Episode 1204: "Maybe Kaneda's Pinball Podcast Just Isn't For You"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·24m 7s·analyzed·Mar 30, 2026

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.013

TL;DR

Teolis mediates Spooky Pinball feedback drama, advocates for better pre-production testing and transparency.

Summary

Host Jeff Teolis criticizes both Spooky Pinball and the pinball community for their handling of feedback and quality issues, arguing that manufacturers should solicit more operator testing during development and customers should contact companies directly rather than airing grievances on Pinside. He discusses long wait times for Turner/Yukon Yeti impacting secondary market value, early production issues with Pokemon machines, and advocates for transparency in production progress for boutique manufacturers. Teolis also makes a public appeal to Spooky Pinball to expedite delivery of a Beetlejuice for a military servicemember's birthday.

Key Claims

Pokemon Pro made $937 in one week on location, which annualizes to over $40,000 per year
high confidence · Jeff Teolis citing an operator's specific Pokemon Pro revenue data
Jaws LE is now trading at 11-5 (approximately $11,500) on secondary market, down from higher prices
high confidence · Jeff Teolis reporting recent secondary market pricing observation
Yukon Yeti orders at 300+ will wait until late 2027 or 2028
high confidence · Jeff Teolis discussing Turner/Dutch Pinball production schedules
Back to the Future is expected to ship at ~750 units per year from Dutch Pinball
medium confidence · Jeff Teolis reporting Barry's stated production target
Winchester has 525 units total production; Dunes has 700; Beetlejuice has 999
high confidence · Jeff Teolis citing known production caps for boutique games
Alice owners have been promised to 'cut the line' on Back to the Future orders under previous American Pinball leadership
medium confidence · Jeff Teolis expressing uncertainty about whether Barry (new AP leadership) will honor this policy after Melvin's departure
Spooky Pinball machines historically have more issues on location than Stern Pro models
medium confidence · Jeff Teolis sharing operator and market perception
Early Beetlejuice builds had topper deliveries distributed unevenly and without clear communication
medium confidence · Jeff Teolis observing inconsistent topper fulfillment across Beetlejuice order numbers

Notable Quotes

“Maybe Spooky Pinball is not the company for you”
Luke (Spooky Pinball representative) @ Early in episode — Catalyst for the episode's central debate about manufacturer-customer communication and feedback handling
“The worst thing that could happen to anybody is silence. When people are so disgusted with your product, they don't even want to share the feedback.”
Jeff Teolis @ Mid-episode — Frames the core tension between manufacturers needing feedback and community dynamics that discourage honest dialogue
“Stop running to the internet immediately. Put on your big boy cargo shorts and call up the company and ask them what they can do to solve your problem.”
Jeff Teolis @ Mid-episode — Direct advice to customers about resolving issues privately before escalating to public forums
“You shouldn't have to unbox anything and start filing down metal... That should be caught at the factory. These are so expensive.”
Jeff Teolis @ Mid-episode — Quality control critique specific to Winchester and higher-tier machines at premium prices
“If you lock your money in and the wait is forever... it's just going to be brutal”
Jeff Teolis @ Mid-episode — Warning about secondary market value decay due to long production waits for Turner/Yukon Yeti
“I just don't think that Turner, with this kind of production schedule, can really work out.”
Jeff Teolis @ Late episode — Skepticism about Turner's production model sustainability compared to Back to the Future demand
“There's too much of what the problem is on Pinside and not enough of what the solve is.”
Jeff Teolis @ Episode conclusion — Critiques community culture of problem-reporting without resolution sharing
“I think that makes sense and I think it would solve a lot of headaches for all parties involved.”
Jeff Teolis — Endorsement of putting operator-facing prototype units in the field before final production

Entities

Jeff Teolisperson Lukeperson BugpersonAntonio VerdascopersonSpooky PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyAmerican Pinballcompany

