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#24 Lady Death with Tommy Skinner The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·15m 47s·analyzed·Jan 27, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

Tommy Skinner shares story of importing and distributing rare German Geiger pinball conversion kits.

Summary

Tommy Skinner discusses his acquisition and distribution of Geiger re-themed conversion kits from Germany, specifically Lady Death (Mata Hari reskin) and Space Rider (Harlem Globetrotters reskin). The conversation covers the import logistics, playfield quality comparisons with American machines, and ongoing artist collaborations to create period-correct cabinet artwork and modernized game builds using P-Rock boards.

Key Claims

  • Geiger produced Lady Death and Space Rider re-themed conversion kits in the early 1980s for European market adaptation

    high confidence · Tommy Skinner describing kits he imported from Germany; Lady Death as Mata Hari reskin, Space Rider as Harlem Globetrotters reskin

  • Tommy imported approximately 50-60 playfields and 30-40 back glass sets, with roughly 8 Lady Death kits and numerous Space Rider kits

    high confidence · Tommy Skinner's direct account of his purchase from a German dealer

  • Geiger playfields used superior quality plywood with harder wood layers, resulting in better preservation and no insert cupping issues compared to American-made playfields

    medium confidence · Tommy Skinner reporting Ron Kruseman's technical analysis and observation that German playfields weighed more despite similar thickness

  • Geiger used generic brown cabinet graphics with colored stripes and a letter G that were hammered/nailed over original artwork

    high confidence · Tommy Skinner's direct description of cabinet conversion method

  • Three buyers are working to upgrade Lady Death kits with P-Rock boards and modern rulesets while maintaining original Mata Hari layout

    high confidence · Tommy Skinner describing ongoing projects from buyers who purchased seven of his eight Lady Death kits

  • BG Resto in Michigan is reproducing Space Rider back glasses from the single original Geiger back glass Tommy provided

    high confidence · Tommy Skinner's statement about taking one back glass to BG Resto

  • Geiger used inconsistent insert types within the same game—Space Rider had roughly 25% opaque inserts and 75% translucent inserts across different playfields

    high confidence · Tommy Skinner's observation from examining playfield variants in his collection

  • European pinball manufacturers (Geiger, Zacariah, Spanish companies) produced playfields that aged better and showed less wear than American manufacturers

Notable Quotes

  • “It ended up being roughly 50 to 60 playfields and 30 to 40 back glasses and plastic sets.”

    Tommy Skinner @ early — Establishes scale of the Geiger kit import operation

  • “He just had me pick each one up. And the German playfields actually weighed a couple more pounds, even though they were relatively the same thickness.”

    Tommy Skinner @ mid — Key technical evidence of superior Geiger plywood construction quality

  • “They're definitely, you can tell they're a little bit more on the, they don't have the American conservatism ingrained in their designs, for sure. They're more revealing than even, you know, any of your greatest 70s machines out there.”

    Dave @ mid — Observation about cultural differences in artwork style between American and German machines

  • “There were several playfields where the insert color patterns were different. Or specifically the Space Rider playfield I have roughly I say a fourth of them were made with opaque inserts and the other three-fourths were made with translucent inserts.”

    Tommy Skinner @ mid-late — Documents manufacturing variability in Geiger production

  • “I'd like to know what the differences are between the American made stuff and their stuff like why is their stuff so much better aged and aging well versus our stuff?”

    Dave @ late — Central research question about manufacturing quality differences

Entities

Tommy SkinnerpersonDavepersonGeigercompanyRon KrusemanpersonBG RestocompanyZomby YetipersonJohn PapadupersonJoel de GuzmanpersonZacariahcompanyLady Deathgame

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Discovery and distribution of rare Geiger re-themed conversion kits from Germany; market exists for themed reskins of classic machines

    high · Tommy Skinner imported and sold multiple Lady Death and Space Rider kits; three buyers actively working on modern upgrades

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: European manufacturers (Geiger, Zacariah, Spanish makers) used superior plywood construction and insert materials resulting in better long-term durability than American manufacturers

    medium · Ron Kruseman's technical analysis showed denser wood; no insert cupping observed; German playfields weighed more despite similar thickness

