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PNP 593- Top 5 Rad & 1 Bad: Alice's Adventures In Wonderland By DPX

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 1m·analyzed·Oct 8, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Orbital Albert reviews Alice in Wonderland's strengths and marketing failure, advocates limited production strategy.

Summary

Orbital Albert reviews Dutch Pinball's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ranking five positive aspects (music, artwork, sculpts, upper playfield, limited 500-unit production) and one critical flaw (poor teaser video marketing). He praises the 500-unit scarcity strategy as smart business that could preserve value long-term, while cautioning against FOMO purchasing and recommending players test machines before buying. The episode includes personal commentary on his recent podcast hiatus and community dynamics.

Key Claims

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is limited to 500 units ever, which is the smartest marketing decision Dutch Pinball could have made

    high confidence · Orbital Albert discussing the rarity and FOMO strategy; states if sold out within 24-36 hours, machines could sell above retail within months

  • Dutch Pinball's teaser video for Alice was significantly worse than American Pinball's approach, making no teaser better than a bad one

    high confidence · Orbital Albert apologizes to American Pinball for previous criticism, contrasts with JJP's Avatar teaser video quality

  • The upper playfield on Alice looks like it could be the most fun upper playfield in pinball, potentially rivaling or exceeding the Lebowski upper playfield

    medium confidence · Orbital Albert states Lebowski already has the 'funnest upper playfield in all of pinball' and Alice's looks 'perhaps even more fun'

  • Alice in Wonderland artwork ranks as B to B+ quality, superior to most American Pinball and Spooky titles, but below Avatar and X-Men

    high confidence · Orbital Albert provides detailed art comparison, noting some color and shading choices are 'wonky' but overall artwork appreciation

  • The topper included with Alice is 'scary AF' and creepy, presented as a free addition rather than paid upgrade

    high confidence · Orbital Albert humorously criticizes topper aesthetic, noting it's the first pinball topper added without extra charge

  • Limited edition pinball machines from the post-pandemic era are more likely to hold value against inflation compared to pre-pandemic releases

    medium confidence · Orbital Albert provides financial analysis noting most pre-pandemic machines 'slowly lost money' and limited production could ensure value retention

  • DPX and Dutch Pinball appear to be very similar entities with overlapping ownership, though relationship is unclear

    medium confidence · Orbital Albert acknowledges uncertainty about distinction between DPX and Dutch Pinball at episode start

Notable Quotes

  • “Life is short, life is short, we don't know when it's going to end, we don't know when we're going to get hit by a bus. If you go play it and you love it, then buy it.”

    Orbital Albert @ ~78min — Core philosophy on impulse purchasing and FOMO, balancing financial caution with life enjoyment

  • “Play before you pay. This is the way.”

    Orbital Albert @ ~45min — Repeated mantra throughout episode against FOMO-driven purchases; key purchasing advice

  • “If you're going to release a teaser video as bad as Dutch Pinball's teaser video, just don't release one at all.”

    Orbital Albert @ ~70min — Harsh marketing criticism of Alice announcement strategy; contrasts with Avatar's superior teaser marketing

  • “Limited. It is limited to 500 ever. Ever. This is probably the smartest and best thing they could have done. It is the best marketing. It is the best advertising.”

    Orbital Albert @ ~60min — Highlights scarcity strategy as primary value proposition; predicts strong secondary market performance

  • “I think that the artwork on Alice is better than all of the artwork on all of the other pins, including Houdini, better than everything ever done over there at Spooky, perhaps outside of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Scooby.”

    Orbital Albert @ ~35min — Positive assessment despite initial skepticism about theme; acknowledges artwork quality relatively high in catalog

  • “FOMO's back, baby. You're going to see the odd pinball machine sell maybe for even over new in box price.”

    Orbital Albert @ ~62min — Predicts secondary market premium if sold out quickly; illustrates value of scarcity strategy

  • “That topper is scary AF. Oh my God, it's not even Halloween already? Like, cue the Unsolved Mysteries music okay?”

    Orbital Albert @ ~32min — Humorous critique of topper aesthetics; only negative element called out in design package besides marketing

Entities

Orbital AlbertpersonDutch PinballcompanyAlice's Adventures in WonderlandgameZombie YetipersonCarrie HardypersonKanedapersonJersey Jack Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Reconciliation between Orbital Albert and Don Garrison after period of tension; represents healing in podcast community relationships after competitive rivalry phase

    high · Don sent me a message...being like, you're on a roll. Even though we had a little mini beef, we're no longer frenemies. We're back to being friends.

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Initial community criticism of Alice artwork as 'hideous, horrible, scary' contradicted by Orbital Albert's positive assessment placing it above most American Pinball and Spooky Pinball titles; disagreement with broader discourse

    medium · I saw a lot of people complaining about the artwork...Nah, nah, nah. I think it is better than all of the artwork on all the other pins by American Pinball...better than everything ever done over there at Spooky.

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Alice positioned as limited-edition collector item with scarcity-driven value proposition (500 units global); strategy explicitly designed to preserve secondary market value unlike pre-pandemic releases

    high · Limited. It is limited to 500 ever. Ever...the limited nature of this pinball machine...will almost guarantee...eventually over time, you break even on it...perhaps this could be the only pin...that I've seen come out...that I think could actually really hold its value.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Upper playfield implementation represents potential best-in-class design with multiple shots (3+ stand-ups plus scoop) offering more engagement than typical magnetic playfield designs; code execution critical to success

    medium · The upper playfield on Lebowski is cited as funnest in pinball; Alice's looks 'perhaps even more fun' with 3 stand-ups and scoop providing multiple shot opportunities, but code implementation remains concern

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.184

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, hopes to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, Welcome back Pinball Nerds to episode 593 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert and on today's show, you'll have to forgive me, I've got a little bit of a cold coming on. I had not one but two shows this weekend, so I'm struggling a little bit with my voice, but I'm here for you nerds. Let's nerd out about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by DPX. Of course, adjacent with Dutch Pinball. I don't really know what the difference is between DPX and Dutch Pinball. It seems like they're very similar, kind of some of the same owners, but we're going to be talking about it. by counting down the top five rad and one very, very bad for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by DPX. Now, it is no secret that I don't love this theme, but as a pinball podcaster, I'm trying to be less of a pinball blogger and more of a, you know, I'll use the term pinball content creator or media person that's not as biased, so I want to throw away my biases of me not loving the theme and I want to objectively look at this pinball machine as someone who loves pinball and just wants to have fun while playing, okay? And so that's what I'm going to try to do for you guys today. But first of all, I just want to thank everybody who took the time and energy to listen. I know I was out a bit late with it, but I had my mystery guest on. I'll go ahead and let the cat out of the bag in case you didn't listen to it. It was my son, Owen, also known as Little Orby Jr. I had a great time with him doing that show. That was so fun. That's what this show for me has always been about, was to share this pinball love with my friends, my family members. I don't really go looking for interviews. If they fall into my lap, I'll sometimes do them.
2:29
From time to time, I'll chase down people. But for the most part, almost everyone I've spoke to with this year, outside of Glenn the Skateboarder and Christopher Franchi, of course, are people I've actually met and got to hang out with in real life. And behind the scenes, I've got to speak to both of them privately a lot. So I do feel like I do have a deeper relationship with them, of course. And that being said, as many of you guys know, Colin there from the Kineticist, shout out. Sending out those weekly This Week in Pinball newsletter updates, email updates. Everyone's excited to get one of those emails. Thanks, Colin, for all you do for pinball.
Avatar
game
American Pinballcompany
Big Lebowskigame
Spooky Pinballcompany
X-Mengame
Don Garrisonperson
Colinperson
Owenperson
Christopher Franchiperson
Rudyperson
Jack Dangerperson
Jaws 50th Anniversarygame
Ryan Berryperson
$

market_signal: Limited production strategy gaining acceptance among manufacturers (American Pinball noted as 'starting to listen') as smart business approach; represents shift in industry philosophy toward scarcity-driven value retention

medium · I've been saying for a long time that people like American Pinball should limit their pins...And I think they're starting to listen to stuff like that, which is great.

