just call us old. I mean, honestly, holy cow. Sorry.
    60:55
    Ouch. We love you, Josh, but yes, we're old. Dude. I feel like, um, it's okay. You're not that old. I got a clean bill. Hey, nice work man nice work but my but my point being is is like we do have to take demographics heavily into this because any distributor will tell you it's all about theme i guarantee all the 12 year olds will be buying this yeah i don't i i doubt it's not that though it's like i doubt people are like i'm not buying harry potter because you know venom is just you know it just there's a lot of demographic split i think you're right i mean obviously no No kid is going to buy a pinball machine. But if you have kids, then 40-, 50-year-old guys with expendable cash or women, they're going to buy these things. You're going to buy a theme that fits well in your household. And we are – I think the pinball demographic of 40- and 50-year-old people at this point have kids who are going to be into Harry Potter, and they themselves grew up with Harry Potter. So it's a double whammy. You've hit both areas.
    62:03
    Yeah. I don't think it affects Harry Potter sales really at all. When it comes out, it's going to sell 5,000. I hope they just don't limit it. When they say limited edition, I hope they put 20,000 on there. I hope they sell 20,000. Legit. Do you think that they bring back the standard just for this so they can get it on the location? Or do you think they just say, hey, it is what it is? Maybe.
    62:29
    This certainly would be something that would go on location. I think it would be smart to do a standard, and the reason being is, yes, you want that location demographic. But if you don't want to undermine what you've done with your price increase with Guns N' Roses and Toy Story, you come out with that third edition, so you still get the lower cost. Your standard B-12.5, your LE B-17.5, your CE-22. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Josh. I'm sorry. You're not backing off. You're not essentially saying, yeah, we jumped the gun and raised our prices too high. It gives you an out to not say that you screwed up, but then you're still giving a cheaper option to hit that demographic. What are you guys thinking price-wise for this? The upper model. Too much is what I'm thinking. Yeah. Exactly. I agree. I'm not kidding. I think by the time this comes out. Yeah. I don't think you're wrong, man. I don't think you're wrong.
    63:25
    I think it's 25 for the CE, and I think the LE will be 18. I think it'll be 18 because add another two years into it, and if they do like an SE, then probably at 25. That's insane. I don't. I think they actually stay at the same price. I think the reason being is the bubble is deflating at the moment, and we're seeing the used market come down really hard right now. And so I think your main market is going to have to fight the – it comes back to pre-COVID. We were all like, well, do I buy a brand-new premium or do I buy two used Sterns for the same price? And especially where the pros are – I mean, you can get a pro Jurassic Park and an Iron Maiden for a brand-new JJP. I think that plays a lot into it it's going to be hard to look into our crystal ball because we're so far out on this and with the crescendo of where we're going it's hard to tell we got to see where it all goes I still think no matter what it's going to be too expensive I can't help it, I am a teacher this is something that you cannot afford I'm with you Sarah I'm with you, I think that there's this is I'm getting to the point where I used to buy LEs and now I'm looking at every premium like, oh, do I buy that for that? That's still sub $10,000. And regardless of where the pricing goes, I mean, the the sheer volume of, you know, orders are going to have to get to pay off the licensing fees for this are through the roof. Either they're going to they're going to sell in bulk or they're going to sell at really high costs just to cover that. Or both. Yeah. Stern does volume um JJP does higher margins and so which so that's what I'm kind of wondering on a model on a title like this you kind of want it out to the masses but you may want to consider I will actually revisit this when it comes out and say my prediction for price was accurate or I was way off I don't think you're way off at all especially for the upper model I would – I really hope that they do come down for like the LE and the Pro and have a very accessible thing so this can get out because this is such a huge drop for so many people. Yeah. This isn't a Bond – yeah, this isn't a Bond 60th. This is – No, this is not a Bond 60. Yeah, this is something that is definitely different. Oh, well, only time will tell, gentlemen. Only time. When I started in the hobby, there were a couple of titles that I was like, I must have this game. This was one of them. We just need to check Goonies off the list and then we'll be we'll be we'll be good. And Goonies.
    66:32
    OK, I legit don't get Goonies. I saw it once as a kid and I know everybody loved the Goonies and I was like, I don't get it. OK, part of me is back to the future, too. if you're going to make Back to the Future trash the last two it's definitely the better movie but you got to get them all in there I don't need them all I don't need a train chase I'm just ready for Mario oh my gosh did you guys it released on VOD today so now you can if you want to pay the money watch it at home you can It was such a good movie. I took my kids to it. And it's so amazing. This is where I'm slightly jaded. I'm like, you know what? It's so weird. When Hollywood makes a movie that people want to take their family to, it makes a boatload of money. Don't get beyond that song. Why don't we have more? Just peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches. It's so good. Oh, my God. Yeah. And having Jack Black do that was so great. That would make an epic pinball movie. Like, the voice characters were so good. And Redemption, right? For the crappy movie we all grew up with. It finally redeemed the whole franchise.
