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Are Barrels (Of) Fun?

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·1h 24m·analyzed·Mar 4, 2025
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TL;DR

Silverball Chronicles examines the unlikely success of Barrels of Fun, a startup pinball manufacturer with zero drama and on-time delivery.

Summary

In this Silverball Chronicles episode, hosts David Dennis and Ron Hallett-Snowden discuss the rise of Barrels of Fun, a Houston-based pinball manufacturer founded by David Van Ness (formerly of Spooky Pinball) and Brian Savage. The episode covers the company's origin story, leadership background, business philosophy, and impressive early track record of delivering games ahead of schedule with zero leaks. The hosts also extensively discuss prior listener feedback about Hankin pinball, an Australian manufacturer, including details about how Hankin secured the Empire Strikes Back license by simply asking George Lucas and offering him a free machine.

Key Claims

  • Barrels of Fun has delivered all of their games ahead of schedule with zero leaks

    high confidence · David Dennis and Ron Hallett-Snowden, discussing the company's business operations

  • David Van Ness was a creative director at Spooky Pinball and was instrumental in securing licenses like Halloween, Looney Tunes, and Rick and Morty

    high confidence · David Dennis citing LinkedIn and podcast research about Van Ness's background

  • Hankin pinball secured the Empire Strikes Back license by contacting George Lucas directly and offering him a free pinball machine

    medium confidence · Email from Steve and Cassandra, described as close friends of David Hankin, referencing a conversation with Hankin himself

  • Hankin pinball had a free games calculator built into their software, potentially before Williams

    medium confidence · Email from Steve and Cassandra quoting David Hankin confirming the feature; Hankin was unaware if he was the first to have it

  • Brian Savage founded Fun Publications in 1993, which became a multi-million dollar company in destination marketing and collectibles

    medium confidence · David Dennis citing Brian Savage profile and background research

  • Barrels of Fun has achieved zero drama and has a track record of delivering machines on schedule

    high confidence · David Dennis making editorial observation about the company's business track record

  • David Van Ness traveled regularly from Texas to Wisconsin on weekends and long vacations to work with Spooky Pinball while maintaining another job

    medium confidence · David Dennis citing background research on Van Ness's career history

  • There was upheaval at Spooky Pinball during the pandemic, with Corwin (Bug) Emery taking over from leadership

    low confidence · Ron Hallett-Snowden and David Dennis discussing industry rumors; phrased as uncertainty

Notable Quotes

  • “pinball is challenging in the best way. It's an intricate mix of art, mechanics, and physics, similar to running a film production. The complexity is what makes it so rewarding, whether you're a creator or a player.”

    David Van Ness (quoted by David Dennis) @ ~28:00 — Directly articulates the philosophy and creative approach of Barrels of Fun's co-founder regarding game design and manufacturing complexity

  • “a manufacturer who has zero drama and has delivered all of their games ahead of schedule. Even more impressive, zero leaks.”

    David Dennis @ ~25:00 — Summarizes Barrels of Fun's standout operational achievements in a highly gossipy industry, highlighting their contrast to competitors and earlier failed startups

  • “David Hankin contacted George Lucas personally and just asked him for permission. And it was granted. Just that easy. And the payment was a pinball for George. That's it.”

    David Dennis (citing Steve and Cassandra's email) @ ~18:00 — Reveals an unusual licensing origin story for Hankin's Empire Strikes Back game, illustrating how a simple ask secured rights that other manufacturers never pursued

  • “You just design a play field, you screw some things to it, and then you just do that like a thousand times... They have too many parts. There's too much stuff. You've got to get parts from everywhere.”

    Ron Hallett-Snowden @ ~29:00 — Captures the core operational and logistical challenges that make pinball manufacturing exponentially harder as production scales

  • “Brian is a fan. I met him at TPF... I still think Barrels of Fun deserves an episode, especially since it gives us a really cool case study of a startup that has done it very differently than most”

    David Dennis @ ~22:00 — Establishes the editorial motivation for the episode and frames Barrels of Fun as a novel manufacturing case study worthy of analysis

Entities

Barrels of FuncompanyDavid Van NesspersonBrian SavagepersonDavid DennispersonRon Hallett-SnowdenpersonSpooky PinballcompanyHankincompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Barrels of Fun has achieved on-schedule delivery, zero production delays, and zero leaks in a highly competitive and historically volatile pinball startup environment

    high · David Dennis: 'a manufacturer who has zero drama and has delivered all of their games ahead of schedule. Even more impressive, zero leaks.'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Barrels of Fun represents a novel approach to pinball manufacturing with a startup that has avoided the common pitfalls of predecessors like Deep Root

    high · Discussion of pre-launch teasing, mystery stickers, community skepticism due to past failures, and eventual successful market entry

  • ?

    personnel_signal: David Van Ness, a key licensing and creative figure at Spooky Pinball, departed during pandemic-era organizational changes to co-found Barrels of Fun

    medium · David Dennis: 'David David Van Es left... And quite frankly, Spooky's animation was pretty good. That's when David started planning something big with Brian Savage.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: David Van Ness was instrumental in securing major IP licenses for Spooky Pinball, including Halloween, Looney Tunes, Rick and Morty, Scooby-Doo, and Evil Dead through relationship-building

    high · David Dennis: 'He was the major reason that Spooky had secured a lot of the license that they have recently released, such as Halloween, the Looney Tunes, Rick and Morty...'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Hankin pinball appears to have pioneered free games calculator functionality in software, potentially predating Williams implementation

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.258

0:00
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0:12
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1:11
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. Sure. Perfect. He's got the clap. he's got the clap clap clap clap clap clap clap he's got the clap an acdc song i hate
1:59
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. With me this month, like every month, is Ron Snowden-Hallett. How you doing? Not yet. That'll be tomorrow, supposedly. It's been cold up here in the Northeast. Yay! It's been wild for us. We don't have, like, a lot of snow. Like, we haven't had any of those epic snowstorms where, like, 40 centimeters falls down in one, like, two-hour period. I don't know what centimeters are. Oh, I guess I've got to look that up, right? That's like a foot and a half, maybe? Come on, you've got to use the proper terminology. America.
David Hankin
person
George Lucasperson
Corwin Emeryperson
Silverball Chroniclesorganization
Steve and Cassandraperson
Deep Rootcompany
Texas Pinball Festival (TPF)event
Slam Tilt Podcastorganization
Grant Kingperson
Dr. Johnperson
Fun Publicationscompany
Pinsideorganization
The Editing Companycompany
Rochester Pinball Collectiveorganization
International Film School of Australiaorganization
Baylor Universityorganization

medium · Steve and Cassandra email: 'David Hankin contacted...he confirmed that Hankin did have a free games calculator built into their software. He was completely unaware that he may have been the first to have it'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Hankin pinball secured the Empire Strikes Back license through direct personal contact with George Lucas, offering a free machine as consideration

    medium · Steve and Cassandra email: 'David Hankin contacted George Lucas personally and just asked him for permission. And it was granted. Just that easy. And the payment was a pinball for George. That's it.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Silverball Chronicles' previous episode on Hankin received substantial positive feedback from listeners across multiple channels (Discord, Facebook, email)

    high · David Dennis: 'we got a lot of feedback on this both like formally and informally from just people messaging us through the Discord channels or messaging us on Facebook. It's been pretty wild.'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Pinball manufacturing complexity scales exponentially with production volume—easy for one unit, increasingly difficult at 10, exponentially harder at 100+

    high · Ron Hallett-Snowden: 'it's really easy to make one of something, and it's, like, kind of hard to make ten. But to make, like, a hundred is exponentially, like, the end of the world.'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Community expectations for new pinball manufacturers were depressed due to prior failures like Deep Root, creating a low bar for market entry

    high · David Dennis: 'people were just, I think there was a low level of expectation about any new pinball company... Because the thing with Deep Root was they were teasing all the time'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pre-launch mystery stickers and vague announcements about Barrels of Fun generated industry speculation but met audience fatigue from similar tactics by failed startups

    medium · David Dennis: 'All of a sudden, these people received stickers... And everyone's like, oh, okay. Oh, God. Here we go. People were burned out from stuff like Deep Root'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: David Van Ness views pinball manufacturing as intricate blend of art, mechanics, and physics analogous to film production, with complexity as reward rather than burden

    high · David Van Ness (quoted by David Dennis): 'pinball is challenging in the best way. It's an intricate mix of art, mechanics, and physics, similar to running a film production.'