  • $

    market_signal: Post-pandemic pinball machines struggle with value retention; only limited production machines show potential for holding value against inflation; pre-pandemic machines typically depreciate

    medium · 99.9% of pinball machines that were released pre-pandemic...slowly lost money. And if you're lucky...if a pinball machine is so good to hold its value against inflation...then you're doing something right.

  • $

    market_signal: Dutch Pinball's teaser video for Alice criticized as substantially worse than industry standard; Orbital Albert contrasts with Jersey Jack Pinball's Avatar teaser which successfully generated FOMO and purchase intent

    high · If you're going to release a teaser video as bad as Dutch Pinball's teaser video, just don't release one at all. Avatar video sold Owen on buying despite limited budget.

  • ?

    community_signal: Christopher Franchi transition from Stern to Spooky Pinball as artist represents notable personnel migration; Orbital Albert has personal relationship with him beyond interview context

    medium · Christopher Franchi...I've spoken to...privately a lot...I do feel like I do have a deeper relationship with them

  • ?

    product_concern: Custom playfield sculpts appear detailed but potentially fragile; similar breakage patterns noted on competing machines (Avatar crab example); durability questions unresolved

    medium · they look very fine detailed...a ball bouncing around there could maybe snap or break quite a few of them pretty easily...the crab broke off from the lower playfield

  • ?

    technology_signal: Concern about code quality execution on upper playfield given Dutch Pinball's track record; unproven ability to implement complex multi-shot playfield mechanics effectively

    medium · we have to see how they implement the code...they don't have a lot of good coders there. But what can you do...play before you pay.