    67:57
    Okay, what about the cartoon with, like, Sirius Lopper in it? Back from the 80s. Side note, though. Did you know that Peaches is the same chords and same chord progression as Rick's Axley's Never Gonna Give You Up.
    68:12
    If you put them two... I figured it'd be something from St. Louis' D. Pick of Destiny, man. That's awesome.
    68:19
    Because it's the pick. Well, that was a good summary of the Harry Potter drama that's going on right now.
    68:30
    I do suspect it was a drunken spurn text. as soon as I saw it that's the first thing I said whoa someone's pissed that's exactly what I thought too on Mother's Day exactly some family trust me there are some families where I don't drink but I would consider Joe had the mother-in-law over and they were sitting around the dinner table having a drink and she's like so Joe how's the licensing going well let me tell you Let me just hammer out this text real quick.
    69:07
    Yeah, exactly. Hold on. Hold my beer. I'll show you who's still a good son-in-law. Yeah, exactly. I'll prove my worth.
    69:20
    Oh, my goodness. Honestly, I have other notes, but we're kind of running out of time. Okay, I do have a question, though, and I'm totally jealous. The Triple Drain guys, go listen to them. They talked about Harry Potter today, too. and they have a lunchbox. Yes. Who has a lunchbox? Are you talking about a tank force? Yeah, I kind of do too. Tank force or triple drain? Triple drain. They did one of those Hydra lunchboxes with all three of their heads. Like one of those old tin ones? Yeah, I know. And a golf towel. Yeah, absolutely old school. I will say that your swag game is on point. I used to think that Sarah's swag game was on point until you guys hit the steam. You've got hats. You have lunchboxes. Or not lunchboxes. You have, okay.
    70:06
    I still have some of the earrings that Sarah made for me. Like, I don't wear them because I don't have pierced ears. You could change that someday. Speaking of which. Oh, whoa, look at that. I saw those in the rainbow ones, and I saw the backpack, and I was like, Christian, these are excellent Christmas ideas. Yes. The backpack in the rainbow. I was torn between the rainbow sneakers and the teal sneakers because I really love teal. Like I really love it. So I feel like I would have gone with the rainbow backpack, the teal sneakers, the goat shirt. I forget what else was on there, but I was making a shopping list. Well, honey, there are fabric patterns. There is a. Yeah, you can get your own fabric. You can make a dress. You got stainless steel tumblers. They have unisex joggers. I mean, anything really you want. What's a unisex jogger? Shorts, man. Oh. jogging pants yes okay i was thinking of like one of those that was kind of what i was picturing in my head as well man i could you could like make a bathing suit that'd be awesome yeah it made me chuckle because will had messaged me after listening to our last episode and he's like dude i'm shortening that link so it's actually just silverballswag.com slash loser kid now okay he's like that was a mouthful i don't think anyone's ever gonna find it the way you guys are type We'll just do slash Loser Kid. But if you just go to Silver Ball Swag, Loser Kid has the main page. It's your site. Yeah. You messed up. I don't know if Keith Elwin gets royalties for your goat shirts. That's awesome.
    71:43
    I will say, we did send him the thing, and we're like, hey, we're thinking of this. Is this cool? He's like, yeah, that's cool. He is. He's for sure. I want to achieve like the zen coolness of Keith Elwin at some point in my life it will never happen but at some point it will be great so I have some interesting statistics we actually 80% of our demographic is males and 20% is females oh man the same demographic yes sorry listening demographic yet our buying demographic is 80% female yeah and 20% male pinball for the ladies let's do it and it's all the shoes It's the shoes. The shoes are amazing. Like, oh, okay. Okay. I still need to get my shoes. So absolutely. I can't do the vans though, because when I was a, when I was a kid in the eighties, I swear all the, all the turquoise back, man. I told him when my kids told me they wanted Crocs, I was like, guys, guys, no, like Crocs are not cool. Not cool. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
    72:44
    So my son got the reds. I got the blues and I want the laces and he wanted the slip off. Oh, okay. Okay, because I'm getting the red laces. I still haven't ordered, but that's what I'm getting. But I'm probably getting her backpack too, maybe a blue backpack. I was shocked at how soft they are too. They actually feel good on the feet. I do have that as well. And they fit, what, true to size, right, Josh? True to size, yes. I was also calculating because I think that they say men's shoes. Am I right? So just don't forget, ladies, that you got to order two sizes smaller, right? Like so if I am a seven in women's, I need a five in men's. There you go. You know what I mean?
    73:23
    Isn't there a women's and men's office? I don't know. I didn't look. All I saw were the men's. Oh, that's awesome. Super cool, man. The backpack is nice too as well. I'm actually pretty sure that there's women's and men's. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to misreport. I just saw the giant men's shoes when I opened up the thing.