  • ?

    design_innovation: Collectors combining vintage conversion kits with modern P-Rock boards and contemporary rule design to create hybrid machines

    high · Three buyers upgrading Lady Death kits with P-Rock boards and modern light shows while maintaining Mata Hari layout

  • ?

    community_signal: Social media enabling discovery and recruitment of talented artists into pinball industry; examples include Zomby Yeti and others being found and engaged for custom work

    medium · Discussion of Zomby Yeti discovered by John Papadu; Joel de Guzman being contacted for cabinet artwork

  • ?

    restoration_signal: BG Resto reproducing Space Rider back glasses from single original; commercial opportunity for rare artwork restoration

    high · Tommy Skinner sent single Space Rider back glass to BG Resto for reproduction; back glasses now available for interested parties

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.047

0:30
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. In this episode, Tommy Skinner tells Dave and I a story about importing Bali re-themed conversion kits that you might not have ever heard of.
1:20
I haven't really posted a ton about this or anything we've talked about on the show, but are either of you familiar with the Geiger Playfield kits from Germany? You had one for sale, didn't you? I did. I purchased a Lady Death kit from a guy in Germany, oh, about two years ago. That's the name of the pin? Yeah, the name of the pin is Lady Death. it's a playfield about plastic plastics and it was uh essentially it's a re-themed kit for a matahari so it would be able to drop it in and you know people are sick of the theme of matahari or specifically in germany where matahari may not have been a real popular theme throw in this game lady death which was essentially a attractive female vampire i've heard people say it's artwork from a comic i believe called vamprilla um anyway i ended up getting one and then we talked about it the game on the show just because I had stumbled upon it through something and then someone ended up putting me in contact with the guy who had one I ended up getting it ran out of space time couldn't find a matahari and got rid of it later on I found another matahari and I knew the guy who I got it from and mentioned having a few so I contacted him to find out exactly what he had and he ended up having roughly eight of the Lady Death kits. And I can't even remember the exact amount of another game called Space Rider, which is a rethemed kit of an outer space theme that would go into a Harlem Globetrotters. And I ended up buying all of that stuff from him in total. It ended up being roughly 50 to 60 play fields and 30 to 40 back glasses and plastic sets. Wow. Yeah. So I've been, I sold off all the Lady Death kits except for one I kept for myself because I had found the Mata Hari machine. And Ron has been cleared that for me as well. I know I recently posted some pictures of that because I just finally picked up the play field over my Christmas vacation from him.
3:29

medium confidence · Discussion between Tommy Skinner and Dave comparing playfield durability across manufacturers

Space Rider
game
Mata Harigame
Harlem Globetrottersgame
Vampirellagame
Deepercompany
P-Rockproduct
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Importing bulk pinball playfields and components from Europe to North America involves significant customs and logistics challenges; 6-month timeline for ~60 playfields and 40 back glass sets

    high · Tommy Skinner's account: 'six month ordeal to get it all taken care of' with customs and shipping coordination

  • ?

    machine_intel: Deeper pinball manufacturer developing game with composite playfield technology; countdown timer active for Texas Pinball Festival unveil; funding model involves pre-orders with hotel/travel sponsorship

    high · Discussion of Deeper's countdown website, Texas Pinball Festival unveil, and compensation for Zipware pre-order backers

  • ?

    product_concern: American-made pinball playfields from 1970s-80s consistently exhibit insert cupping and edging wear; root cause potentially related to wood shrinkage or material selection

    medium · Dave and Tommy discussion comparing American playfield wear to superior aging of German and Italian machines