    • 3:07
    Colin had shouted me out and said that I was number one, I believe, on Hot Boy Summer or The Brat Summer or something like that. I don't know what it was. Something like that. And of course, at that point, I was coming in with lots of interviews, lots of shows, rapid fire, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Even Don of Don's Pinball Podcast sent me a message. I think it was our first message chatting again after our little mini beef we had. And we're no longer frenemies. We're back to being friends, which is pretty rad. I do like that. and he sent me off a message being like, you're on a roll or you're on fire or something, right? So, you know, that was happening. And then all of a sudden, crickets. It's like you're playing the pinball machine frontier. Just crickets. Nothing from Orby for like a month. And I came back and I apologized to you guys and I said I'm not really ready to talk about what happened. Well, today's the day. I got to talk about Alice first, but at the end of the episode, I'm just going to explain to you guys why I was gone for so long, what that means for the show. Don't worry, I'm not ending it or anything. Sorry to all my haters. I know you were hoping to hear that, but no, the show will go on, and maybe even more frequently now, to be honest. But I went through a bit of a hard time. I'm going to talk about that openly and honestly with you guys. And I also have two other minor pieces of bad news to share.
    4:26
    But bad things come in threes, as my mom and my best friend always said, so we're going to save that to the end. Let's get into Alice. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. And I will say this. With someone with very low expectations, I was actually mildly surprised when seeing the pictures before seeing the video. I was mildly surprised by Alice. I will say that. So I'm going to count them down in order of radness from least rad to most rad of my top five most awesomest rad things. And let's go, Alice. Let's get it done. Number five on this list is the music. I actually don't mind the music and not only did I not mind the music I was watching Cary Hardy's live stream and he didn't mind it either he didn't make fun of it once I didn't even say anyone in chat be like oh that music sucks so like boom Bob's your uncle there you go the music's actually like I don't think it's anything to write home about but it's like it's better than mid you know what I mean it was good it was cool like I hope there's more and I hope there's different stuff and I think if you owned it long term, I guess you would hope there's more than I always like more songs rather than less that was one of my favorite things about owning Guardians of the Galaxy was the six or seven different songs, new song in every different mode, yes you might hear the same song like ten times in a day but you wouldn't hear it ten times in one play and I guess that would be my fear, it's good music but there's not enough of it so that it wouldn't eventually get repetitive, but it's such good music that I think it's kind of backgroundy and elevatorish that it wouldn't bug you, but I thought it was good. I thought it was, for what it was, it was very good. So that was my fifth favorite thing, I guess you could say, on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Dutch Pinball. Okay, number four is that artwork. I saw a lot of people, this is the first one I got to differ with people, I saw a lot of people complaining about the artwork and saying it's hideous, it's horrible, it's scary. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. You know what's hideous, horrible, and scary?
    6:24
    That topper. Oh my God, that topper is scary AF. F, oh my God, it's not even Halloween already? Like, cue the Unsolved Mysteries music okay?
    6:36
    Or if, you know, in case you're French and you're from Canada here, every Halloween, sing it with me. Say la-la-ween. Hey, say la-la-ween.
    6:50
    No? Okay. Whatever. No one bought my X-Men 49, so I still get to sing on this show. That's the rules. I'm sorry. you. C'est l'Halloween, ever got excited for it, you sang it every October in your French class, almost like two, three times, you're like, you'd put it on, and it'd be like blah, blah, blah, ghost, and blah, blah, blah, zombie, and blah, blah, blah, freaking scary thing, and then you'd sing that verse that I just sang to you in my horrible, horrible French, which yes, I can barely speak French, which is really sad, because I took it from grade one, no, no, no, you start in grade two. I took it from grade two until grade 10. And the second they were like, okay, you don't have to take French anymore. I was like, I'm gone. See you later. See you later. But let's get back into it here. So I will say that that artwork, number four is the artwork. I actually do really like the artwork and everybody else was like, nah, they didn't really love it. Now I will say this, some of the shading. I didn't go to art school, okay? I'm not an art professional. I don't know. I do happen to love art. I love comic book art. I love fine art. I also happen to love, like, almost every time I go to a city, I go to the art gallery and the museum. I love sculpture. I love all different forms of art. My wife took art at the University of Western Ontario at King's College. So, you know, she loves art as well. She knows art a lot better than I do. I'm looking at some of her, I'm looking at six of her beautiful pieces of East Coast artwork she has up on the wall here including a beautiful lighthouse and a seahorse and like she's very talented, but no, I don't know art that well but I will tell you this, in comparison to looking at X-Men art and then looking at the Alice art, it appears, and I know they're both by Zombie Yeti the pinball artist god that we all love, come on, but and nothing Zombie Yeti's ever done is horrible or terrible by any means, no matter what anyone else says, but I think that the black and white actually looked more stunning than when it was colored in, because those colors don't look like colors Zombietti would have used. Some of the colors do pop against each other, but just the je ne sais quoi, since we're going to go French on this episode, is missing. I don't know what it is.
    9:13
    And sometimes that's how it is in life. C'est la vie, right? But I have no clue what it is, but I think some of the shading is kind of wonky. Some of the artwork choices are kind of wonky.
    9:27
    Is the artwork super-duper-duper over-sexualized? Yes. Does that offend me personally? Not really. I feel like what's more offensive is, to me, the original story was about a young girl. And I feel like, why are we... Okay, like, let's say, for instance, this was, I don't know, let's say some type of, I'm trying to think, like, well, they would never do this, but if they did a sports illustrated swimsuit edition pinball machine, hell, yeah, I'd want to see every single girl dress like that, barely wearing anything, cleavage busting out, of course, because that's, like, that's the theme. but to me in my head and I know that there's other comic books that were more about the adult one and I guess there's other movies more about the adult one or something but to me growing up I only saw the Disney movie of Alice in Wonderland and I always think of her as being a young girl so for me to see her super sexualized like that gives me the kind of like the like the yeah not as bad as that topper that topper really gives me the oh my god do not be in a room alone with that topper. This is the first time ever any pinball machine is adding in a topper for no extra charge. I'd be like, no, thank you. I'm going to let you keep that topper, my friend. I'm going to let you keep that topper, okay? But the topper is not the one bad thing in the machine. I thought it was going to be. After seeing all the pictures, I thought it was going to be the worst thing. But then after I saw the video, well, I don't want to give it away. I don't want to give it away. So I will say this. The artwork, though, I still appreciated for what it is, and I thought it looked good. It doesn't look as good as Avatar, but it looked good. It didn't look as good as X-Men, but it looked good. I will say this to me personally, outside of Galactic Tank Force, I think the artwork on Alice is better than all of the artwork on all of the other pins, including, yes, Houdini, which used to be my second favorite by them. I think it is better than the artwork on all the other pins by American Pinball.
    11:26
    Perhaps outside of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Scooby, I think that the Alice in Wonderland artwork is better than everything ever done over there at Spooky. Uh, so I mean, I, I think it is a very good art package. I, I think it's like an A minus at best, but most likely like a B, a B art package. I think some of the color choices were very good. I think the other ones were meh. Um, I don't like that really thin, the really thin, the custom oh my god, along the top of the cab I can't even think of the name of it right now. I don't like those rails with all the words written in them. I think they're very thin and they're very small and it kind of makes it look cheap, I guess. And there's only one edition of this, so that certainly makes it easier for content creators to remember, but it's got the quote in it from Alice and it's like the metal that's inscribed and I'm drawing a blank on it. I'm drawing a blank on it right now, but I will say this. I don't love that, but it's not on this list, so it doesn't matter. So let's just keep moving on. Number three for moving up to the most rad things, I think, are those sculpts. Those custom sculpts are really cool. We're used to seeing a lot of flat plastics connecting to pretty much everything, especially on the bottom one-third of the playfield, and instead you're seeing sculpts like sculpt after sculpt after there's so many in there there's so many and they look very i will say this they look very fine detailed like maybe a ball bouncing around there could maybe snap or