    73:40
    Yes, there is men's and female shoes. Okay, well. These guys have their bases covered. They're on it. Yeah, no, we're good. We're good. we're down with all demographics. Yes. See, there's a men's lace up canvas, women's lace up canvas, the men's slip on canvas and women's slip on canvas. That's a tough call, man. I think I'd have to go with the slip ons, but I let, um, that's tough.
    74:03
    I love the lace look. I like the lace look as well. I'm very happy with mine and, and they are a conversation starter. I've, I've worn them out. It's funny because my wife has officially said, you're no longer wearing them on these nights. because we get stopped and people like those shoes are sweet. I will say we had like a church outing and it was one of those things where write down something about you and people try to guess what I wrote down is I have my, I have a customized shoe and shirt line. And you're not lying. You're not lying. You're not Kanye, but at least you've got to do have a line. You do. Yeah, you do. Yep. Yeah. I hope I'm definitely not Kanye. I don't know who designs all your fabrics and stuff, but they do an amazing job. Amazing.
    74:55
    Amazing. Yep. Kudos, man. You guys. Well, that was Brad Albright. We commissioned that and Brad made it for us. It's so good.
    75:03
    And he was the one that was brilliant and said just use typical pinball imagery. And we were the ones that were like, can we throw in Keith somehow as a goat? And he's like, sold. Man, that took convincing, huh? so it's amazing totally amazing i love it so so much the swag game is so strong yeah for sure so so if you want people to get a hold of you christian and sarah just um hit us up at allentown pin fest next year we'll be we'll be right at the tournaments and uh no we we are kind of out of the game guys we don't have a pinball podcast anymore but i still have a pinball email. Yeah. You know what it is? It's wompwompbaby at gmail.com. What?
    75:46
    Yeah. True story. Nice. What you need to do with the lines though is hit them up for their Christmas cards. These things are insanely cool. And my wife is always happy. She's like, oh, I wonder what they're doing this year with their Christmas card. Seriously? We just made a standard card. Usually we do two cards. We do a pinball card and then we do a regular card. But we bailed on the pinball one last year, but this year we got to bring it back. Oh man. All right. I'm surprised that we got ours out. I think, I think we got them out. I think my wife told me about that, but we were in the middle of renovations and living in the basement. I wasn't even playing my machines cause there were so many boxes in front of us. That's rough. Yeah. So, well, we, we want to be on your list. We love Christmas cards. We hang them all up in our, in our kitchen. So.
    76:34
    Yeah. Yeah. We, we hang them up. Guys, this was so much fun. Thank you for having us on. This was awesome, and we love talking pinball with you guys.
    76:43
    I don't know. Yeah, keep carrying the torch and doing amazing pinball interviews because you're one of the last few podcasts that do it and do it really well. So we love hearing it. I think it's because I don't have a life, and Josh is really motivated to keep this going. I love it. Keep it up.
    77:01
    I just enjoy doing this. I don't know. It's fun. It is. It is super fun. It opens doors. You make so many friends. it is it's just an awesome thing to do yeah well it was funny too because like we had that 99 invisible reach up because we do this and they're like we've heard keith l1 on your show how do we get them on and so i worked with them because they're obviously a little bit bigger than us i mean when they're when they're where are they getting like 200 000 downloads within 24 hours just slightly close to us yeah when you have one yeah when you have 1.1 million subscribers just on the podcast side of things through not even through apple that's just through android you know you're doing something right so i was like i will try to help you out a little bit oh and also in case you are podcast only we do have a youtube link now so you can watch our faces talk yes please subscribe so you get notifications uh i'm still trying to figure out how to edit the crap out of this so that's cool it's new realm for me i haven't done video editing since I was in high school, which was almost 20 years ago. We'd cut the Betamax when I was in high school. Don't age us.
    78:13
    Eight track, baby. That's bad. Thank you, Loser Kids. We love you guys. You're welcome. We are working on a 3.0 hat. We have a list of hats. I'm wearing the old school OG right now. I love the OG. I do. I have it. I wear it all the time. I have my winter hat. I had to retire it because it's getting a little too hot for it. I rocked that all winter. It will come out next season.
    78:38
    Yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice. Come on out. I re-upped for passes. Yeah, they live right by the slopes, man. We have to go. Oh, man. Let's go hang with them. 40 minutes. Yeah. It's terrible. 40 minutes. If you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. You can get a hold of us on the socials at Loser Kid Pinball on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. and always shoot us a message if you're bored or if you have a question maybe it'll get read out online please tell us if you want it said publicly or privately there's some messages we get and we're like I don't know if they want us to share this publicly so yeah just leave that in the title or what not but yeah Scott you got anything else for us before we go um yeah wow um be really careful about what you text out on a Mother's Day because it could end up being on podcast that's very good advice if it hits the internet it's forever right you can't take it down but it's always out there the internet is forever yep it is especially when there's screenshots oh and panheads are no fools click click immediate yeah I think I got it reshared like within 5 seconds of Joe posting it so well I guess we'll see you guys in 2 weeks
    80:00
    Shut up and sit down. Overland Golden burgundy season 3 out