  • ?

    organizational_signal: Spooky Pinball underwent significant organizational changes during the pandemic, with Corwin (Bug) Emery assuming leadership roles and associated staff changes

    low · Ron Hallett-Snowden and David Dennis discuss 'upheaval at Spooky during the pandemic' and 'Bug who is... Corwin. Emory... who is the son of... Charlie. Mr. Emory. He had sort of taken over'

    • 2:47
    Fifteen inches. Oh, okay. So, like, a foot. Yeah, like a lot of snow just sort of appears. and then you wake up and use your snowblower and get out. We haven't had any of those, but it's been cold. It's been like minus 22, which is probably like minus 4 or 5 for you guys. So does every Canadian have a snowblower? Pretty much, yeah. That's sort of like a – The houses come with them, I think. Yeah. It's like – so when I moved, I used to live in Toronto. I sold my house there and I moved to Atlantic Canada. So when that happens, you have a bunch of like Toronto house sell money. And you buy a lot of lower-cost East Coast home. So you've got some leftover money. And I assigned some of that money for a really nice Honda lawnmower and a really nice Yamaha snowblower. I literally took some of the profit from my home and set it aside for that. So you're in the slums of the Atlantic. Yes, the slums of Atlantic Canada. Just brutal. So you just got back from California, though, so that must be really tough. I was told that it was cold for California It was in the 70s the first two days Before it kind of went downhill Wow Yeah, that was nice though Yeah, that's like 21 degrees I'd kill a man for 21 degrees I'd kill you, Ron, for 21 degrees Oh my And how did you finish over there at Indisk? It never drains in Southern California I finished fourth in the one tournament Whoa, hey, that's pretty good And didn't qualify for anything else. So there you go. Oh, that's fine. Didn't you win last year? Didn't you win Classics or something? No, no. That was two years ago. I was like second. Wow. Good for you. I wish I was that good. I played in a tournament back like the last tournament before Provincials or something.
    4:44
    And it didn't go great. I finished like way out of qualifying. And this is just me just rolling in. It was not good. provincials where's my podcast mate on my other podcast slam till provision provisionals for some reason so when we were uh so that brings us up i co-hosted with you guys over there on uh the slam tilt podcast which i was told it was the highest rated slam tilt podcast in the last two years oh really okay yeah i i was told specifically that i popped a number i am the hashtag the draw when it comes to podcasts. I always draw a big number. And on there, we played a lot of fun games. So go back and listen to that. I think it was like, what, episode 500,612 and a half, I think. Just go to slamtellpodcast.com. You'll see it there. Yeah, it's a good one. It's a good one. When we were recording that and then Bruce did say provisionals, I did hear it and I'm like, I'm just going to let him roll. I'm just going to let it roll with that. and then you named the episode Provisional Winners, and I thought that was hilarious. Yeah, I didn't say anything when he said that either, because I was just like, I think he said that wrong. I'm pretty sure he did. Did you go back twice? Did you like, wait a second, did you do one of those? Just during the editing process, you know, I noticed that he said it wrong. So everybody knows we've sold out, Ron. We are huge sellouts, which is why we got into this. You can see us sell out as much as you want over at patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. And we've had a few new individuals join us on the Patreon since our last episode. So I would love to thank them personally for joining us. And they said, I love that Ron Hallett, but that David Dennis guy. They're like, I am here for Ron. Everyone else is dead. He says out in a weird way. I don't get it. That's right. I want to say thank you to Killer Kim for joining us. Thank you for Darby S. for joining us, and Brandon L., you guys, kicking in, and probably the person with the best name ever, McBain. Hi, McBain. They've joined us. McBain has joined us. Cool, McBain has joined us. On the pro-level crony level. Yes, Bob. And if I haven't... He has come here to lead, not to read. That's right. And Nick H., thank you for joining us if we haven't thanked you for joining. We have a few people have joined us at the $3 a month crony level, which is just to say thank you, giving us some of your hard-earned money. We really appreciate that. Now, a few people jumped up to the $6 a month premium crony level. Premium. Very original, pro-premium and elitist. the six dollar month they get into the chat room and the discord so they can ask us questions and interact and talk about all of the shenanigans that are going on in the world today and in pinball we also sometimes will talk about upcoming topics and the biggest reason to jump up to six dollars a month is the early ad free access to silver ball chronicles before it goes live in the general feeds you also get a sticker after three months ron what did you do with your sticker um i put it in a little area i have in in my my basement where i just have nothing but stickers the stickers is that on the door no it's by the the streaming table the streaming table it was just a big slab of wood there it's like this is a perfect place for it boom yeah yeah have you been doing a lot of streaming lately i have not no no you should show off those stickers show off that silver ball chronicles stream the stickers gotcha that's it that's it but if you want to be an elitist you can jump up to the 20 a month tier that is our top tier after three months you get a silver ball chronicle t-shirt and we did have a few individuals join us at that level this month so wow we thank you so much for that you can also interact with us uh on facebook at facebook.com slash silver ball chronicles and we always ask that if you can give us a five star review or the highest amount of stars or thumbs up or check marks that would be very appreciative because it helps other people find us in the algorithm and helps manipulate the masses to somehow enjoy our banter and hopefully apple will update the podcast correctly unlike my podcast lately the slam tilt podcast yeah the last episode didn't show up for two days i opened a ticket with apple and then the next morning the episode just showed up and then they responded to the ticket that night basically saying like oh no your your your episode's updated thank you and they closed the ticket like what why wasn't it updated like what was the issue that's right i hate apple you can also grab a t-shirt over at silverball swag.com we have a couple of design choices i love t-shirts you do you got a couple of those t-shirts do you wear them to bed right especially the ones that say ron's name first they do i made sure the new one said your name first because i know that keeps you up at night our last episode this was a uh this one went over a lot better than i had expected we got a lot of feedback on this a lot of hankering for hankin a lot a lot of hankering for some hankin like we legitimately got a lot of uh feedback on this both like formally and informally from just people messaging us through the Discord channels or messaging us on Facebook. It's been pretty wild. Grant King, he's a regular sort of reacher-outer. He doesn't reach around. He reaches out to all of us. And I believe he's an Aussie, And he sent a How's That music video to us over from Australia's YouTube, which I assume is the same as regular YouTube except upside down.
    11:05
    And he said, great to see the recognition that Hankin deserves. They put Aussies on the map when it came to pinball manufacturing in Australia. They also had a big play in cocktail and arcade machines here in Australia. And he says, thank you for putting out Mr. Pinball because he is a very well-known pinball brand and has a great reputation here in Australia. Anyone in pinball knows that name. We also had some feedback here from Steve and Cassandra from Down Under. They wrote a lengthy email and provided a bunch of sources.
    11:47
    Yes, and their email is literally Hank and Pinball, so you know. It's them. Exactly. Now, they are very good, close friends to David Hankin, and I guess Hank and Pinball has played a large role in their life. Now, the coolest thing here is, Ron, the games that you played at Expo were Cassandra and Steve's games. Huh? Yeah. Those games. To Rob Burke, and now it's at Past Times. Permanently, I believe. They included a couple of photos of them having a couple of pints in front of their cars. They're Holdens. That's what I'm looking for, Holdens. It's a lengthy email. I don't want to read the whole thing, but I did take a couple of bits out that I thought were really, really cool. Remember that amazing art that we spoke about on Shark? Yeah, well, the Shark artwork was done by a 19-year-old who happened to be the accountant's son. Yeah, the accountant and Hank at Pinball. The accountant's son.
    12:49
    What an imagination he must have had, says Cassandra and Steve. No joke. And they answered a question I've always wondered, which is, you know, Hank and did Empire Strikes Back. And it is licensed. They didn't, like, just do it illegally or whatever. And I always wondered, how the heck did they get the licensing for that and no one else did? Well, David Hankin contacted George Lucas personally and just asked him for permission. And it was granted. Just that easy. And the payment was a pinball for George. That's it. That was it.
    13:28
    Man. Man, really, the North American manufacturers really blew it on that one, didn't they? I guess they didn't ask because they figured it would be too expensive.
    13:38
    I mean, and literally he got it for a pinball machine. Brutal. So you hear that? Other pinball manufacturers, just call the – Just call them up. Well, not anymore, but just call someone up. Hey, can we do this? We'll give you a game.
    13:54
    Wow. The funny thing is, I think they gave Lucas a game for the Star Wars video game, too. He got one of the sit-down model. Oh, yeah. He got his own personalized one.
    14:06
    I would be surprised if that's all they needed to give him. Like, here you go. Cool! So Dennis Lilly. The how's that guy? The how's that guy, right? So how's that refers to what a bowler says when they think that they have got the better out of getting the ball past the bat and knocking over the wickets. You know, those like wood poles. So they turn to the Empire and say, how's that? And the Empire rules it if the player is out or not. It's like getting three strikes apparently in baseball.
    14:38