break quite a few of them pretty easily uh and of course we know that happens to everybody i know i was just listening to uh i believe it's fresh pinball and uh they were talking about mad pinball had got them an al uh and an avatar and they put it the very first day in the wild when it was on site, the crab broke off from the lower playfield. So of course, this can happen to any pinball company. It's what percentage of machines it happens to. And I would tend to think unless they are using like the absolute highest quality for all Lior sculpts down there, which, you know, from what I understand, he makes a good quality product. But unless they're using the absolute top quality, there's going to be a good chance that like some of those look like they could snap off but they look gorgeous they look wonderful you gotta praise where praise is due number two on this list okay and some people don't like this it is taking up a lot of real estate uh in fact i believe ryan berry mentioned that from phantom tilt pinball i'm gonna go i'm gonna talk about that in a second of course but uh because i do want some other people's information i haven't looked so far on pin side i haven't listened to kaneda's uh recap update that he put out later, the 20-minute podcast reviewing it. I haven't listened to that. I wanted to come in here just with, you know, with seeing a little bit of Kaneda's live stream yesterday. I was going back and forth between Kaneda's and Kerry Hardy's and just watching the live streams back and forth and kind of just getting a feel for what was going on and what people were saying. So I have that, but I can tell you that I disagree with a lot of people. I like that upper play field that magna, like I've always said I like the magna, whatever the little magna play field on Twilight Zone and it only has one shot and that's probably it's biggest the crappiest part about that play field in Twilight Zone is there's only one shot the best part is it's timed so you're not up there too long here we've got not one not two but three stand ups I wish they were dropped down as I always wish they were but there's at least three stand ups up there and then there's another, there's like a little scoop that the ball can go into, right? So you've got several shots up there to shoot for. That being said with that, can you really actually shoot for one individual shot or another? I don't know. We have to see how they implement the code And I guess that part of another problem that worries me is they don have a lot of good coders there But what can you do What can you say other than just hopefully hopefully they do a good job doing it And of course if you listen to my advice that I try to give on almost every show, play before you pay. This is the way. I highly doubt no matter what anyone tries to scare you and FOMO you into believing, I highly doubt they'll sellout of all 300 coming to the United States and the other 200 going to Europe or whatever, or I think there's 300 coming to North America, probably Canada and the USA, right?
    15:54
    So I really don't think they're going to fully sell out. If they do sell out, you're going to be able to get them for, at worst, the exact same cost, and you won't have to pay the shipping, and you won't have to pay the taxes, and the shipping and taxes are going to be huge on both of these. And because they're coming from overseas, you're not going to be able to skip out on those very easily. Now, I don't know, maybe the distros are taking on 100% of the shipping costs, and maybe they're just charging you, you know, I'm just thinking myself, like, worst case scenario, if you can't play this at Expo, wait, and I know it won't be on a lot of locations, but wait until you can play it, because I honestly truly think that,
    16:35
    well, we didn't see a lot of gameplay in that gameplay video, but I honestly think that the gameplay could be the most underwhelming thing of this whole machine because like I said the music seems pretty rad the artwork looks great the sculpts look incredible and I think that that magna playfield that magna upper playfield is the coolest I mean right now just looking at it it looks more fun to me than pretty much any upper playfield I can think of it really does I'm sorry like I love the mini playfield on monsters I really love that one. That second mini playfield on Avatar looks pretty legitimately fun, but as far as upper playfields go, like, I don't know. I might be the only person on planet Earth I, like, do like the upper playfield on Game of Thrones. That is, okay, no, no. Yeah, it's not that good. I don't think it's that good, and again, I'd have to play it, but it just, you know, there's four or five different shots up there. It looks cool. It looks fun. Again, we don't know how it's going to be implemented in the code. Hopefully, you're not up there too long. Anytime you're up there, like, I'd say if you, if even as like a decent player myself, like, you know, slightly above mid, if I'm up there longer than a minute, that's just too long. That's just too long to be like, like hitting the flippers almost nonstop. And let's be honest, there is some skill to keeping it up, usually with a Magna Flipper, but it's like, it's limited. It's limited. And speaking of limited, let's talk about number one. The most rad thing about this pin, And as someone who's not a really, I don't really collect pinball machines as a collectible, even though I am a collectibles dealer or was. But let's just talk about this for a second.
    18:15
    Limited. It is limited to 500 ever. Ever. Now, I've been saying for a long time that people like American Pinball should, you know, limit their pins to a certain amount. And I think they're starting to listen to stuff like that, which is great. But limiting this to 500 is probably the smartest and best thing they could have done. It is the best marketing. It is the best advertising. It is the best word of mouth. Because if I'm wrong and they do sell out within 24 to 36 hours, then for at least a couple months, FOMO's back, baby. You're going to see the odd pinball machine sell maybe for even over new in box price. A couple. Okay. But within six to nine months, guaranteed, I'll tell you, I used to be a financial services advisor so let a former financial services advisor for one of the largest banks here in Canada let you know that my non, because I am no longer a financial advisor this is not financial advice but I used to be and I do have a degree in marketing from Funchal College there in London, Ontario the fourth city, but I didn't graduate top of my class Even though I did get honors. I did get honors for a semester, but that's neither here nor there. That was before I discovered beer. No, it's before I had enough friends to find parties to go to basically in college. But no, I had a wonderful time in college. None of this matters because you don't need to go to college and have a degree in marketing to know that 99.9% of pinball machines that were released pre-pandemic, pre-COVID, slowly lost money or maybe held their value. And if you're lucky, if a pinball machine is so good to hold its value against inflation, which averages 2.5% to 4.5% up to 5% some years, then you're doing something right. because it's a toy that you get to enjoy and have fun with, and it's gaining 5% per year. Hell, do you know how much money you have to put into any type of GIC or any type of guaranteed savings bond or any type of guaranteed investment to get 5%? It's upwards of probably 50 to 75K. Once you get into that realm of 100K, yeah, you might be able to get guaranteed 7, 8, 9%, something like that, or close to guaranteed. But I've gone off topic here. what else would you expect the limited nature of this pinball machine will almost guarantee almost guarantee as long as the gameplay is at least okay which we don't really know about yet but as long as the gameplay is at least okay which we have every right to believe it will be because everyone I've heard that has played the big Lebowski absolutely says the gameplay is great they say those two play fields are really fun people cite all the time actually that upper play field as being the funnest upper play field in all of pinball so if it is correct that they already made the funnest upper play field in all of pinball this one's even looks to be perhaps even more fun you know it does take up a lot of real estate up there but i think that the limited nature of this pinball machine so long as the code and the gameplay are okay they don't even have to be great they just have to be okay as long as those two things are okay i think that maybe not this year or next year will you break even on it, but I think that eventually over time, again, so long as it doesn't take Dutch Pinball 10 years again to make all of these suckers because then I don't see the value going anywhere, but as long as they actually get these out in a fashionable time, it doesn't have to be all one year, but let's even say CGC styles of like 3-4 years, as long as they slowly are trickling them out and no one's in jeopardy of losing any money, which it sounds like with how the distros are doing, you probably wouldn't lose your money. Probably, I say, because I don't know for sure. But my point is that due to the limited nature of these,
    22:14