    • And then I've still got roughly like 17, 16, 17 of the Space Rider kits left. Unfortunately, those didn't have back glasses. there was only one but I took that up to BG Resto in Michigan so if that ends up being something you guys or any of your listeners are interested in the black and black glasses are available and it pretty neat to see the different artwork go into these games and just sort of the idea behind them you was a lot of Harley military theme It wasn real popular in Germany Same thing with the Harlem Globetrotters although that's an Americana sports team in Germany, especially in the 70s, that didn't mean a whole lot, 70s and 80s American basketball teams. So the space rider really made a lot of sense there as far as why they would re-team that. Did it come with cabinet graphics as well? No. That's kind of the interesting thing, was they had a generic cabinet covering. It was actually like a thin sheet metal that had stuff printed on it. I want to say, like, I picture it almost as like a tin sign type of thing. And it was the graphics, you can look them up, but Geiger cabinet artwork, essentially, it's brown with a couple colored stripes, almost like a rainbow and a letter G on it. And you would just hammer it over the original artwork and just nail it to the cabinet.
    4:48
    Those were the ones. Really? but I the whole process of shipping roughly 60 play fields and back glasses and plastic sets uh it this whole deal of me agreeing to buy these things from a guy in Germany and getting it all arranged and through customs it turned into a roughly six month ordeal uh to get it all taken care of uh and adding in the cost and the cabinet graphics were just very ugly honestly to do that part of it I had no desire because I figured anyone who was putting in the work to do one of these swaps and re-themes would come up with a different solution for cabinet artwork. And she's got the Lady Death machines, and I, as well as the space writer, have been working on either some of those guys are artists or no artists and coming up with some cabinet stencils that would be like period correct, but their own unique thing.
    5:39
    Well, I know George and I are a good guy for it. Joel, Joel de Guzman would be a good guy to figure that out. He's a great artist, global guy. I think he's done Taylor's – I think he did Taylor's logo for his reshuffle. He did. Yeah. Yeah, that's another person I can reach out to. Well, there's enough new artists out there.
    5:58
    Yeah, exactly. It's silly as it sounds, but that's one of the great things with social media. Yeah, I think that's how Zombie Yeti got into the pinball industry was – what's his name? John Papadu, noticing something he had done via social media and reaching out to him. And there's just so many people who have always probably had these talents and never had a way to showcase them before. Now they're much easier to discover and reach out to. But that's the process. Like I said, I have the stuff, but it's just sitting there in my queue waiting to find time to do it. But, you know, like I said, I think I had eight at the Lady Death Kits and I sold the other seven. and there's a specific group of I think three guys that I sold them to that are working together that are contemplating installing them into machines but actually going a little bit further than just re-theming Mata Hari and installing P-Rock boards and completely updating the game itself so the layout would be identical to Mata Hari but it'd have this lady vampire theme to it and a completely modern light show and rule set as well so it's been really neat to see how that's kind of coming along slowly because these all just went out in the last couple months but uh there's people out there they're doing really cool stuff taking some of these classic games that you know we all seem to share a great passion for and updating them and making them you know something that's more the people who lean heavier on the modern maybe a little more interested in i'm looking at space rider right now the back glass i know if it's uh not that family friendly but it's striking.
    7:30
    Yeah, the whole thing. Both of those machines, they're definitely, you can tell they're a little bit more on the, they don't have the American conservatism in the ingrained in their designs, for sure. They're more revealing than even, you know, any of your greatest 70s machines out there, like Strikes and Spares and stuff Yeah So it cool that BGResto was willing to take that on from the one back glass i had wasn even in perfect shape but he was really into taking that and making it available again so that was cool for him to do that yeah i just i i uh i'm glad that you brought up all these geiger conversions because i didn't really realize the hell that had all these i'm looking at some pictures right now we're talking and uh like Yowza.
    8:17
    It's interesting. It's very interesting. It just needs to be that there was somebody who thought it would be much harder today with the way these games are coded and the displays, but they were taking something that maybe wasn't earning well or providing operators with a way to refresh their arcade without buying a brand new game. They obviously had some pretty talented artists working for them. Some of the art packages are really pretty. Some of them are not so great, but a lot of them look pretty damn good. Yeah, my guess would be that they wanted to forego the import charges and recycle a game fairly inexpensively. Makes sense. Yeah, that was another really interesting thing was I've taken a few of these play fields up to Ron Kruseman for people who either bought them from me or some from myself.
    9:04