Signals

?
community_signal: Spooky Pinball representative's dismissive response ('Maybe Spooky Pinball is not the company for you') to operator feedback on Pinside triggered discussion about community dynamics, defensive manufacturer posturing, and Pinside's amplification of negativity
high · Luke's quote and subsequent Teolis analysis of Spooky feedback thread
?
product_concern: Early production units of Pokemon Premium/LE, Winchester, and other high-price games arriving with mechanical defects (misaligned mechanics, artwork damage, fitment issues) that should have been caught in factory quality control
high · Winchester topper clipping and screw-through-artwork examples; Teolis criticism that machines at $12k+ price points shouldn't require customer remediation
$
market_signal: Jaws LE trading at 11-5 (~$11,500), down from higher secondary market peaks; concerns that Yukon Yeti's 2+ year wait will expose it to severe value deflation as alternative games release
high · Teolis citing Jaws LE pricing observation; extensive list of upcoming competitive titles (Transformers, Goonies, Gremlins, Fallout, Sonic, Back to the Future, etc.) that will saturate buyer interest
?
operational_signal: Pokemon Pro generating $937 in plays within one week (annualizing to $40k+/year) validates operator interest in high-performance Pro tier games; suggests Pro tier design is working for location play
high · Specific revenue observation from operator running Pokemon Pro on location
?
manufacturing_signal: Turner/Dutch Pinball's production schedule for Yukon Yeti (orders 300+ waiting until late 2027/2028) indicates severe capacity constraints relative to demand; Back to the Future targeting 750/year but unlikely to achieve given historical Alice production barely exceeded 300/year

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.072

0:00

Got a cut and run through the ball, and who better than this guy? Get it into Boozer, back for Saar, ahead, Boozer, that ball deflected, and stolen by Mullins! Caravan, two seconds, Mullins tosses it out! Oh! It's good! We're point three! UConn goes in front!

0:22

Utterly impossible! March means drama! Happy Monday everybody coming at you from the state of Connecticut. Suck it Duke! We did it! We led the game for only .4 seconds. Welcome to March Madness, March Drama, Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. Any drama out in the pinball world? We've got what? We're not even going to talk about that that are infringing on IP. We've got spooky pinball telling somebody maybe spooky pinball is not the company for you. We've got these Turner games that are going to take 18 years before you get them. There's always a little bit of drama in pinball. But for the most part, this hobby is usually connected and collaborates to make sure everybody's Ownership experience is a good one. So let's talk about what's going on in the world of pinball as we head to April this week. It's crazy. Where does the time go? Okay. So let's start off with this thing I was reading on pin side and it was like people were giving feedback to spooky pinball about Beetlejuice. Now we all know this. Spooky Pinball is making a thousand Beetlejuice's plus 80 show games sold out before they even reveal the game. For the most part, spooky pinball machines haven't held up on location as good as a Stern machine. There's always been more issues. They're learning as they go. They get better with every game. But, you know, I would say, on average, if you're an operator and you want a problem-free game that makes you money the most days it's in operation, you're most likely gonna go with the Stern Pro. That's what they're built for. That's why they designed the Pro. That's why they have three tiers. I just saw a dude has a Pokemon Pro on location in one week from Monday until today. In one week he's got 937 plays. That's $937 in a week. He's almost on pace to make over $40,000 a year on the game. Maybe we should all start thinking about being an operator. But look, here's what happened. There was some feedback and it's in the pin side thread about some issues with the game as an operator and there was like multiple people chiming in and Luke said something along the lines of, well, maybe spooky pinball is not the company for you. And I think, you know, the answer is somewhere in the middle because then Flinibus who was Cyborg Blaлена,