    and that there's only one model, so you know that they're not going to make more of a different model later, at least they've said they're not going to, that perhaps this could be the only pin that I've seen come out in the last, say, post-pandemic, that I think could actually really, really, really hold its value. I don't know I mean Jaws Ellie perhaps probably as well do you know what I mean and I wouldn't expect that a toy should have to hold value but due to the limited nature you're always going to know that you're seeing something special and unique and you're not going to see something else somewhere else and that would be the best argument for the most rad thing about this machine and I think that if they wanted to see it sold out in a day it would have been funny if they did due to the nature of this pinball machine being a lot seemingly about uh you know enjoying yourself and partaking in psychedelic uh and soap you whatever they are these type of drugs or whatever it is that is happening in alice in wonderland or alice's adventures in wonderland um i think it would have been better and they would have had an even better chance of the day one sell it at 420 but i'm always going to push for you know less limited uh less machines to make it more limited and I think that makes it more special and easier to sell out. Oh, and I do have to give a big shout out to my boy Rudy. Rudy over there at Alpha Investments, just like how it sounds, A-L-P-H-A Investments. Rudy does an intro to his thing yesterday. You can even see it in the thumbnail if you go over to his page. And he admits he's a pinball nerd and that's what he does in his... This guy is like, according to Magic the Gathering, okay, according to like Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, some people's I mean not really fine art but he does F with that a little but he is the biggest like excuse me he's one of the largest most followed investment like non-traditional investment guys on YouTube and uh he showed off three just three he said if you want more pinball content let me know in the the comments so everyone go over there and comment that you want more pinball because I want to see the rest of his arcade but he had a one of 600 uh Black Knight LE he had uh Foo Fighters, which he said is one of his favorite and highest ranked. Cheers, shout out to Jack Danger. Foo Fighters Ellie, I think one of a thousand. And, well, I'm just going to say that he had another Ellie. Go there and watch the video to see what his third one was. No, he does not talk about the pinball machines much in the middle. A little tiny bit at the end, mostly at the start for like 30 or 45 seconds. He's mostly talking about Magic the Gathering and Pokemon at the end. But that's neither here nor there. But shout out to Rudy. I had no clue you were a pinball nerd. That was like, whoa, mind blown. Worlds collide. I watch pretty much every video. I watch every Pokemon video he does. I don't watch every single Magic the Gathering video he does. When he's generally talking about the collectibles market, I usually watch that stuff as well. If you're into Pokemon, make sure you put Alpha Investments Pokemon Bathroom. He has a bathroom with like $3 million worth of just like, he has a spare bathroom he doesn't use. And he just, everyone said these Pokemon boxes were going to zero. So we just threw them in the bathroom because he thought they were basically a POS. and anyways they've now just risen in value and that's it's like a five million dollar bathroom now but anyways I've gone off topic those are my top five rad let's talk about that one bad thing about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Dutch Pinball and first of all I have to start by giving an apology to good old American Pinball I had once said that to American Pinball that since they didn't release absolutely any teaser trailer for barbecue I said something to the extent of anything would have been better than nothing American Pinball come on any teaser video would have been better than nothing because we didn't really get a teaser video we kind of eventually sort of got a live stream but we didn't really get right and then months later we got the teaser video and everyone's like well this is great but it was months later. I take it back, American Pinball. I was completely wrong. If you're going to release a teaser video as bad as Dutch Pinball's teaser video, just don't release one at all. Just wait. What would it matter if you waited an extra week? What would it matter? Two weeks. I guess, yes, two weeks from now is Expo, but come on. Like a week before Expo, if you had released a video that was even 20-30% better than that, you're not going to get to the level of Avatar. The best thing about Avatar, we can all agree, is how pretty it looks. Perhaps the second best thing, or arguably the best thing, is how gosh darn tootin' good that teaser video was from JJP. Right? I mean, it sold Owen on it. Owen watched that video and he wanted to, he seriously wanted to sell, he has like 20 pairs of shoes, he wanted to sell his shoe collection and try to get me to help him buy an Avatar. And after a couple days of FOMO wore off a little but like my man seriously was like we're buying an avatar dad we're getting it that's the most beautiful pinball machine i've ever seen we went on to watch the avatar movie well i think that helped that we watched the avatar movie leading up to it as well with the fam and um or maybe after it came out but before the podcast and he still really wants to get it someday but you know what i mean that fomo if you ever get the fomo itch don't scratch the itch for like a week Just tell yourself, if a week later I want this pinball machine just as bad, and 99.9% of the time it will still exist, and even if it doesn't 100% of the time, you can buy it in the next 6 to 12 months from when it comes out for probably less. If not, maybe the exact same price, but you don't have to pay for shipping and taxes. So at the very least, you're saving, what, 15%, 20%, depending on how much you have to pay for shipping and how much taxes are in your state or your province. so don't get FOMO is what I'm saying play before you pay this is the way if you go to Expo and you already know you love the artwork and you know I mean the lighting seems fine but if you go to Expo and you love how it plays and you love the shots then buy it life is short we don't know when it's going to end we don't know when we're going to get hit by a bus we don't know when it's going to all be over so life is short if you go play it and you love it, then buy it. And I mean, if it's a dream theme for you and you've waited and waited and waited to play it and you absolutely can't play it,
    28:45
    go ahead and buy it. I mean, again, the most you're probably going to lose on a pin is two to three grand. And if you're going to lose more than that, just save it and keep playing it. If it's a dream theme for you, don't buy it and sell it within a year or two, obviously. Like, you know, hold on to it and get a little bit of diamond hands like JJP does. Just hold on to all their LEs there, right? but just hold on to it for a bit longer until you break even on it. And if you absolutely need the money from that pinball machine, sell it and you lose one or two K. It's not the end of the world. Each and every one of us here talking, I mean, I know myself, I think I've bought and sold like 11 or 12 cars, which, you know, it's not quite as much as my 15 pinball machines, but every single solitary car I've bought and sold, I've lost at least two grand on. And that was okay because I had an awesome, well, not awesome. I've never had an awesome vehicle. I rented a Mazda 6 once. That was fun. But no, I'm not a baller. I mean, the most expensive car I've ever had was my last Yaris. Or sorry, it was a new-in-box Yaris, and it was like, you know, it kind of had some good stuff on it. New-in-box, i.e. new-in-box. I think it was like five months old. I got like a lease from a woman who fell in love with a man she met on vacation in Hawaii and decided to move there. And so we had a five-month-old car. That was the closest to like a new car we've ever had. And that was only like a $26,000 car. I think this bad boy, the Corolla we have now is like 24K. What I'm getting at is I've never had a pricey, expensive one. It doesn't matter. The video, I'm sorry. Whoever did the video work, and I don't want to hurt their feelings, and I honestly hope they never hear this, but I'm sorry. Both of my sons, both of my sons could have shot, edited, and put up a better video than that in two hours. They could have. I'm sorry. so anyways I wanted to let you guys all know a few other pieces of information now that we gone over that a lot of you know I was putting a lot of podcasts, doing a lot of shows having a really awesome summer and unfortunately shortly after I did one of my interviews I think with Debra Tallman I basically found out that a good pinball friend of mine, I won't say pinball friend because I rarely play pinball with him but we did play pinball from time to time but a good friend of mine who I've been friends with for years unfortunately um passed away and uh shout out to Drew there in heaven or wherever you are buddy um unfortunately I always thought of him as kind of more like a cousin I would say for maybe from seven years ago until like 12 years ago so for about five years He was easily up there, maybe my top three, top five friends. We hung out all the time. We hung out almost every Friday for like three and a half, four years. Then it went to just like twice a month kind of thing. But Drew worked with my best friend and my best man who was up there at my wedding, Travis. And Travis was his boss. And he also worked with another one of my groomsmen that was up there, Tim. They all worked, shout out to London Life. They were all cooks in the kitchen there while Drew was like dishwash food prep. But Travis and Tim are both chefs there. In fact, the one is the sous chef and the other one is the head chef. So shout out to those boys. But Steve and Drew, they were the other two guys who did the food prep and the dish. And I hung out with them every Friday, brewed craft beer with them, went out to craft beer places. A lot of them were foodies as well. Drew partied a bit harder than all of us. And I worked really, really, really hard with Drew on trying to get him to like calm down on his partying and like mellow out a bit and stick with like the more natural highs that you can get from living life as opposed to some of the other ones. and unfortunately due to extenuating circumstances I will probably never know about I had not talked to Drew hardly at all much during COVID but really really super happy out there guy life of the party typically but unfortunately he was 29 and that really when I found out about that it really kind of hit me hard because I felt like as kind of again more like an older cousin to him than an older brother but like I kind of felt like we were family. I did teach him driver's ed. I was his driver's ed instructor. I taught him again for his G license. And when he went out to go get his full G, you know, and whenever I even outside of just being his good buddy that we spent thousands of hours together, I also felt like I really helped him try to help him with his life because he was struggling with quite a few things like many of us, not just say drugs or alcohol, but also just like, I know he struggled with like depression and anxiety. So if you need mental health or you need help, you know,