    And Ron was actually looking at the wood. and he you know ron this being what he does was able to basically take a look at the layers that are in the plywood and identify like a really dark hard wood that was being used for a couple of the layers that really provided a lot of density and strength to these play fields because uh where like typically you know if you get a new old stock machine uh or play field you know from any of these 70s 80s valleys games today they're gonna have a few problems specifically insert edging and cupped inserts, maybe some planking, that sort of thing. These playfields all being printed really in the early 80s, they're perfect. There's no insert edging, there's no cupped inserts, and I just thought that stood out to me right away, having owned a few old stock playfields of that era, and giving it to Ron and letting him have them to look at for a little while, he was able to basically analyze the wood on it, you know, not chemically or with any sort of test, but just looking at how it was made. And when I went up there, he had a new old stock Frontier play field. And then one of these is either a Space Rider or a Lady Death. And he just had me pick each one up. And the German play fields actually weighed a couple more pounds, even though they were relatively the same thickness. And he said that was because of the kind of wood that they used. It was really interesting.
    10:26
    Dave, you've been professing this for how long? A while. You know, another interesting thing, Speaking of those play fields and how no cupping and that kind of thing, same thing with the games from Zachariah, like Farfalla and all those games they made.
    10:45
    Yeah, those were all Italian, essentially, or Spain, right? Yeah, they never wore. I never see play field wear on them. I never see cupping of inserts. So whatever they did, I don't know if they, you know. I have a location here, a Sonic game, and I know that's the Spanish company. And so I'm saying I have a little bit of insert edging, but it's been getting played on location for who knows how long but none of the inserts are tough yeah so it's like it's almost like a function of the wood heat shrinking up or whatever and kind of making it squeezing on the plastic or something I'd like to know what the differences are between the American made stuff and their stuff like why is their stuff so better aged and aging well versus our stuff yeah it is a good question And that was another interesting thing, having that many play fields from this company, as I kind of looked through several and laid them out side by side. And Ron noticed, too. As I said, I took a good amount up to him to do stuff with. But you could tell they were really throwing these things together with whatever they had There several play fields where the insert color patterns were different Or specifically the Space Rider play field I have roughly I say a fourth of them were made with opaque inserts And the other three-fourths were made with translucent inserts, completely clear ones. They'd still be colored, but opaque versus translucent. It was really interesting just to see. and he was like yeah they probably were honestly using whatever they had or whatever they could get easily over there to throw these things together so even within my little stash of play fields there's some variants wow that's interesting another thing did the um the harlem did it i seen it on the harlem game and also in matahari barely experimented with this that's with a plastic the plastic play field stuff they did whatever that material was you've seen that real dark kind of plastic wood they used you ever see that speakeasy is the one i think of yeah well this is actually the whole playfield is not wood they use some kind of like plastic composite for the wood as an experiment so yeah i had i had bought one for 20 bucks back at allentown you know 20 years ago and somebody was grateful that I had one of those, but it was definitely different. And this is a good time to introduce something that I saw a week ago when I was in California. I'm touring this house and there's a surface on top of one of the cabinets.
    13:31
    And you could tell it was modern made, but the builder that I know said, oh that's an interesting uh you know composite i said what's so interesting about it he goes i was at the factory and they took a hammer and hit the surface several times and there was no chipping no marks no anything is this story sounding familiar to anybody deeper perhaps yeah so i'm wondering it's he wasn't clear on exactly how the product was made but i guess they used plastic pellets and pressure in order to make this product so i'm wondering as you just mentioned do you think that's where they're going i have no idea i still have no faith in you for doing anything so until they have stuff that they are building and shipping and selling publicly in which case again i hope they do i hope they have cool stuff because they've assembled some of the best designers and artists and coders you know that have been around for the last several decades but until it actually happens and pinball nowadays unfortunately it's one of the things where it's like i don't believe it you know i could see it touch it well i played it in Houston, but again, it wasn't their play field. So we'll see. Jerry's still out. I'll give them a pass until the game is produced. Yeah. I know they've got their countdown running on their website for the Texas pinball festival at this point for their unveil. And they just announced those people who had money in on Zipware, they're flying them down to Texas and paying for their hotels. So again, I think they will eventually get their stuff out there, but I'm perfectly content to wait and see on their stuff.
    15:19
    Oh, oh, oh. Space ride away. Where you think you're going? Is it somewhere I can follow?