    And that's the Empire. It sounds like you're saying the Empire. The Empire. So what happens is the bowler knocks the wickets down. He turns up and he goes, how's that? What do you think there, right? And then he says something. And I guess that they say it with such vigor and such oomph that it became sort of his thing. Super cool. Man, oh, man. Really good feedback. Now, the other thing that you had asked was about the free game calculator built into the software. Yeah, because that was on every flyer. And I'm like, how did I never hear of this before? Yeah, did they rip off or did they invent before that? Yeah, before Williams? Did they beat Williams to the punch? So this is what Steve and Cassandra say. They say, I met with David yesterday and he confirmed that Hankin did have a free games calculator built into their software. He was completely unaware that he may have been the first to have it or there was any dispute about who came up with the idea years later. Very interesting. He's quite a humble person. Anyway, how cool is that? He like they invented something and they're like, whatever. But that's just like Australians and Canadians, right? We're just sort of like we don't need to tell everybody when we do something. Unlike some other nation that I know. America! Woo! And Dr. John. Dr. John also reached out and he says, thank you for covering Hankin. I've been trying to get David Hankin on a chat for years, but he's quite a shy man. Just a few things to fill in about the Australian things. Cricket, he says, is enjoyed by the majority of the world, except for the Americas, which is changing. So we are having, specifically in Canada, we're having a lot of immigration boom, and a lot of that is coming from Southeast Asia and Europe. A lot of those countries are coming, a lot of those immigrants are coming together. And they're all playing cricket? They are playing cricket. There's cricket in my town, and it's like middle of nowhere in, like, Canada. It's like they're playing cricket. I never understood it. It always confuses me. The guy throws the ball, and he kind of, it seems like it's baseball, but it's not. He also describes all the things about cricket for us, because quite frankly, I don't understand it quite that much. I know there's a type that can be played over the course of several days, like a full game, and then there's others that are more timed or something. Now, a lot of Holden cars apparently have two-letter abbreviations for their model descriptions, which is like where that FJ comes from, which is, of course, one of those old iconic cars. and they really don't make much sense but there are tons of these initials among holden cars now you know and you complained about the regulator on scuba diving right so we were talking about shark and how they were like this extra thing floating around well i guess scuba diving is more of a thing in australia than it probably is in upstate new york that yeah i've that would make sense he says that the regulator is the thing you breathe through which i did know And this regulates the pressure leaving the tank into you to breathe. And they also have a second regulator for someone else to use if they run out of air whilst diving. And they call it an octopus, which is why that other one in the art was floating around. Remember, we crapped on that. We're like, why does it got two regulators? I also love how they use whilst. I don't use that enough. Whilst. Yeah, in Canada, we just say while. Yeah, while driving. Yeah. Yeah. We just say it kind of that way. That's what I feel like whilst is better. It sounds fancier. It sounds like you're more intelligent. It does. It does. Which is funny for an Australian. Oh, wow. Not very nice, mate. It's all about that.
    18:28
    All right. Shall we jump into today's topic? I thought we were just reading mail for the entire episode. No, that was long, actually. That took a while. So everybody who complains about the banter being too long in the first of the episode, well, you know what? It's not banter, though. This is actually information. This is pretty legit. Like, how else would you know that they got the licensing for Empire Strikes Back by just asking George Lucas? Hey, George, hello. My name is David Hankin. I'm an Australian pinball manufacturer. We'd like to make an Empire Strikes Back game. I wonder if it's okay. Well, what's in it for me? Well, we'll give you one of the games for free. Sure. Okay. You had me at free. You had me at free game.
    19:14
    All righty. Have you ever heard the saying pinball is hard? Yes, I've heard that. Well, the team at Barrels of Fun hasn't, and they've decided to smash on ahead and impress pretty much everyone in pinball. It's been just under two years since they launched their company and their first licensed game. Oh, wow. So here's a disclaimer, because I like to be as ethical, and I like to be as above board as possible. You are very ethical. You might be the most ethical person I know. That's pretty bad. You don't know enough good people.
    19:51
    You spend too much time at the Rochester Pinball Collective. Which is located at 349 West Commercial Street, East Rochester, New York. A suite number 2965. Yeah, okay, thanks. Thanks for that. Brian Savage, who is the chief business officer of Barrels of Fun, reached out to us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com and asked if we would put together an episode about Barrels of Fun. Naturally, I was confused, but I was humbled that somebody actually cares about us and sees us as a positive voice in pinball or something. but I was skeptical and I figured I was being played. I did have a chat with Brian as to what he wanted. He was like, oh, let's do an interview. I'd love to get us cemented in the history and the zeitgeist of pinball. And I'm like, ah, it's not really what we do. We don't really do interviews. As I thought about it after our chat, I thought, man, it would be pretty good to add something new because we've gone back quite a bit here in the last little while to like older brands and things like that. And I thought it would be kind of neat to dive into Barrels of Fun. I thought it would be a good break. What about you, Ron? Do you feel like we're promoting or selling out or anything?
    21:17
    It's pretty early in the company's history to do an episode. I would think that they have a lot more cool history coming up Yeah but we usually wait until there some sort of scandal We usually wait until the company explodes That has not happened here Exactly We looking for drama And Brian is a fan I met him at TPF. That's right. Actually, was it TPF or Expo? One or the other. Yeah, but I still think Barrels of Fun deserves an episode, especially since it gives us a really cool case study of a startup that has done it very differently than most, and a manufacturer who has zero drama and has delivered all of their games ahead of schedule. Even more impressive, zero leaks. That is the most impressive part. That's pretty amazing. So I figured, okay, let's give it a go. So here you go. If you want to shoot us some emails and tell us we're promoting Barrels of Fun, I've been upfront and honest here in this situation. Of course, we are Mavericks in pinball, right? Mm-hmm. I've decided to make this episode with basically zero input from David and Brian, beyond asking a few questions for clarity's sake around production numbers and things like that. So you ready to go? I'm ready to go. All right. Is pinball hard, Ron? Pinball's very hard. Why is it so hard to make pinball? It's pretty easy, right? You just design a play field, you screw some things to it, and then you just do that like a thousand times. Pinballs are too complicated. They have too many parts. There's too much stuff. You've got to get parts from everywhere. You've got to get parts from Asia. You've got to get parts from Canada. You've got to get parts from the States. You've got to put them together. They all have to be the same. You've got a physical ball bouncing around. You've got to deal with licensors, who are apparently terrible in most cases. Pinball's pretty hard. So they always talk about, like, it's really easy to make one of something, and it's, like, kind of hard to make ten. But to make, like, a hundred is exponentially, like, the end of the world. and then of course it just gets worse and worse and worse as you as you ramp it up which is why i think when we look at like stern and jjp to some cases uh some cases we're just like wow you know what they do is actually really impressive wouldn't you say i would say so what does david van s say about pinball who's david van s well before we get into that what david says is pinball is challenging in the best way. It's an intricate mix of art, mechanics, and physics, similar to running a film production. The complexity is what makes it so rewarding, whether you're a creator or a player. Seeing fans, from pinball enthusiasts to fans of the IP, experience the game for the first time is the ultimate reward for all the hard work. Oh, so nice. And David Van Ness is Australian, but I'm not going to do an Australian accent. Come on. No, it's embarrassingly bad. And he's got that really good Australian, laid-back Australian accent. Oh, there's different types? Yeah, man. It's just like the States. You've got different accents based on where you are in the country and if you're in the city or in the rural. How about Canada? They have some places where they actually say out, but others where they say ute? No, it's all pretty much like that. It just depends on how ute it gets. Oh, how ute it gets. I got it. Yeah. So in Atlantic Canada, we have hard Rs. Oh. We're going to the – hey, my buddy and I, we got in a car. We went down to the bar and we had a time. Oh, okay. But I don't, I try to enunciate more for the podcast so you can understand me. Well, do you remember hearing about this new company? I remember hearing rumblings about a new company. That was like, I want to say it was like pre, you know, just around the pandemic. There was all this like stuff on Pinside about a new, like, oh, there's this new company and they're ordering materials. But no, everybody was really cagey, right? Nobody ever gave any specific details, which I thought was really, really interesting. Did you bump into this? Well, the stickers started showing up everywhere. Yeah, so that came after. All of a sudden, these people received stickers that said, Barrels of Fun, and it had this really cool logo.
    25:25