    33:42
    if you need help finding help with mental health, make sure you talk to friends or family, or even better yet, probably go seek therapy or professional help. And if you're someone who has a problem with drugs or alcohol, again, reach out to friends or family first. And if not, try to seek professional help because there is help out there. There's great resources out there. I don't know which one of those resources Drew went to go seek but Drew is no longer here with us and when I went through that really hard time my wife was still back in Ontario and when she came back it actually caused my wife and I to have some turbulence and I was honestly being probably very hard and difficult to get along with because I was partially feeling guilty that I couldn't help this friend out that I spent years and years and years not just being a good friend with and having fun with, but like trying to help him like kind of better himself so he could get to a better place. And even when most of our other friends were no longer speaking with him, I still talked to him from time to time. And we even hung out a couple times outside of that friend group. And even after I came here, we had sent messages back and forth near around the start of the pandemic, but we hadn't talked for some time. Outside of that, I had liked a few of his Facebook things and he had liked a few of mine, but we hadn't actually like chatted or talked on the phone whatsoever in multiple years. So as someone myself who struggles with mental health, finding out a good friend of mine for years passed away, probably that may have caused me to be even more difficult than I already am. And I'm already a challenging, strange, uniquely difficult person to get along with on the best of days. So this made it so I was probably intolerable. shout out to drop target danielle i'm sorry and we ended up struggling and going through some real uh rocky parts in our marriage for like a good a good solid week and a half two weeks after that before we went away on our anniversary and managed to square things up pretty good but at that point i wasn't even thinking about expo i was like i don't care if i go to expo i don't care if i do pinball nerds podcast ever again i gotta go live my life like um i wasn't able to get back to his celebration of life ceremony because that actually was happening while Danielle was still in Ontario before I could actually get back there for it. And anyways, it was a very tough time, but that is suffice to say why you guys and I had an interview coming up with Steven Silver as soon as the from P3 Multimorphic, as soon as the Princess Brides were on the line, I wanted to chat with him. I had at least three other interviews like semi lined up that we had been chatting about talking. I canceled them all. I haven't done any of them. I haven't really wanted to, my mental health has been much better the last two or three weeks, but like for a while there between, you know, arguing with my wife quite a bit, or at least I won't say arguing, but like bickering or not getting along. And then on top of that, which it's always difficult during summer because we're together like, you know, 24, 7, 365, other than maybe on Saturdays when we're going to work, one of the two of us will go to work. But it's always tricky in the summertime when you live in a homestead in the middle of nowhere, because you're together so much. And the only two arguments really my wife and I have had this year, and I know this is more, I said this would be more like a blog or less like a blog, more like a podcast. But the only two times we've really, this does relate to pinball, was when I came back from the big trips, whether it was Maple Pinball in Mississauga. Shout out Jeff Teolas and Shane there who run that so well. And then the other one was, of course, Nationals and Pinmasters because when you go on these long trips, not only do you spend quite a bit of money, and because I don't bring in a lot of income to our family, I feel extra guilty about spending that money. And also because we just don't have a ton of it, right? Like we're very middle, lower middle class, I'll say that, right? So I like to think mid-mid, but it depends probably where you live. If we're from like New York City or LA, I'm sure we would be lower mid-class or something like that, right? But out here, thankfully, like we are kind of right middle of the road right so it's not like we're you know i'm not just sitting here eating eating ramen noodles every night but i'm not i'm also not going out for like surf and turf for like hundred dollar meals very often i would say maybe my anniversary but i've gone off topic again guys i just wanted to shout out drew drew was also a musician we like to play music together we did like karaoke together we did like even the shmuley and the different singing apps and stuff together. Drew and I were the two guys who were always kind of messing around and screwing about when Travis and Steve were brewing the beer. They were doing the do-do-do-do-do-do-do, like super nerding out, pulling out their calculators, doing the water chemistry, figuring out the recipe. And we were kind of like the lackeys who were like, we had to go clean out the kegs. We had to go get the next, you know, go fill up all the water jugs and go back and forth. And we had to go like mill all the grain and stuff like that. So we were kind of just, you know, we were helping brew beer, but I got to brew over a hundred batches of beer and about 80 of them were with what I called the plaid brothers. For those of you who've been listening to my show for years, the plaid brothers brewing was just a joke that I called really the three of us because like the three of them basically wore plaid every Friday and I made fun of them. I was like, what are you nerds wearing plaid for? You all look the same. I can't tell who's who. Um, but anyways, no, that was kind of what I did Fridays. Uh, Thursdays I was always at call the office playing all you and play pinball. Monday night pinball at Call the Office was my league and then Saturdays was Loppel which was the London Ontario pinball league or TCPL which is the Tri-Cities which is actually Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph, Hamilton, whatever or I'd be playing at Topple which is the Toronto Ontario leagues on Saturdays. Saturdays and or Sundays as well. So that's kind of what I did with my life for like the first five years of this podcast believe it or not or the first three years I guess three years of this podcast because we've been doing it eight years now almost coming up to nine years, I think, I've been doing this podcast, guys. That's crazy. But for the first three years or so before I moved out here, that's what I did. Every single Friday I brewed craft beer pretty much or went to a party or a get-together or a craft beer place with these guys. And then Saturdays was like my pinball buddies, right? So, Miss You Drew, I'm going to later on, maybe closer to Christmas or so, when it's not going to bug me so much, I am going to play a song. his um unfortunately he had a very young daughter I believe she was just three or four years old and that really bugged me as well and he was only 29 which like I'm 44 if somehow like I get hit by a bus tomorrow which would be very hard to do here in River Herbert because we don't have any buses but if I was somehow just god forbid I had a heart attack or whatever and I left this planet like I feel like I've done most of the stuff I wanted to do both my sons shout out to Owen now that he's 16 the other one's going to be 20 in a month and a half so like I feel like I've done most of my parenting. I mean, I got to win the New Brunswick Pinball Championship. That's pretty cool. I got to do almost 600 episodes of a pinball podcast. I'm semi-retired. I got to be a small business owner for years and years and years. I even got to do collectibles for a couple years.
    40:52
    And that brings me to number two of the three bad news I have to share with you guys. I've decided to kind of hang my hat, so to speak, as a collectibles dealer. As many of you know, I mentioned I stopped doing the Halifax shows last year because they stopped becoming profitable.
    41:10