3:37

mons 2017 Botsov as a manufacture isn't necessarily what you want to hear And if there's a lot of it, it doesn't mean that people are trying to take your company down. There just might be a prevalent issue that is really important for you to get in front of. So there is no such thing. I would say this. If I'm making pinball machines and I'm making millions of dollars selling a consumer facing mechanical device that has thousands of parts, I've got to be willing to take all of the feedback in, good or bad, pro or con, whatever it is, I want to hear it, give it to me. The worst thing that could happen to anybody is silence. When people are so disgusted with your product, they don't even want to share the feedback. I went to a restaurant recently and my friend's a food connoisseur and the food sucked and the owner comes over and he's like, let me hear it. I want to hear what you guys think. We've been open for a week. What do you think of the food? And my friend just looks at him and he says nope. I'm not gonna give you the feedback I just don't want to do it I don't want to put the negative energy out in the world My friend will never go back and that place is never gonna get the feedback that they need to get better now in the world Of pinball we know that feedback is not hard to come by that people love to run the pin side and it does create a little bit of a mob I'm Luke and I'm Flinibus. Shake hands, hug it out, and get back to helping each other out. Because the real truth is this. When you write stuff on Pinside, often times things can be taken a little bit out of context. Pinside does skew a little bit more negative and cranky, but also when you read stuff, We're not getting tonality. You're not being like spoken to like a normal adult. It just like mostly men typing away after a few whiskeys And so I think Pinside in general makes manufacturers get very defensive and I think it empowers the community to be overly aggressive and so you put those two things together and I think this is what happens you get both sides acting a little bit way more dramatic than they should So here's my advice to both parties. Keep giving your feedback to Spooky. If I'm spooky, just take it. Take all the feedback you can get. And here's the other advice I wanna give to Spooky Pinball. If you have a game and you're getting great feedback from operators, I think what Spooky should do is this. Forget the show games. There's always like a two month delay between a new spooky game and it actually going on the line The game is a game for consumer facing products. You know, there's like the prototype and then they show the game and then there's like a little bit of a delay as they ramp up for final production. What I think Spooky should do is this. No more show games, but make like 10 operator facing games that will never be for sale later on and put them in high traffic locations around the country. I'm your host, Jeff Teolis, and I'll see you next time on Pinball Podcast. Bye. All of these are the reasons why you can't change your game. You can't change your game because you've ordered everything this length, or you're going to lose a lot of money if you have to hit pause on the assembly line. So this is the reason why when you had loaded games back in the Bally Williams day, they didn't sell them like this. They didn't use FOMO to sell any of these games. I didn't reveal Twilight Zone and it was sold out before it was even revealed or Adam's Family Gold was sold out before it was even shown to anybody. No, they put these games even as white woods out there in the world to catch every single mistake before the final production began. I think we need to get back to that a little bit and Spooky, you've got that two month window between reveal and final manufacturing. I think that makes sense and I think it would solve a lot of headaches for all parties involved. Okay, now what else is going on in the pinball world? Pokemons are going out the door. I see people are having a few issues here and there. Early builds. It's what happens with every early build. Remember Stern made Pokemon Pro. Well, they're not going to catch any issues with Pokemon Pro that might be connected The Premium or the le so we know they didn't put those games out on location until now And so maybe it does beg the question Should Stern put a few Stern premiums on location as well? Before they make the le's because now you're not gonna catch anything Related to the higher end version of the game if all you had was the pro which didn't have the stuff in it That could be a problem for premium or LE games. Look, it's pinball. It is pinball. But again, at these prices, nobody should have to unbox anything and start like filing down metal like you're doing with Winchester. This dude's filing down his tower mech so it doesn't like clip the house when it falls over. You shouldn't have to do that. There was another dude who's Winchester. They didn't align it right when they put it into the cabinet. And like one of the screws went through the side blade artwork. You shouldn't have to do that. Like that should be caught at the factory. These are so expensive. Would you accept a car that had a big scratch across the hood? No. So why should you have to open up a pinball machine and have mechanical issues that there isn't really a fix for? And this is what happens. This is what really leads to a lot of the drama because you unbox the game. You're super happy. You just want to play it and you have an issue. And so where do you run? You run the pin side first. That's the other mistake I see a lot of. A lot of these guys don't even go to the companies. They don't even give the company a chance. Let me give you guys one major piece of advice, which will change your life when it comes to customer service forever.