    Yeah, I don't think it said barrels. It just had the logo. Just the logo? Yeah, I don't think it said. It said something like. It's like an exclamation mark. Yeah, an exclamation, like, it's coming. It's coming. And everyone's like, oh, okay. Oh, God. Here we go. People were burned out from stuff like Deep Root and all that. Like, oh, come on. This is about the time that Deep Root was, like, imploding. I think it's important to get the backdrop here, why the debut was so impressive. Because everyone's just like, okay, like, stop with the stupid stickers. Just come out what you're going to come out with. We don't want, you know, we're sick of this. And just because you had all these other failures. And people were just, I think there was a low level of expectation about any new pinball company. The best part is a low bar, right? Just show your stuff and whatever it is and stop joking around here, right? Because the thing with Deep Root was they were teasing all the time, and this is coming, and every house needs a pinball, and every pinball needs a house. We're going to revolutionize the construction and et cetera. Ferrari pinball for Kia prices. Uh-huh. Right? It was all like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I remember hearing from an individual on Pinside who I thought was crazy and pops up on Pinside quite regularly rambling, which I think is pretty funny. And he was like, oh, no, this company is legit. There's this company coming and they're buying things and things are getting underway and everybody's just like, you're crazy. Nobody's paying attention to you, crazy old man. And then it sort of came out and it's like, oh, he was right. But, I mean, everybody – nobody was spilling the beans as to what was happening. It's just things were happening. But we hear it all the time. The two major principals of this company are David Van Ness and Brian Savage. So you had asked the question, who is David Van Ness, which, by the way, kind of a cool last name, huh? Mm-hmm. David of the S? Well, he was known through his association with Spooky Pinball. Yeah, that was his big thing. And he's a big lover of pop culture. I have a couple of links to some podcasts where David and Brian are guests. They talk about that, predominantly David. And they talk about a lot of this stuff, which is where I gleaned most of this information. I also stole some of this information from their LinkedIn profile. So it's quite possible that they lied on their LinkedIn profile. Oh, I hope not. Who does that? But it says there that David has over 20 years of media experience in film production, post-production, branding, product development, marketing, licensing, and project management from start to finish. He originally went to the International Film School of Australia. You're well aware of the International Film School of Australia or IFSCA. I'm IFSCA. I just like that. I believe he said he was a stuntman. That's cool. I would put that on my LinkedIn if that's true. Yeah. So International Film School of Australia, right up there with the New York Film School, one of the biggest in the – I don't know. That's a lie. It could be. But after graduation and after goofing around in Australia for a little while, he moved to Boca Raton, Florida, which, I mean, who doesn't want to move to Boca Raton, Florida? Isn't it Boca Raton? Isn't that how you say it? I thought it was Boca Raton. Okay. You can write us in at silverballchronicles at gmail.com and tell us, is it Raton or Raton? I thought it was Boca Raton. That's how I always said it, but I'm probably wrong. Well, I'm Canadian. I don't know. But our education system is better than the American one. Wow.
    29:05
    Now, he worked in video production and eventually became post-production producer for a company called The Editing Company. Very original name. Now, this was around 2013. David began working with Spooky Pinball as their creative director and media specialist at the same time. So he sort of had these two parallel kind of jobs. A hard worker, I would say. Hard worker. He would travel from Texas to Wisconsin on a regular basis in his car, there and back, like on weekends or on long weekends or vacations, and he would be working with them. He actually spent a lot of time building a lot of relationships with licensors.
    29:51
    He was the major reason that Spooky had secured a lot of the license that they have recently released, such as Halloween, the Looney Tunes, Rick and Morty, those other ones that I'm forgetting. Scooby-Doo. Probably Evil Dead. That doesn't mean that Spooky's not going to be able to get licenses in the future without David Van Ness, now that he has left Spooky. However, he was one of the sort of the people that kind of taught them how to play that game, which I think is really, really cool. But then it was the pandemic that changed everything, wasn't it, Ron? Yeah, it did. Changed everything. And you remember the pinball show episode 149.5, right? That was their lowest rated one ever, I think. Nope. The pandemic revisited episode. I am the hashtag the draw when it comes to ratings. One of the best episodes ever done where we talked about the effects of the pandemic on pinball. Have you been on that show since then?
    30:47
    Exactly. Well, for David Van Ness, it was time for a change as well. And there were many changes at Spooky at that time. Do you remember sort of the upheaval at Spooky during the pandemic?
    30:58
    You mean when Bug took over? Yeah, that was like Bug who is... Corwin. Emory. Yes, Corwin Emory, who is the son of, what's his name, Emory? Charlie. Mr. Emory.
    31:17
    He had sort of taken over, and there were some changes among some of the staff and other people. I don't know if that's one way or the other that people are, you know, I don't think there was any hurt feelings, but maybe there was. I don't know. But there were a lot of changes at Spooky, and I remember the rumblings. People were like, David Van Ness left. And people were shocked because he did a lot of the animation on their screens. And quite frankly, Spooky's animation was pretty good. That's when David started planning something big with Brian Savage. Who's Brian Savage?
    31:48
    Brian attended Baylor University in Texas, majoring in business administration and ended up in sales and marketing. So Baylor University, is that a university I should know? I've heard of it. I actually didn't know it was in Texas. I remember it from more of a sports thing. Yeah, that's a whole thing down there. It's like sports in the States. Yeah, sports are great. So he started a thing called Fun Publications in 1993. Fun exclamation, all capitals. It ended up becoming a multi-million dollar company specializing in destination marketing events and limited edition collectibles. So is it fair to say that Brian's a bit of a nerd?
    32:27
    Because he's into collectibles? Yeah, I feel like that's a nerdy thing, right? So is being a nerd cool these days? It is. Yes, being a nerd is cool. Did that become cool? When did that become cool? Like when all the comic book movies came out and all that? Comic-Con, all that? Yeah, I'd say like 2006. So all of a sudden nerds were cool. Okay. Yeah, kind of around the time. I would say maybe, you know, the Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, Batman, kind of that started it, I think. Oh, my Batman. I think that that's around the time. Now, they produced over 34 international conventions as destination marketing specialists, and they produced over 450 magazine issues on collectibles and stuff. They also developed over 500 limited edition G.I. Joe action figures and over 150 limited edition Transformers action figures. Ooh, I wouldn't mind the Transformers. That's really nerdy. More than meets the eye. so when you think about like action figures and stuff like that i feel like that's a whole other thing yeah right i i would definitely like some transformers yeah like transformers were really big in the 80s i missed out on that when i was younger i had a buddy of mine who had tons of those see i'm old i have the megatron uh gun because he's a gun yeah which was before that was like, and it doesn't have the orange thing at the end of the barrel to say it's not a gun either. It's that old. So that was really big, and G.I. Joe's were really big in that late 70s, early 80s too. That was really a big thing. And those have had a bit of a resurgence, I would say, probably now. But action figure collecting is, I think, really cool in some ways. But that's a whole sub-genre. But you can see that he tapped into that sort of generational zeitgeist and there was a magazine and then you'd go to like conventions like i guess like a pinball convention that would be action figures and then they'd have these special limited edition gi joes that's cool stuff but you don't just get those without relationships brian ended up coordinating with hasbro as the licensee for over 25 years for gi joe and 12 years for those transformer brands and he was one or his company was one of the longest Best continuous license holders from Hasbro for that G.I. Joe Collectors Club and Transformers Collectors. That's wild.
    34:59
    Like, that's a big license to hold on to. He's a real American hero. Yes. How did Brian meet David? How did this marriage come about? Well, Brian says, David and I met because he sold me a Doctor Who pinball machine from his collection. Actually, I had to talk him out of it because it was one of the first editions with the Dalek moving topper. I shamed him into selling it because my son was a huge Doctor Who fan at the time. So we had talked about Doctor Who. The Dalek topper, yes. Exterminate! Exterminate! Yeah, we did that in our Mechs That Made Us episode, probably. Right? Like, Doctor Who's a pretty cool, like, original, neat design. It's got some really cool bits and pieces to it. And Doctor Who was like if Star Trek and Star Wars was not nerdy enough for you, you watched Doctor Who. I actually didn't watch Doctor Who. Yeah. See, I didn't know Doctor Who existed until like 2010, which is pretty wild considering that it had been on the air for like 40 years at that point. It's neat, but it's weird. It's like British sci-fi, which if like British comedy is weird, just extrapolate that to British sci-fi. So they began a business relationship around this time. It was this whole thing that this is – I missed out on this. It's called the re-import craze. Do you remember this?
    36:25
    Yeah, you just get all these machines back from Europe. Yeah, so it was like 2000s, 2010, like the industry had collapsed. and and what was happening was like people were buying a bunch of pinballs from like europe and then they'd ship them back to north america and then switch them back over to american or a lot of that was with the williams stuff because if you remember from our williams episode who was one of their biggest distributors the german distributor and and williams would send a lot of their their early production machines you know stuff that would have stuff in it that was taken out later they would go to like germany so then a lot of these got re-imported back into the u.s so in your coin box if you ever notice that you have like a button that has deutsch marks on it or uh or any of that stuff you you likely have a re-import uh machine i've seen a few of these em machines that have been re-imports that have had like european coins on them like uh what were the one like crones i saw a buddy of mine had one that had like a a coin slot button for crones I'm trying to think if I still have any re-imports because I used to have my No Fear, I think, was German. Yeah, they have No Fear and the Germans. Yeah, the knocker didn't work because it was disconnected, and then I found out that was a common practice there where they just unplug it. They didn't like knockers for some reason. Everybody knows that the Germans are very skittish. Yeah. They're skittish people. So what does Brian say about their relationship? I don't know. I know what Brain says because that's what it says. Oh, that's – well.