    And then a couple of you might know that I had record low, at the end of last year, I had record low shows in Moncton. And so I've actually stopped buying a couple weeks ago. I just completely, first of all, I was trying to save money for Expo. But then second of all, most importantly, I just really stopped. I saw a lot of, it kind of is almost similar to what happened in the pinball buying market. everybody who wanted lots of comic books was buying them ferociously during covid and then when the prices tanked same thing with sports cards same thing with pokemon when the prices tanked because everyone had bought like the maximum amount and prices were coming back down to being level again it was the same thing with how you couldn't get a pinball machine for years you weren't able to buy any pokemon cards at walmart or at like you know even target i heard about people getting in fights over like sports cards and pokemon and any type of collectibles like that. Even comic books couldn't stay on the shelf at my local Walmart, right? So now that that's all kind of gone away, it's become harder and harder and harder to make any money. And two shows ago, I only made about $60. And this last show, where you guys saw me do the live stream from, where I was already a little bit frustrated due to several other issues, but I only made $41 outside of our two coffee sales we were already guaranteed. We did sell two bags of coffee, two for 40 to one of our previous customers who we assumed was coming there, which is why we brought the coffee and they did meet us and buy that. But so we did do $81, but I mean, my table was 55 bucks. So I lost $14 plus I had to get up at like 5am to travel a province and a half away. And, you know, it's just like, it's, it's a lot of work for nothing. And not that you guys should care that I'm ending the collectibles co, but it does, it might affect the show and the fact that I am looking for a new side hustle. and especially now with my youngest son being 16, I don't need to be around as often. I might end up taking like a J-O-B, J-O-B in the town where I'm working. I don't know. I don't know where I'll be working, but I am looking for a job and if I do take a new part-time job on, you're not going to hear from me as often. However, until between now and then, I do plan on doing more regular shows than I have been doing because I really was not in a great mental place like I told you guys, A, because of the passing of my good buddy Drew. like come on, Colin from the Connecticut's Head labeled me number one for Brat Summer right, for Hot Boy Summer, what was it I don't know what it was, something to do with that number one, and like I had mentioned, even Don had messaged me and been like, man you're on fire, you're on a roll you're getting out all these podcasts and then all of a sudden I went down, I went from doing like five podcasts, six podcasts a month down to like one or two a month and you didn't hear from me for a long time I was also working on all these YouTube videos including my McDonald's one, I'm going to share that. I'm going to share that story another, I'm going to try to share it on my next episode of the one after, because that is, there is a cool story with that, partially because I stopped caring about doing the end of the video because of everything I had found out, and worrying about editing it, and also partially because of some other things, but I am going to share the link to that. It is edited, it is up, I am going to share the link for that on a future show. Thank you to Robert C., by the way, who actually donated for that. He is mentioned in the comments, down below on the YouTube channel. However, today I'm sharing some other bad news. The final piece of bad news, and this is the one that's the hardest to share with you guys, is that mostly due to my own self, I don't want to blame anyone but myself. It was primarily my fault and partially the government's fault for their website being somewhat misleading. It looks like I'm not going to be coming to Expo. So part of me, as soon as my son had hit the deer and he went to go get his car checked and we found there was a giant crack in his frame and he had to get a new car. There's no way he could get that car safety when it needed a new license plate. Part of me just knew like, man, this is going to be hard to go to Expo because I knew we were going to have, he had already saved up three and a half grand or something like that. We looked at cars and looked at cars and looked at cars. you cannot get a good used car nowadays for hardly under, well, he ended up spending about $9,200. We ended up lending the differential of that, which put us way over on our HELOC, where we want to be comfortable with leaving enough money for if there's an emergency, God forbid something happened to our car, you know, living out in the middle of the country, having no access to public transit, God forbid, you know, plumbing, electrical, emergencies, whatever. so we actually don even have enough money to borrow left on there for me to actually go to expo and have a great time However I talked to my wonderful super understanding wife and she was like dude you want to go to Expo you wanted to go forever, it's the 40th anniversary, you've promised everyone you're going, just go. So even though all that stuff happened with Hayden that wasn't expected, even though I was in a really crappy place due to the whole situation with my best friend leaving the planet, and also with my wife and I going through a bit of a rocky spot for a couple weeks there on and off. I really didn't even care about Expo. And then as soon as like September 1st hit, I was like, no, dude, you are going, you've wanted to go for too long. And I made sure, according to the Canada, whatever website you have, it's supposedly it's 14 days, but I was going to pay for just the nine business days and I did this 25 business days before I would be leaving. So I thought, well, even if I did the 14 day and they were late by 11 days, I'm not going to chance it for the extra 50 bucks. It's only 50 bucks. Danielle went to go drop it off and when she got there, they said, we're really, really, really sorry, but we can't accept it in pink. Well, the only paper we had at her house at the time was pink. It didn't say anywhere on the website if you print it out in pink and bring it in, you know, the form. So anyways, I wasn't going to send her to town and back for a two-hour trip just to get the forms. So she basically got the proper forms, came home that night. She doesn't have time to drive home from Amherst and make it back there before the office closes at four because she finishes work at three. And depending on which kids are in her classroom and whatever else, she might not get out the door until 310, quarter after three. Doesn't matter. The point is she brought home the white papers. I got them filled out as soon as possible. We switched my passport photos over and everything, brought it back in there, got it handed in. But when she got up to the front of the line, the woman said, Oh, I'm so sorry. The nine, we're glad you filled it out in white. That's wonderful. This looks good. Everything's filled out properly. Thank you. Just wanted to let you know the nine day one where you're guaranteed it to be back in nine days. That option's only available in Halifax. Well, my wife works in the morning in one town in the afternoon, a different town. So there's no way I could even borrow the car during the day and go drive to Halifax and back and do that.
    48:13
    And there's no way I'm going to rent a car for like 200 bucks just to do that. I'm not sitting on the bus for three and a half hours to do that. There is a maritime bus from Amherst that drives there very slowly, like a Greyhound bus or something, but there was no way I was going to do that. So it would have to be waiting down till Saturday to go do it. And of course I had to work on Saturday and I couldn't cancel the market potentially lose three, four, $500 income there because our markets are almost done for the entire year. In fact, our last Pugwash Farmers Market is this Saturday. So come visit me there if you haven't yet, by the way.
    48:44
    But where I'm going with this is there was almost, there was, I knew because we now had 24 business working days that I would still most likely get it back in time. So we handed it in to them and everything else. Everything seemed good. and when Danielle got an update, I think the day, either the day I did the, I think it was like nine days ago, eight days ago. I've been stewing about this for a while. It's really got me deep down and depressed again a little bit. But when Danielle went to go get the update on it, they said, yeah, it should be done by November 9th. She said, I don't understand. We handed it in way more than, she even wrote on there, you have to write the date of anticipated travel, October 15th. And they said, yes, we're really sorry. The goal, if you don't pay the $50, which you have to travel to Halifax to do, the goal, she was explained, is that it gets turned around in approximately 14 business days, but they can't guarantee anything. It's first come, first serve. And she said, but when I was here, you estimated that you would be able to get it done in the 14 days. And she said, yes. And unfortunately, that estimate is now wrong, and it's changed to November 9th. So even if they were nine days earlier, I wouldn't get it till after Halloween.
    50:01
    Like WTF Canada. I love living in Canada usually, but what is going on? You messed up my trip to Holland last time with my passport. Like what is going on? I am not high risk at all. I have no clue why it's taking this long. The only thing that I can think of, And this was something that was brought up to Danielle five years ago when she filled them out, was that if the person that you're using as your reference lives in a different province than you, then it could take that office longer to get a hold of them. Well, both of my good friends who I used as references on my passport live in Eastern time zone, same as Toronto, Chicago, whatever.
    50:53
    And that's only one hour off of our time zone. So I was floored that they still haven't been contacted and they've had it this long. So at this point, even if I hear today from both of my friends at once that they were finally contacted, and even if I hear today that they're going to be shipping it to like say the Halifax office in like three business days, the chances with the date today being the 8th, three business days from now would be like next Monday.
    51:25
    I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe I'll get to go. I have no clue. all I want to do is I want to say sorry to Drew and Ian I want to say I'm really sorry to Glenn the skateboarder I want to say I'm really sorry to well I know I wanted to play at Pinball Expo and play in the tournament I'm really sorry to Colin from the Kineticist I can't go to the Media Mixer and I took up one of those dumb tickets I'll have to message him and let him know about this like I'm really sorry to everybody who is counting on me going believe me I'm more disappointed than all of you, even though I don't really have the money to spend, so I'm like less disappointed than I should be. I was trying to think of like the good news that's coming from this is I am going to save, even on the low end, even if I only ate Happy Meals, between two flights, renting a car for five days and four nights in a hotel room and me drinking like a fish, even if I only bought Happy Meals, I'm probably saving $1,200 to $1,500 Canadian, which is like, you know, a grand US.