12:02

Put on your big boy cargo shorts and call up the company and ask them what they can do to solve your problem. Give them a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, all right? Man, Monday morning, Kaneda, Yukon, stunning Duke, unbelievable. To lead a game for only 0.4 seconds and make it to the final four is absolutely incredible. All right. What else is going on in the world of pinball? Look, I think we have now communicated for everybody the reality around how long the wait is going to be for this Yukon Yeti. It's up to people now. And if you order one and you're near like 300 or more, you're going to be waiting till late 2027, 2028. And you know how I feel. I just don't think that Turner, with this kind of production schedule, can really work out. Because you gotta think about how many games are gonna come out between now and two years from now. The only thing you're ever worth, like, holding onto, like, over a two year wait would be, like, if you ordered Back to the Future and you know you have to wait two years. Because the Dutch production schedule is gonna like be that slow compared to how many orders they get. But it's back to the future. Who's gonna lock in two grand on Yukon Yeti in 2026? And let's just count the amount of games that are gonna come out between now and you get your game. So we're gonna get Transformers, we're gonna get Goonies, we're gonna get even Gremlins, We're gonna get Fallout, we're gonna get Sonic the Hedgehog, we're gonna get Back to the Future, should I keep going? We're probably gonna get Justice League, we're gonna get Resident Evil, we're gonna get Circus Voltaire, we're gonna get the new game from American Pinball, I mean the new new game, we're also gonna get their Circus Voltaire remake, we're gonna get a remake of Twilight Zone, we're gonna get a remake of Tales of the Arabian Nights, we're gonna get, I'm gonna keep going, the next game from Pinball Brothers, if they stay in business, I'll keep going. And we're also going to get three more Stern games you don't even know about. We're going to get a remaster of Kiss or ACDC. I could keep going. All of these are going to come out before your $12,000 Yukon Yeti that you're locked in on is even made. So tell me when all those games come out, how do you think Yukon Yeti pricing is going to hold up in the face of all those titles? Not to mention all the other games that are just losing value left and right. I just saw Jaws LE. I get Jaws LE was hit hard by Jaws 50th, but now it's an 11-5 game. That's what it's going for. Not even Jaws is holding up. So it's look, it's just going to be brutal if you lock your money in and the wait is forever. You know, I don't talk about Back to the Future much because of course I'm worried about the production on that game. I think Barry is aiming for 750 a year. Now look, we know this. They're not going to just go from barely making 300 Alice's, barely, to making 750 Back to the Futures at the snap of a finger. Do you really think that Dutch is just going to all of a sudden become twice as efficient overnight? I just worry about all these companies. If I were them, I probably would have wanted to ink a deal and just get a few million dollars, Barry, sit on a beach and let Jersey Jack or Stern figure out manufacturing. But it is what it is. I'm excited to get the game. We'll see if they still honor. I'm curious about this, whether they're still going to honor that the ALIS owners get to cut the line. Now that Melvin's gone and over at AP, is Barry still going to honor these ALIS owners? Speaking of ALIS owners, I did see that someone early on who's been waiting on their topper finally got their topper, but where's everybody else's? It's not like they all went out at once. It's like one dude opened it and there's dudes, I mean, they're low on the orders. They're like number 46 is without a topper and guy number 70 something gets a topper randomly mailed to him and it's just like, where's the communication? I'm all about transparency. I am. The other thing I was thinking about was this. Why is it that companies that make a finite amount of games, and you know who I'm talking about, 525 Winchesters, 700 Dunes, 999 Beetlejuices, these companies don't need to keep their production secretive, right? We know exactly how many they're going to make. I think these companies that are doing it this way, why is it that every week they don't I'm going to be honest with you, I don't think I'm going to be able to publicly announce what number they're at. Why should people have to, like, wonder where they are? Like, I just think it should be a Friday thing. When you're a boutique, we made Winchester's up to number 46, Spooky should say we're at Beetlejuice number 178, whatever it is. I think that should be a weekly thing that is communicated to customers. And I get why they probably don't do it because if they do it that way, it will highlight weeks that are efficient and weeks that are inefficient. But come on, you're just going to be better off being transparent and letting everybody know the state of what is happening over at the company. All right. So speaking of what is happening at these companies, I've got a little favor to ask. I got an email this morning and I'm going to read it. I want to read this because it just came in. It just came in at 6 in the morning and I'm going to reach out to Bug and Luke and I really want to try to help this guy out. But before I do that I want to give an extra special thank you to Kaneda Club member new Kaneda Club member Mr John Kearns coming in hot baby at the Omokase Club price of a month John, thank you so much. I don't know if you know this, but you are now in the Omokase Club, which means if we meet up, I'm taking you out to Omokase, so hopefully you like the uni and the otoro. Greg Coulton's on his way back from Japan. He went there with his family. I love Greg so much. Just couldn't do it vegan. He's vegan. He went to Japan vegan. And look, he probably had the most amazing vegan ramen of his life. But man, all that fatty tuna. Anyway, anyway, I want to read this note to you. And it's from Antonio Verdasco. And he writes, Chris, I wanted to ask a favor since you have a good relationship with pinball manufacturers. Well, that is highly debatable by some. I am currently in the military and stationed overseas and fully engulfed with the situation involving the US, Israel and Iran. I managed to get a Beetlejuice through Joe at Pinball Star, but my billed number is number 712. I'll be in the States for R&R in June to not only celebrate my birthday, but also my son's 21st birthday. So it would be great to be able to have my Beetlejuice that month so we could enjoy it for a few weeks while I'm home. His birthday, of course, will involve more than just playing pinball. I will be taking him out for his first legal drink as an adult, a little gambling at the A Hard Rock Casino in Tampa and some deep sea fishing. So my ask of you, since you have a good relationship with Spooky, would it be possible for you to assist me with getting my game by June? I know it's a big ask, but thanks for taking time out of your day to read my email. One of your fellow and loyal Patreon members, Antonio. All right, so let's deconstruct this real quick. Antonio is serving in the military. He is making an incredible sacrifice and his game is number 712 and he wants to get it in June for his birthday, his R&R and his son's 21st birthday. Okay, now we know that Antonio's 712 will not be ready by June. So here is my public ask of both Joe, Bug and Luke, maybe something we could do with I'm going to be there by June. But what I do know is this, Antonio, I'm going to do my best. We're going to try to get you that game. Now, also, if you have an earlier build, I'm just going to ask this of you people out there. If you have an earlier build of Beetlejuice and you want to swap with Antonio at 7-12, I am sure there would be no issues with that if you don't mind waiting a little bit longer. 7-12 I think would put you somewhere in August, somewhere around there. So we're going to see, Antonio, we are going to see. I just wanted to read this story because it just came in. It was too early to call Bug and Luke, but there we have it. We're going to try to get this guy his game by his birthday. I mean, think about how amazing that would be to allow him to unbox that with his son's 21st and as a great thank you to everything he's done in serving this great country of ours. Everybody, happy Monday. I love doing this show on Mondays. You can feel the energy on Mondays, especially after UConn sticks it to Duke. If you went to Duke, I'm sorry, man. I don't know how they recover. All they had to do was hold on to the ball. But look, I just want to put a pin on today's show for manufacturers. Listen to the feedback. Get your games out there. Get more quality testing before final production begins. For those of you who are customers, stop acting like cargo short babies every time you have a single little issue with the game. Call up a manufacturer. Your telephone still works. Build a relationship with them, okay? I just run to the internet like a baby at Sunday night when you're drunk. Give them a chance to help you out. And then it's way more positive because you can walk into Pinside with what the solve is. That's the thing is there's too much of what the problem is on Pinside and not enough of what the solve is. And Flinibus, Flinibus, you don't have to act like a baby and say you're never going to help out Spooky again. Wah, wah, take your ball and go home. Everybody man up, we're adults, the world is on fire and we're all very privileged to be alive and talking about pinball every single week. Take it away, Europe! It's the final countdown.