    37:57
    Whoops. That's going to happen, I think, a bunch in here. Don't worry. Well, Brian says, after the first transaction, the Doctor Who, we were talking about how many containers of pins were coming out of Europe. So we bought one thinking that there were lots of people who were looking for games to refurbish. We did okay with the 33 games. That was the start of our business relationship. That's a good idea. And Brain also said,
    38:21
    I had retired from running the Hasbro-licensed G.I. Joe and Transformers collection clubs for 25 years. And David was working in the pinball industry with Spooky. Then COVID hit and the world changed and Barrels of Fun was born. You remember when Deep Root collapsed, right? Yes. And how there was like this, they started liquidating all the assets. They started sort of selling off the prototype play fields and they sold like all of the metal pieces and side rails. And there's still legal stuff going on with them to this day. day here in 2025 early 2025 uh fighting with that which is why we don't have a deep root episode yet i'm looking for some closure before i uh yeah robert mueller is still they're still trying to get money from him so that literally is still going on so when it so they had like uh pinball legs and they had screws and pieces of metal and and and manufacturing equipment and and the pin pods and lcd displays as we'll find out later and this all went up for liquidation auction A bunch of people picked up some of these things. One of those is Turner Pinball, and you remember them from their Ninja Eclipse game. A lot of these companies that picked up stuff kind of remained nameless. Barrels of Fun picked up a bunch of the LCD screens. So if you look at their first released pin at Barrels of Fun, they have an LCD screen under the glass. We'll get into that. Don't get ahead of ourselves. All right. To be able to build pinball, you need a place to build pinball. And we spoke about how that was such an issue in Australia for a company called... Haggis. Good Lord. Wow, I've forgotten about them that quickly. They struggled with scaling up manufacturing. So the first thing that Barrels of Fun did was they secured a 19 or 20,000 square foot facility in Houston, Texas. texas which is pretty big here was one of the clarification things that i did ask uh over to the team at barrels of fun and i said why houston and not chicago reasons make sense the reasons make a lot of sense although reason one we don't live in chicago and don't plan to move there it's too cold there and besides david is really far south texas yeah he's he's very like he doesn't want to be cold. And I get that. I was snowshoeing this morning, Ron. Yeah, I don't want to snowshoe. Houston is also a huge manufacturing facility with a port for import and export of parts and products worldwide. Labor cost is much lower. Finally, we are developing secondary parts suppliers that other pinball companies don't use, so we have multiple supply channels outside of Chicago. And they're not alone. There's lots of companies that move to Texas. Yeah, there's a lot of manufacturing in Texas. So it's not like it's not like they're in the middle of nowhere. They are in a in a hub.
    41:24
    Their only issue is the power grid because they have their own. So when it goes out, they're screwed. Yeah, that's yeah. Oh, it's the windmills. The windmills are ruining the power grid. They started working on their first machine. I'm really I really like this machine. So let's talk about this. Just to go back in time here, we were talking about the the the little stickers and stuff that would show up at shows about this new upcoming company. And it was around, it was across the country. Like I was at Allentown, Pennsylvania for their show. Stickers would show up. You'd be like in California for stickers, these things would show up. Texas, they would show up. Like what is this? What is this? This weird logo, this company that's coming.
    42:09
    And we finally figured out what it was. It's a cool logo. and they show up at TPF with these Labyrinth games ready to go. They had some in boxes ready to go. I'd say one of the most impressive debuts I've ever seen. So you were there. You were there for everything. I was there when Jersey Jack unveiled Wizard of Oz, and it wasn't as impressive as this. As far as just the amount of games they had ready, they had a whole row of like 10 games with a never-ending line to the point where I only got one game in because it was just such a long line. They had banners. They had stickers. And they had merch. And they legit launched it. And I think part of the reason why they were able to put such a show of force at the Texas Pinball Festival was because they had money behind them It wasn just a small family or a bunch of guys getting together It wasn't like a gal putting up a GoFundMe or a – what do they call those? It was a guy from a multimillion-dollar company, his own multimillion-dollar company. Who did manufacturing. Who had relationships. So he's a business person first and a kind of collector, marketer second, which is really important because most of the people that start up a company in pinball are just regular individuals, which is fine. But it's a totally different game if you're trying to make something as hard as pinball and you're just like an enthusiast. They didn't position it as pinball, pinball for everybody. They know that they're not selling a sub-$1,000 pinball machine to the masses. They are specifically focused on the collectible market, limited edition numbers.
    44:03
    And you need certain credibility and the ability to do that because people have to believe in your product. And I think they knew right out of the gate that they had to impress. and you were there. Did they impress? Labyrinth was the first game I remember since probably Wizard of Oz, like from a debut company where you looked at it and it looked like a pinball machine by a company that had been making it for 10 years. It didn't look like a homebrew. You know what I mean? It looked like a professional manufacturer company that had been doing this for years. So when you went up to it and you gave it like a shake, it didn't go like squeaky, squeaky, squeaky? Not just that. It's just the appearance of how it looks.
    44:49
    You know what I mean? Like the physical appearance of the pinball machine? Like if you go to Highway, their first game there. Oh, God, what was it called? The one with the racing theme. The racing theme. People are just screaming, writhing on the highway in their car right now. I mean, you could tell, okay, it came from a new company because it just looked it, at least to me. this looked like it could have been from any you know long time manufacturer putting out a game it's just what it looked like full throttle i can't believe i can't remember that name man i'm getting old okay so here's the thing and it was licensed the first thing they say is they got a license you can't they're in the collectibles market and nobody wants to buy the collectible of food truck nobody wants to buy the collectible of barry o's barbecue challenge they want a theme that is collectible around their brand. And I'm going to have to say I am shocked and surprised it is not Transformers or G.I. Joe. Oh, after the other. Like that's like his bread and butter, right? Brian Savage's bread and butter. Well, they already made a Transformers game, and I'm sure they didn't want to just retread something. Yeah, that probably went into the calculation. And G.I. Joe.
    46:02
    I mean, it could make a Team America World Police. Oh, that would, you know, if. That's like a modern day G.I. Joe. If they ever made a Team America world, please, yes, I'm in. But that will never happen. So the theme that they chose, Labyrinth. And Labyrinth is the licensed fantasy, creepy Muffet, David Bowie bulge theme. They have sold, I think, over 750 units, although they targeted 750 units. So they're already ahead of the game. Game was designed by David Van Ness. The mechanics by Travis Moseman. Software by Eric Pripke. Eric Pripke. and Phil Grimaldi. Artwork by Jonathan Bergeron, who's a name you should recognize.
    46:44
    He goes by Johnny Crap up here in Kanata. Yep, he did Jurassic Park for Stern. Animation by Trent Armstrong. Now, I remember somewhere around the Rick and Morty time when that came out at Spooky, there were rumblings that David Van Ess was designing a play field. And he really wanted to jump into doing more than just the marketing and animation. And then it never happened. And we were like, well, what happened with that? And then kind of a year or six months after kind of those rumblings came out that David Van Ness was working on a play field, and he was very excited to release it, he was gone from Spooky. So him becoming the game designer of Labyrinth, I think, is kind of interesting.
    47:33
    So let's talk about the theme. Yeah, what about Labyrinth? I've never seen Labyrinth. You've never seen Labyrinth? No.
    47:40
    I remember seeing this when I was a kid. I want to say probably like 6, 7, 8, kind of in that age range.
    47:48
    And it has this creepy, scary childhood feeling in my chest. It's like, you remember who framed Roger Rabbit? Please, Eddie. No, I don't remember it at all. So that movie has the same nostalgic terror in my background. Terror?
    48:09
    Yeah, the part when he gets rolled over with the steamroller at the end. That's awesome. Come on. You find out he's a toon? Yes. To this day, creeps me right out. Oof, Ray and Roger Rabbit game. That's what I want.
    48:22
    It's good old Jim Henson. So you know it's going to be decent at all times. I love Jim Henson. so it has this it creates this feeling in me of like this creepy exciting fantasy it's got jennifer connelly and it's just it's so fun and it reminds me of being a kid but it also has this just this level of of creepy weird that makes it so interesting and i think that's why david van was such a big fan as well. He has the same feeling. Labyrinth is the 1986 musical fantasy film directed by Jim Henson. I believe his last movie directed. Many of the stars in the film were Muppets, created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop with collaboration of Brian Fraud. And this was actually executive produced by George Lucas. Back when that meant something. so after george lucas made all that star wars money he worked on the executive producing of a lot of of films and this was one of them and howard the duck was another one people forget that one the indiana jones films he was a producer yep this uh film starred a young jennifer connelly and david bowie in tight spandex pants where he played the goblin king he's got the bulge thing i remember that part of it after jim henson made the dark crystal in 1982 I love Dark Crystal.
    49:52
    This is Gene Simmons from KISS. I would like you to join the Patreon for Silver Ball Chronicles. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Want to be as cool as KISS? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority in our episodes? Jump up to a $6 a month premium crony. and then go to kissonline.com. Stop that. We're not going to kissonline.com. Just finish up the damn list. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an Ellie Lutis Cronin. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Then afterwards, you can swing on over to kissonline.com.
    50:42
    See, I have not seen Dark Crystal. It's, well, it's kind of dark, and it's not a musical. I remember I saw the Jim Henson documentary on Disney+. That's very well. It's very good. Definitely worth it to watch. So Henson and Froud began thinking of a new film concept after Dark Crystal. Dark Crystal did not do very well in the film.
    51:11
    Critics thought it was okay. Kids didn't like it. I thought it was okay. I love that movie. Your feelings of Dark Crystal are the same feelings that I have for Labyrinth. Now, the film was written by Terry Jones, who was originally one of the members of Monty Python. He was always a member of Monty Python. Well, that's right. Yes. Until he died. Yeah, exactly. As you had mentioned, this was really one of the last major projects for Jim Henson, who was a crazy, nutty, workaholic guy. I believe it didn't do particularly great at the box office, and he never got to direct another movie. The last thing that Jim Henson directed, the last project he worked on before he died of cancer untimely was – It wasn't cancer.
    51:57
    No. Wasn't it? He had some issue, and then he didn't get it looked at immediately and died. Yeah, but I thought it was cancer. I'm pretty sure it wasn't cancer.
    52:06
    I'm not going to look it up. It was something that if he had just gone in earlier, that probably would not have been a problem. just 53 years old that's brutal he just totally robbed right i mean the guy was we were robbed of more cool shit having trouble breathing blah blah coughed up blood might be dying but he didn't want to take time off from his schedule to visit a hospital then he finally goes to the hospital multiple abscesses in both of his lungs the result previous something that he apparently had for the past few days so basically he had a really bad it's pretty bad infection just didn't get it looked at where he would have been fine so one of the last project the last project that jim henson um worked on before his death was yeah it was at hollywood studios in um disney world uh muppet vision 3d which is one of my absolute favorite places in uh disney world which unfortunately is being closed down and they're changing it over to is that the one where you go in to the stage and what waldorf and what's his name there in the top oh yeah i did that it's awesome it's so great now they are changed they are they are changing that over to monsters inc world quite frankly disney has completely mishandled the muppets except for like one film in in the entire relationship they had since jim henson's passing which is which is pretty upset which is pretty sad for me because i'm a huge muppet fan is pretty good at destroying franchises they specialize in Muppets, Star Wars, Marvel they're great I hate Disney by the way if you haven't noticed you and I, we're going to Disney World I've been there once, that was enough we'll go and I will be the power hungry guide walks you through the entire process and manages everything and you just go along for the ride and you'll have a great time so this had a $25 million budget back in the 1980s and it grossed $35 million at the box office so it did make money it did get 77% Rotten Tomatoes which is less than The Dark Crystal however it took on some serious cult classic after that in fact I love this movie so much I thought I'm going to buy this on Google TV so I can have it so I put it on the Google TV and I started watching it with my 6 year old daughter and at the beginning of the movie David Bowie steals the little baby brother of Jennifer Connelly. And my daughter freaked out and didn't want to watch the rest of the movie. It was pretty great. David Bowie told an interviewer in 1992 that, every Christmas a new flock of children comes up to me and says, oh, you're the one who's in Labyrinth. You're not like David Bowie, the legendary freaking absurdly rich musician. Right. In 1997, Jennifer Connelly said that, I still get recognized for Labyrinth by little girls in the weirdest places. I can't believe they still recognize me from that movie. It's on TV all the time, and I guess I pretty much look the same. Which is pretty great. Good for you, Jennifer Connelly. Yeah, she looked good in Maverick. So we talk about location, location, location, right, all the time. Well, you know what? In pinball, and some people still don't get this, it's IP, IP, IP. That's what sells pinball. We talk about choosing IP a lot. Tom Neiman, you remember him? We spoke about him long, long ago back in the archives over at silverballchronicles.com, right? Bally episode. Yeah, he was the Bally licensing guru back in the 1970s. You mean games like Wizard, Captain Fantastic, Kiss, Harlem Globetrotters, Dolly Parton, Rolling Stones? Yeah, the good Rolling Stones. Oh. Yeah. This was like, this was forever ago, and we still have not learned marketing and IP is everything. Tom Neiman says, I kind of became the licensing guy for a ballet corporate. I work with amusement parks trying to cross-promote with some licensing deals. There it is, cross-promote. The licensor promotes you because they want their brand out there. You promote the brand because you want people to have an emotional connection to that. That is why David Bowie's bulge is so important to selling pinball, because I remember that as my childhood and it brings back that emotion. Neiman explained on a few older podcasts back in the day in a couple of interviews and in the Pinball Compendium book, all linked in the show notes. he explained that he was able to get licenses through directly contacting those relevant parties, movie studios, record labels, celebrities, and negotiating deals where Bally would provide a certain number of pinball machines as payment, rather than upfront cash payments. Now, of course, I'm sure that has significantly changed nowadays, unless you're George Lucas and you'll do anything for a pinball machine. but this allowed bally to produce very successful licensed pinball games that sold significantly more units than their unlicensed counterparts when licensing is too expensive you go to you know your own white label kind of branding things but having a license is not the only thing you need right according to roger sharp as he stated on top cast episode 17 he feels that the key is blending the design team's ideas with the license rather than just doing a work-for-hire license game. He believed the quality of the game design and creativity was more important than just having the license. That's right. So back in the 70s, right, you just had a play field and slapped some art on and it was KISS, right? Now it's sold more than if it would be like Fire Band 2000. It could have been any design. It could have been any theme. But because it was KISS, it sold more. now we get into the 1990s where roger sharp is like the licensing guru over at bally williams and it's become more about theme immersion and how the actual design team melds with the license so plenty of people back in the day would make a game and then they would slap a a design on it that doesn't work anymore in the 90s well bringing it back to labrath brian savage says our company vision is from the collector fans perspective we first decide if an intellectual property is interesting to us and will it make a great game some ips are great but may not translate well to pinball the world is everything if it doesn't scream the ip to the player we will have not done our job we want people to purchase our games because they love the world we have created and they find the game very entertaining i mean a great example of of ip integration is something that is sometimes hit or miss over at jjp kind of look at toy story 4 and it's sort of like that could almost be any game with just art on it but then when you look at something like the their latest release avatar that is like that screams world under glass but that's what brian and david Van Ass want to have is they want everything to scream IP. Well, as far as, so since you're a Labyrinth guy, did they do it? They really, like, really nailed it. It is Labyrinth through and through. It has all of the characters and little bits. Let's, I mean, let's talk about the flyer first. Because we love our flyers. Because we love it. And they did a great job. There's no puns, which makes me a little sad. They got David Bowie right on there, which was a good idea. They knew exactly what to do. It's an all-new pinball adventure. Yes, return to Jim Hansen's most iconic world of goblins, mazes, bogs, and more as you venture on your own quest to escape the Goblin King's labyrinth.
    60:13
    Featuring the music of David Bowie from the Labyrinth soundtrack. Yes, magic dance, that's the one that everybody knows. underground chilly down as the world falls down also very good one within you but the like the back glass with david bowie and his teased hair and eyebrows it's just awesome i like with the modern licensing you need two paragraphs of uh credits at the bottom of all the licensors yes who owns what can we zoom in on that let me see if i can zoom in and see if i can actually all game elements barrels of fun jim henson trademark and logo labyrinth trademark and logo jim henson company motion picture labyrinth enterprises magic dance all the music is owned by wc music corp probably a david bowie license for his likeness or something there's a lot of like fine print down there which is pretty funny when we look at the back side of this flyer it is labyrinth. So labyrinth is, it's all, it's, so this girl, she gets sucked into this maze that's always shifting and changing. And it has all these weird, strange, you know, Muppety characters down there. And those characters, along with the labyrinth themselves, are just the core of that entire film. Each one of those little details are in this pin. This is why I wanted to do an episode on it because i love labyrinth and this screams it the little worm dude that's sort of the guide that she meets when she first enters the labyrinth his name is i think ello which is short for hello pops up over by the skill shot area and then they have the the pop-up uh sculpts that are the uh what the heck do they call those guys they're like these little like and they tease you and harass you and bother you all i know is they had me when i you drain on the left side and the little guy pops out of the apron and mocks you. If the game is mocking me in any way, I'm immediately a fan. It has Sir Didymus, which is the little dude on the horse. Sir Didymus. I think that was his name, yeah. Sir Didymus.
    62:28
    Ah, the wise man, who's like this creepy, weird guy. It's just, ah, man. It's so good. And if you look at the play field, in the back panel, we see an lcd display so we we alluded to this earlier that that is one of the uh the the pick offs uh from uh from deep room and what happened was they had an opportunity to buy all these lcd screens so they just bought them cheap and we should say they are different they're longer and thinner and that's what deeper was going to use in their games so they found that it would be perfect for the back panel so they stick it in the back panel and then under various scenes it'll change. It'll show some detailed information in the background. But there's like one of the most famous scenes in the film is when they're in this hedgerow. And in the hedgerow, there's these goblins that are trying to chase them down. They have these like little sticks with like a nipper on the end and it bites people. It's sort of like instead of having a sword or a spear, they've got a stick with a nipper on the end. And you could just see these nippers kind of bouncing above the hedgerows because the actual goblins are super short. And it's hilarious. And you can actually get this nipper shooter rod, which is really cool. It's just that they knew what they had to do, and they hammered it right out of here. It's so good. So beyond that, though, we've got three flippers, two major ramps. We've got spinners. You've got everything. Everything you need. You've got drop targets. Skulls galore. They nailed what they needed to nail when it came to the look and feel. So hats off to them for knowing that. They actually delivered one of these games to Henson Studios in Los Angeles, which is kind of neat. And then there was the topper. So toppers have gotten pretty wild here in the last little while, right? So the first I think crazy kind of cool topper after that Bally Williams Like toppers disappeared when Bally Williams disappeared Well cool toppers Yeah Technically Stern had the one that said tournament pinball on it Yeah, that's not. That doesn't, even though it's literally a topper, that doesn't count? Yeah. Okay. It doesn't count. Just because it sits on the top of the machine where a topper does not make it a topper. Okay. Yeah. I think the first major milestone in the new age of toppers was the Ghostbusters topper, Which was just this cheap kind of crappy plastic thing that went on top of it. It looked like the lights from the Ghostbusters car, Ecto-1 or whatever. Then the next, I think, major topper milestone was probably what, like Black Knight? Black Knight was good. Or it's this animatronic Black Knight that moves left and right and up and down. Chicago Gaming had all their cool toppers from Attack from Mars and Monster Bash and all that.
    65:18
    Hey guys, as a quick heads up, I wanted to let you know that in my real life, I'm David the Advice Guy. At Dennis Financial, we aren't investment advisors or insurance agents. I always thought that sounded terrible. We want to provide you with sound financial advice. In fact, we want to provide you with investment and insurance advice for life, and we take that honor very seriously. Do you know individuals who receive financial advice for 10 years have two times the financial assets of unadvised individuals? For example, we've got mortgage insurance at the bank, right? Well, did you know a 40-year-old non-smoker can save $30 a month every month for 20 years just from shopping around for a more competitive rate? Now, just imagine what a pinhead like you could do with that extra money. Toppers and shooter rods, anyone? If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensing most Canadian provinces. contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice ebook or check out dennisfinancial.ca insurance solutions provided by dennisfinancial inc canadian residents only now the next biggest i would say escalation in the topper wars is definitely this jim henson's labyrinth topper this is the three goblin goblins interactive topper you can see this on youtube and it is worth it to take a look so not only is it like a pieces of plastic stuck together and animatronics and lights in eyes this is like full rubbery kind of faces that move and and almost like move their their their jaws and stuff it is it is like something that you would see it's let's call it animatronic right like it is like almost disney ask now are the are these characters from the movie like do they have names these characters are from the movies their name escapes me at the moment ah okay but they are uh specific characters they are modeled after those specific characters and this was done by an individual who names his name escapes me who i should have looked up but i'm not going to because we're already recording and i'm lazy and he worked for uh peter jackson's production company or it does work for peter Jackson's production company called Weta FX. And that's part of, I think, Wingnut Films or something. And he is a friend of David Van Ness, likely from the Australian film school days. And he's a sculptor. He loves Labyrinth. As soon as he heard about Labyrinth, he was he's like, oh, yeah, let me do a sculpt for you. And he came out with this topper and it is unbelievable. What do you think? I think I just played a labyrinth last weekend. Yeah, and did it have a creepy topper? Yes, it had the topper. And they harass you, right? They do talk a lot, yes. Yeah, and their eyes glow like red. Very creepy. Keeps you up at night, I'm sure. It's got the shooter rod that's enormous. The end of it, the nipper shooter rod. Yeah, I'm not a fan of shooter rods. I like just the regular shooter rod. If you have to hit a skill shot or something, having this huge thing at the end of it. See, the thing is with me, it has nothing to do with skill shot or whatever. It has everything to do with the weight. I just grab it. I don't like it being this big, chunky. I just like the regular stern style kind of just bloop. Well, it's not stern. You mean regular plunger style. Yeah. That's been around since like the 30s or 40s. You can also buy an alternate back glass, which is like the mirrored glass back glass. Basically, if you don't want big David Bowie head, they have the other back glass that doesn't have David Bowie on it. Personally, the David Bowie is where it's at, in my opinion. Yeah, I've seen – I thought more people would be into the alternate back glass than – Nope. But most people seem to want Mr. Bowie on there. That's because it screams hilarious 80s. The puffy teased hair, the David Bowie makeup, it's just – it's so iconic. Did you know they're going to make a new Labyrinth film? Oh, God, no. Yeah? Why can't they make anything original?
    69:28
    Because nobody has any original ideas. There's no talent. Hollywood sucks. Everything's been done again. Oh, God. Whatever. Don't get me going on that stuff. So they actually started shipping those toppers in January of 2024. You know, pretty close to production. Stern can't seem to get their accessories out within a 12-month period, which is pretty wild. Did we go into the big debut? I mean, they debuted at the 2023 Texas Pinball Festival. I think I did talk a little about that. They had, I don't know, like 10 of them there. they had other ones available for sale they had a huge line a cool display it was one of the more impressive debuts i've seen and and they actually worked like i've seen impressive debuts before but you know i remember the alien debut and it kept breaking i remember um big lebowski and the thing broke while I was playing it, kept breaking.
    70:26
    These were pretty – they worked pretty well the whole show. I didn't see play fields up in the service position at any point. Which is pretty great. And then people left the show with some that they bought, which to my understanding are still working. Yeah, and other people were like, yeah, I'm putting my order in. That's where if you're a distributor, you were hoping that you – you're a distributor for Barrels of Fun. They also – we've got to talk about the name. This is the first time we find out what the name is of this company too. Yeah, because they just, boom, they just appeared. And now it's just barrels of fun. What was your reaction to the name? I thought it was fine. I was not a fan. No?
    71:05
    It's got to have a better name than that. No, I thought it was fine. It doesn't really say what it is. There's no pinball in the title. But I guess the idea is, and that's the other thing, supposedly they're going to make more than just pinball. Yeah, it's going to be manufactured collectively. Yes. so i guess from that perspective okay you don't put pinball in the title but i don't know it's just it's never crazy about the name i think it's fine it's not it's not um it's not as good as ramps oh god ramps pinball manufacturing the new name that was just announced like i mean it's not that good but i mean it's it's cool uh you know it's fine it's a bit different we'll see we'll see where it goes let's talk about some of the milestones so it blew up right like it won the twippy award uh in 2023 for topper toys and mechs it won a people's choice award at modern pinball at the uh for modern pinball at mgc which is the midwest gaming classic for those who don't know what that means yes it won best in show at the modern pinball uh for modern pinball at the brisbane masters in australia in 2024 you said brisbane right very good yeah it became the main sponsor for the return of pinberg yes in july of 2024 it did not last the whole tournament though no i have to be i have to be truthful it did it didn't last it was it was it was kicked around a lot it was played a lot but yeah it didn't last to the end of the tournament they did it's not all rainbows and unicorns though they they did struggle a bit you gotta have growing pains as you scale up because you know most i think they spoke about set you know 750 was like the number they were going for but i think they were actually like limited to like 1100 units worldwide They've kind of blown through that number. They've really pushed a lot of units out and haven't had a lot of – like there's no angry pin-side. I haven't seen too many angry pin-siders complaining about a zillion broken servos or stuff not working on their game. Yeah, or they call up for support. There's nobody there. They didn't renew the contract of all their employees, and now they're just going to start again, again. Well, David Van Ness says, growing the company from a small team to over 25 employees has been a huge learning curve for me. Adjusting our production goals to meet the overwhelming demand has been both exciting and challenging, impacting logistics, HR, quality control, and development. Managing rapid growth and navigating supply chain issues has been a head spinner. But the support of our team, distributors, customers, fans, and family keeps me focused. I'm determined not to let them down. These hurdles have taught us invaluable lessons and strengthened our foundation for the future. Right, it's like a duck on the water. Okay, the duck is just kind of cruising. You just see it, you're like, oh, look at the ducks, they're so cute. But then under the water, it's like these legs are going like a million miles an hour. I was wondering where you were going there with that. I've never heard the duck analogy. You've never heard the duck? So we talk about the duck all the time. Duck in Canada is the whole thing. It's all about the duck, duck and the beaver. Is that your national animal? No, it's the National Anthem Animals, the beaver. Cool. Yeah. You could also make a lot of jokes. Yes, we could, but not on this. We're highbrow. We're not like the Slam Tilt podcast, your other podcast. That's what's happening, right, is they're talking about all these challenges and issues they have scaling up, but, I mean, I'm completely unaware of these issues. You know what I mean? Like, underneath the surface, all this stuff is going on crazy like the duck's leg, but on top it just seems like they're cruising. I think in their most positiveness, they probably did not expect the amount of demand that came. I think you're probably right. Especially after things like Deep Root happened. People might be a little sour on new companies and just going all in. But that was not the case at all. I think the pinball audience has shown they have no memory. And if you put a good product out there, they're going to go for it. Especially if it's not like all the money's up front or something. Like I can just pay and get my game. It's actually ready. Yeah, no down payments. Wow, that would be great. No Kickstarters. That's the way that you don't have to wait 12 months or two years. Although Spooky has been able to make the deposit system work. But here's the thing, okay? As you're scaling up, a lot of stress, a lot of worry, a lot of back and forth. Well, how do the team members of David Van Ness and Brian Savage work together? Well, David says, we are the epitome of yin and yang. Our strong personalities challenge each other to improve and to double-check ourselves. There are so many moving parts in this business. It's not about I. It's a we company. His experience and guidance has been instrumental in our success, and I value his contributions deeply. Oh. What does Brian say? Brian says, our partnership has been fantastic as we work extremely well together. David is focused on building machines, and I'm focused on building the back end of the business. Each is a totally different task. Since I work remotely, David is the one who has to manage all the people in the day-to-day business. his inside the industry contacts are stellar as is his reputation in the industry i dare say neither of us could have done it without each other so we can see there's a separation of powers here well it's very yeah david is the creative force behind the games and brian is like the money man with the facilities and all that right he's the he's the george gomez he's running the studio he's dealing with all that i'm sure gary stern probably a little taller a lot less glasses more hair does does labyrinth pass the ron hallett as a game i would buy it as a theme i would not buy it because i just never seen labyrinth you should watch it it would you would enjoy it i think labyrinth is the kind of 80s movie that i think you would enjoy but just knowing the kind of licensing or the licensing success david vaness has had i am very curious to see what the next game is going to be. I mean, you figure if he has any kind of relationship with Henson, like what else could you do? You could do a Dark Crystal. I don't know how that would sell, but you could just make a plain Muppets. Oh, my God, if there was a Muppets. Everyone wants – that's the one I hear all the time. Everyone wants just a regular Muppets pin. Yeah, man, if there was a – a Muppets pin would be a hard – that would be a hard thing for me to like pass on. and the whole trade war conversation between Canada and the U.S. at the moment, which we have not touched on. Buying U.S. products from U.S. companies is very faux pas at the moment. But I'll tell you what, man, a Muppets pin from like a Barrels of Fun. With a Stadler, Wardolph, how do you say it? Stadler and what's that after the hotel? Waldorf. Waldorf, Topper. Ooh, animatronic, and they both insult you. Oh, man. Could you imagine? Hey, what happened to the ball? It disappeared. all the pig jokes uh pigs in space oh my god birdie birdie put the bird in the bird oh i want one now make it happen barrels of fun i demand a puppet machine dune people have mentioned dune was another one dune would be pretty cool that's kind of fun i don't know like if it's the new new dune or the old dune which is also itself kind of hilarious i think oh god if it's the old Dune, is it going to have Sting on there with no clothes on, saying, I will kill you? Sting with a bulge, also a big deal.
    78:21
    There's been rumors of Fifth Element was a rumor for a while, which is a good one. I love Fifth Element. That's a nostalgia. If they follow their pattern, it's going to have to be something that can really be the world under glass. It's going to have to be something in its own world. I'm excited to see what's going on with Barrels of Fun, which is why I think I jumped into this episode, because I'm impressed with what it's done. I would think it has to be announced this year. It might be coming. We're a month and a half away from Texas. They built their 750 labyrinths. It's been two years. In addition to that, actually, so when I was doing the research of this episode, sort of December, January, early January of 24, 25, the Barrels of Fun website was down for a while. And they were doing some changes and modification to their website. So I don't know if that's like hiding stuff in the background. The flyers are already ready. See if you can hack the site and get it. Right. I don't know if that's like setting up a new e-commerce website component. I'm only kidding, Barrels of Fun. Don't do that. Don't be like Stern where there's just a link and you find it and like, oh, look at that, a flyer or something. Or, hey, a video. Hey, there's the trailer.
    79:42
    Yeah, exactly. Don't do that. What was that? Was that a JJP error a few years ago? They've all done it. They've all done it where they have the link. It's like it's unlisted, but it's not private. it so if you just stumble on it or can find it boom there it is yeah and there's plenty of nerds in pinball if you haven't noticed jump on the barrels of fun facebook page i got some milestone information just to wrap it up they shipped their first 100 labyrinths by february 21st then they were at 270 on june 14th 400 by august 16th so 2024 and 500 as of september 24th 2024 and then 559 games on their first anniversary of October 13, 2024. I guess they consider that their first anniversary when they started full production, I assume. And as of December 16, 2024, they have built over 750 labyrinths and made even more in the last weeks of the year. Yeah, and now we're in February, so they've got to be. Well, let's see. What does David Van Ness say about what's next? He says, and what's next? We are currently planning three to five years ahead in facilities and intellectual property with a vision that extends into the next decade. The planning process is dynamic, and it hopefully allows us to remain agile in the short term while staying aligned with our long-term goals. Wow. A lot of very business-y speak there.
    81:14
    Yes. And he has the process in there. God, I hate that. Yes. Synergy. We have dynamic synergy. The planning process. You mean planning. Planning. Yeah, you're just planning. Yeah, exactly. We're going to onboard all of these IPs. I think you have to talk this way now. It's some kind of law. Otherwise, you don't seem like you're professional enough or know what you're doing. Exactly. Now, here's the thing, right? Most of these companies, most big companies, they're planning 10 years out, right? And you plan 10 years out. And then, of course, 10 years out is like a crapshoot, right? Lots can change in a year. A lot can change. So you got your three to five year plans, you got your 10 year vision, and you just sort of navigate the waters of which you go out of there. The other thing is if the U.S. starts a trade war with the rest of the world, that's going to cause a lot of issues when it comes to importing parts from other countries. So if they're in a place like Texas where they can maybe manufacture more of those parts with the expertise they have, hopefully that will keep their prices down. Because if they're fighting off tariffs, that's going to be a problem for the pinball manufacturing industry. You'll literally be able to tell which pinball manufacturers import more stuff. Yeah. Because I know companies like Spooky likes to make as much of their own stuff as possible. They could be in a better position. Like, hey, our prices haven't changed. Do they want to take down Stern? Is this what they're doing? Because Brian Savage says, we don't want to be the biggest. We just want to do the best job that can be done for our customers. That means selling 500 or 1,000 machines, but them being like collector-ish items, that's a big deal. That's what they're focused on. Which is pretty much the Spooky model. Yeah, which is why Spooky has been successful, I think. And they have several other employees from Spooky that are there.
    83:00
    Pripke. Pripke's been, he's done games for different companies. I'm trying to think which one he did. I think he did the original Cactus Canyon Continued or whatever it was called back in the day. so barrels of fun i am looking forward to whatever their next game is please be muffins that would be great hey that's great okay here we go as always you can send your comments questions corrections and concerns to saveablequanticles at gmail.com We look forward to all your messages and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review on whatever the highest star level is. That way more people can find us. Join us on Patreon to support the show. Becoming a pro-crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Join the Discord chat by jumping on at $6 a month as a premium crony. Want all the other perks and a t-shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an elite disc crony. Maybe you just want a t-shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silverball Chronicles t-shirt. I'm out of here.
    84:37
    and uh when we were recording that and ron did uh when jesus did that again when we're uh holy moly than the typical LCD screen. They're longer and thinner. That's what she said.
    85:10
    Edit. I don't know. When they just did a Muppet theme, maybe they want to kind of space that out, have a non-Muppet theme, and then go back to a Muppet theme.
    85:23
    Tommy Douglas? Tommy Douglas. Former member. Oh, God, 1904. He was originally from England. Scottish-born Canadian politician.
    85:39
    Let's see. Okay, here we go. In 1930, Douglas married Irma Dempsey, a music student. They had one daughter, actress Shirley Douglas. His daughter Shirley married actor Donald Sutherland. Together they had a son named Kiefer Sutherland. Okay.