    52:24
    I know that everybody there, especially all the poor men's tribe people would be very generous and probably give me beers or shots or... What's that weird drink that you guys drink in Chicago, that weird drink I always hear about?
    52:36
    I can't remember what it's called, but it looks god-awful and apparently it tastes even worse. But I've never tried that. Mandalort? Mandalore? Mandalort? More... Oh, God, I butchered it. Mandalort sounds like something from The Mandalorian.
    52:52
    Anyways, guys, I've gone off-topic enough today. I told you about the three bad things. I'm really sorry I'm not coming to Expo. I know I've disappointed a lot of people. But you know what? I promise you I'm more disappointed than all of you. I'm not even going to say for sure. Because if this comes in next Monday and I can find a last-minute reasonable flight and I may be able to talk to a friend or family member who might be able to toss me a whip, if I can get a car for free that cuts down on like half my cost, then I can maybe throw up a Facebook post about, like, I haven't lost 100% hope. But just like, well, even Foghorn Leghorn and Craft Brew Sally, they have this really cool Chef Boyardee inspired shirt that says pinball junk drawer that I wanted to get off them and they were like do you want us to bring you an extra one and I just loved the comment because I didn't want to say yes for sure because at this point I have no clue if you had to ask me I'd say there's like 90% chance I'm not coming to Expo if I get that passport in even the morning of the 14th I will still try to come I will say that even if I got it on the Friday and I had to miss the whole pinball tournament just come the Saturday I will still come I plan on trying to come. I want to come. One of the silver linings from this is that I will get to go with Ryan of Phantom Tilt Pinball Podcast in Kimba next year if not because they are going to be here. The other silver lining is my wife has always wanted to go check out Chicago so there's a tiny chance she would get to come next year because we'd probably have more money next year. Hopefully. Especially with our oldest son moving out no later than the spring because we've told him once he turns 20, he has like six months till we want him to. For other parents out there who have a 20 year old who are like, hey, you should move out soon. Anyways, he'll probably be moved out by then. So that'll clear up a little bit of extra money. And also my wife's been getting more regular shifts now that she's been a substitute teacher longer. So all of these things are good news. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. If I worked a 40-hour-a-week job most of the year, I could just take off two weeks and go to Pinball Expo for sure. And also, had I not been dealing with the Drew situation as well as the situation with the relationship, that kind of snowballed into that, and then now dealing with the passport issue. And something I'm very clear of, I just should have sent this away like months ago. Had I just done it months ago, I would have been guaranteed to get it back in time. And had I known it had been such a pain in the ass to get the 14-day, I would have actually just, like, rented a car and driven to Halifax and back to pay for the 9-day guarantee. I would have. Like, had I thought there was any chance in hell in 24 business days, they wouldn't get back something that says on the website that it's supposed to be back in 14 with no delays currently when I applied. So, who knows? Your guess is as good as mine. To everybody that I'm not going to get to see there or I wanted to see there, I do apologize. guys. I promised to read a few quick comments here.
    55:47
    Colin the Kineticist put up, what are your thoughts on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? And I thought Ryan Barry's take from Phantom Tilt was perhaps the best I read anywhere on Facebook. He said, deceptively barren when you actually look at what's in the game. Horrible art. I don't know about horrible art. I thought the art was okay. I thought the shading was a little bit horrible in some of the color choices, but I wouldn't call it horrible. I don't think anything Zombie Yeti's ever done is horrible. Ryan, so I'll disagree with you slightly there, but I hear where you're coming from. Repurpose Twilight Zone mini playfield, which actually isn't a bad thing. It's a cool idea. We agree on that. But it takes a lot, it does take up a lot of real estate. So like, you know, you don't have any ramps there. You don't have any other mechs there. There isn't really any mechs that like, I guess kind of the playfields, kind of a mech that interacts with the ball, kind of, I don't know. There is a physical lock underneath there. But again, that video was so bad. We didn't get to see how it shoots. You know, maybe we see the gameplay video and you go, okay, it looks like it shoots okay. I don't think it's going to have the flow of like an Elowen or a Jack Danger. Like, come on, but I hope it does. I hope it does, or a Steve Ritchie for that matter.
    56:54
    But he says, but if it's not time like TZ, you could be up there for ages. Exactly. Also, why the tiny little speakers? That's what I was thinking when I watched it. I was like, oh, that's cute. They put my Walkman, it looks like little Walkman headphone speakers in there. Like a little tiny dollar store. Like, oh, that's cute. Where did you get that out of? Like a fortune cookie? Like, where'd you get those little speakers? You know what I mean? Now, what Ryan says here is very careful. Listen to this. If Stern released this, they'd be getting raked over the coals. I don't see how it competes at that price with Avatar, Elton John, or X-Men Ali. It doesn't. You're right, Ryan. It does not at all. Lucas Pepke, okay? Formerly of the, What were those? Shoot, I forgot about the call. The puppets, pinball puppets.
    57:40
    The art is a huge letdown, in my opinion, definitely aiming for a certain target demographic. It was super-duper over-sexualized. Again, which I don't mind if that's part of the theme. Believe me, I love women.
    57:53
    Growing up, honestly, my mom and my sisters were my best friends. You know what I mean? I love women. I just don't know if maybe like over sexualizing like you know like think about if they did like an Aladdin and they made Jasmine that sexualized you'd be like even though like yeah she might be of age it's just like weird because like that's not how you grew up thinking about her you know what I mean be the same thing if they did that with Ariel if they did a little mermaid and they made it her that much like that like you know we can have her looking cute we want girls to look cute but it feels like that's kind of like they're trying to like sell it to you with sex. And I feel like that's kind of like, meh, is it really known for being a sexual theme? I thought this was a nursery rhyme about a little girl who went into a hole with a rabbit or something. But anyways, I've gone down the wrong rabbit hole now, so to speak. We're getting really close to an hour. I hate going over an hour. You guys don't want me to go over an hour. The art package, Lucas doesn't like it. I think that the artwork looks good, especially the trees and some of the neat psychedelic colors and the mushrooms. God knows I'm a fan of mushrooms, okay? Those really cool sculpts that interact with it and the color matching is all the same. And I think the way the girls are done, like it looks honestly, the artwork looks like almost like Wafu, if you know like Japanese art, that kind of looks like, I saw someone else wrote, it looks like tattoo art, right? Death Save Pinball Streaming, shout out. He said, looks good, also doesn't look like a $12,500 grain. I agree. If, Dutch Pinball, if you're listening, if you can't sell these suckers at $12.50, I think if you sold them at a premium pricing or in and around there for Stern, if you had them at $9,500, I don't know if they'd sell like hotcakes, but I think it would sell better.
    59:41
    Again, it depends on that gameplay. If this thing shoots like a dog, they're not going to sell many of them, and they don't deserve to. I apologize to everyone that I'm probably not coming to Expo. Please don't get mad at me for it. I'm already upset with myself.
    59:54
    in an ideal world, you know, if I worked a 40 hour a week job, I could just take a week off and I could afford to go easily. And I could say, even if my passport comes in on the Saturday morning, I'll fly in just for two hours and stay. But most likely, you know, and I've already been on two pinball trips in 2024. So I like, I'm, you know, I got to go to nationals this year. Any year you get to go to nationals is a pretty good year. I got to play in pin masters, also incredible. And also, I will say this very quickly, thank you to Tom of Fundy Flippers for being the awesome TD there in Moncton. I won my first tournament back in six months. I shook off the rust, guys. So great. I had no clue I'd get to do that. I had a wonderful time doing it.
    60:38
    Excuse me. The next tournament is actually at Flippin's Arcade in Fredericton. I'm hoping to make it out to that one, depending on, I forget or not, if I actually am away at a Christmas show or not for that. but anyways guys I absolutely love you I'm sorry I won't get to see you at Expo most likely shout out to everyone going to Expo though have a rad time and if you absolutely think that you love the look of Alice just shoot it first play it before you pay this is the way until next time pinball nerds remember to eat sleep and breathe any pinball other than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland