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Stern Pinball Nascar Re-Themed Into Talladega Nights Pinball!

Cooltoy·video·23m 2s·analyzed·Jul 7, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

Cooltoy completes Talladega Nights retheme of 2005 Stern NASCAR pinball with restoration, custom art, and Pinsound audio.

Summary

Cooltoy documents a comprehensive retheme of a 2005 Stern NASCAR pinball machine into a Talladega Nights-themed custom game. The project involved extensive restoration (board repairs, electrical fixes), cosmetic upgrades (new artwork, LEDs, powder coating), mechanical enhancements (diecast test car, custom shooter rod), and a full Pinsound audio package with 70+ unique callouts and 22 custom songs. The creator discusses the original NASCAR game's weaknesses, the movie licensing logistics, and collaboration with fellow customizer Pinstine.

Key Claims

  • Original 2005 Stern NASCAR was designed by Pat Lawlor

    high confidence · Cooltoy, direct statement about game's designer

  • If Stern had themed NASCAR around Talladega Nights (2006), it would have sold multiple times more units

    medium confidence · Cooltoy speculation on counterfactual licensing strategy

  • The original machine came from a Chuck E. Cheese location in Texas and had $2-3 plus tokens in the coinbox

    high confidence · Cooltoy found property label and contents during restoration

  • NASCAR has 8 different theatrical cuts/versions released in different markets

    high confidence · Cooltoy researched for audio work and found multiple versions

  • Created 70 unique callouts and 22 songs for the Pinsound package

    high confidence · Cooltoy direct count of audio work completed

  • The original NASCAR flipper bat was so locked to the pawl it required a ball peen hammer to remove

    high confidence · Cooltoy restoration experience description

  • Replaced two bridge rectifiers, four transistors, three resistors on power driver board alone

    high confidence · Cooltoy detailed board repair documentation

  • Original test car mechanism is prone to shorting out due to complexity and tight internal wiring

    high confidence · Cooltoy explanation of NASCAR's mechanical vulnerabilities

  • Used polycarbonate instead of acrylic for custom plastics due to superior durability

    high confidence · Cooltoy material choice explanation and durability testing

  • Pinstine, fellow Pinside user, independently created a NASCAR Talladega Nights retheme kit with full playfield decals

    high confidence · Cooltoy collaboration and endorsement of Pinstine's commercial kit

Notable Quotes

  • “if they would have themed this around that movie and how successful it was and released this game then it would have sold, you know, probably multiple times more than the units they sold”

    Cooltoy@ 1:21 — Highlights the missed opportunity for Stern to capitalize on Talladega Nights' 2006 release with a thematic tie-in

  • “it has some terrible music, it has some lackluster callouts and I think that just prevents it from being anything other than an average game”

    Cooltoy@ 1:59 — Direct criticism of original NASCAR's audio design as a limiting factor

  • “legitimately could not play the game”

    Cooltoy@ 2:45 — Describes the non-functional state of the purchased machine

  • “I had to get a ball peen hammer and eject that thing manually with brute force because it was just so malformed”

    Cooltoy@ 4:08 — Illustrates the mechanical degradation of the original machine

  • “found a couple bucks and quarters as well as some Chuck E. Cheese tokens and an address on top of the coin box that said this was property of the Chuck E. Cheese headquarters in Texas”

    Cooltoy@ 4:50 — Unexpected provenance discovery adding curiosity value to the restoration project

  • “NASCAR is unique in that it has even a smaller hole than all the other games of this era that had that tournament button hole and you can't even put a tournament button in it”

    Cooltoy@ 15:13 — Technical detail about NASCAR's unusual design constraints

Entities

CooltoypersonPat LawlorpersonPinstinepersonAngelpersonStern PinballcompanyNASCAR PinballgameTalladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky BobbyproductDale Earnhardt Jr. EditionproductGrand PrixproductPinsoundproduct

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Original NASCAR released without Talladega Nights tie-in despite 2006 film's commercial success; hypothetical Stern licensing partnership could have dramatically improved unit sales

    medium · Cooltoy speculation on missed IP licensing opportunity between Stern and Talladega Nights properties

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinside community actively creating custom retheme kits; Pinstine independently developed commercial Talladega Nights kit with decals and plastics, demonstrating monetization of retheme design work

    high · Cooltoy's collaboration with Pinstine and endorsement of their full playfield decal/plastic kit available for community purchase

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Original NASCAR pinball criticized for weak audio (terrible music, lackluster callouts) preventing it from rising above average gameplay quality despite fun core mechanics

    high · Cooltoy: 'it has some terrible music, it has some lackluster callouts and I think that just prevents it from being anything other than an average game'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Talladega Nights distributed in 8 different theatrical cuts by market with different jokes/scenes included, creating complexity for audio sourcing and IP clearance in custom projects

    high · Cooltoy: 'there's not just like a director's cut, an unrated cut. There's like eight different versions of this movie that were out there. They released different versions for different markets'

  • ?

    product_concern: Original NASCAR machine exhibited widespread degradation: non-functional ball ejection, board-level corruption (two bridge rectifiers, four transistors, three resistors replaced on power driver alone), corrosion, hack job wire splices, bent brackets

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.069

0:00
I finally reached the checkered flag on this custom Talladega Nights NASCAR pinball re-theme. We're talking about NASCAR, so it's only fitting to whip out the lawn chair. I got notes because there's a lot to talk about. I got this game a couple months ago in the middle of Arkansas. Posting popped up on Facebook Marketplace. $1,000.
0:37
Sellers said it worked, but it had issues. And I was like, well, I'm looking for a new project. So, jotted on down there, picked up the machine, brought it home, and instantly realized, yeah, it had some issues.
0:56
If you're not already aware, this game started its life out in 2005 as a Stern, Penvault, and Asgard release. It was designed by Pat Lawler. The following year, 2006, is when Talladega Nights came out and, you know, ipso facto, hindsight being what it is, if they would have themed this around that movie and how successful it was and released this game then it would have sold you know probably multiple times more than the units they sold on nascar obviously did well enough for them because they had a reiteration special edition day learn heart jr version that had some different aesthetic and trim but it was the same game and they also released it under a different you know a banner if you will grand prix for the overseas market but it's a super fun game albeit i don't think there's enough nascar pinball fans out there or nascar fans that are also pinball fans uh they really give this a fair shake because it is a fun game but it has some terrible music it has some lackluster call outs and I think that just prevents it from being anything other than an average game that's why I thought it was a perfect candidate to re-theme and try to you know bump that fun level up and get it from being an average game to a good game slash great game depending on your affinity for Will Ferrell and his comedy stylings all right bear with me gotta go over the notes so like I said picked this up in a place in Arkansas it was actually an auto body shop which I thought was a nice touch that they had a NASCAR pinball machine there. Been there for years. They said people didn't ever play it. Rarely ever got used, and I can understand why. Because it didn't actually allow you to play. It had electrical issues and board issues. It prevented it actually from ejecting the ball when you hit the start of the game. And if you tried to manually feed one up through the plunger and everything, certain things wouldn't activate, so you legitimately could not play the game.

  • “there's multiple cuts of this film. There's not just like a director's cut, an unrated cut. There's like eight different versions of this movie that were out there”

    Cooltoy@ 18:39 — Explains the complexity of sourcing unique audio from multiple Talladega Nights versions

  • “I've seen Talladega Nights probably 900 times after editing everything and putting this sound package together”

    Cooltoy@ 22:13 — Humorous acknowledgment of obsessive audio sourcing work

    • This Ability Designs
    company
    Chuck E. Cheesecompany

    high · Cooltoy's detailed board repair documentation and restoration narrative spanning 15+ minutes of video

  • ?

    technology_signal: Custom polycarbonate plastics preferred over acrylic for durability; LCD color DMD upgrades replacing original dot-matrix displays; diecast car replacement improving visual appeal of test car mechanism

    high · Cooltoy's material selections and component upgrades demonstrating evolution in aftermarket customization standards

  • ?

    technology_signal: Aftermarket audio customization via Pinsound board representing significant upgrade path for legacy games; creator invested in extracting 70+ unique callouts and 22 custom songs from multiple film cuts

    high · Extensive Pinsound implementation with custom audio sourcing from 8 different theatrical versions of Talladega Nights

    • 2:50
    Got it home, cleaned it thoroughly because it was absolutely disgusting. obviously years of negligence and abuse and just never being you know properly cared for definitely showed its signs there was you know missing bolts and screws and loose wires and you know hack jobs galore on this thing so I cleaned it top to bottom inside and out that was first and foremost and then I started you know repairing fixing and updating certain things so for whatever reason at some point somebody had added some leds but only on the top side and really around only around the slings in the in lane area they have these really red and blue ones and i thought those just looked hideous uh so i got rid of those put all comet you know white leds uh for everything top and bottom for the most part changed out all the standard star post now they're clear uh clear titan uh silicone rubbers everywhere changed out the flipper bats the original flipper bats were yellow put white ones in here with you know blue silicone rubbers on there. I think it just looks nicer. There's a lot of, you know, white and blue throughout the play field and everything. I think that color scheme looks better than the yellow. One thing to note, the left flipper bat, it was so locked into the actual, like, what I don't know, the pawl, I think that's what it's called, the thing that holds the actual flipper bat itself, that I had to get a ball pen and hammer and eject that thing manually with brute force because it was just so malformed that it would not let go of that flipper bat for me to change it. I put a full set of cliffies on this for the in-lane drops as well as the drop hole here in the middle of the little track area. It's a massive gaping hole in this game that gets a lot of abuse so the cliffies will protect that for many years to come. One oddball fact about this game, like I said I picked it up in the place in Arkansas. When I got it home, opened her up and looked inside the machine uh there was a giant uh lock on the actual coin box itself so snip that actually opened the coin box and lo and behold found a couple bucks and quarters as well as some chucky cheese tokens uh and an address on top of the coin box that said this was property of the chucky cheese headquarters in texas at one point uh no longer is that chucky cheese location you know real but i thought that was kind of neat uh that technically you know i made some money buying this game. Like I said, I paid $1,000 for it, found a couple bucks in the coin box, so technically I paid less than $1,000 for it. Even got some cool, you know, Chuck E. Cheese tokens out of it, so that was a plus. The biggest initial hurdle, though, was just getting this to be a functional operational game before I could even really start messing, going down the road of the re-theme. I had to do so much board work on both the Power Driver board as well as the MPU, more so than any game I've ever operated, messed with, tinkered on whatsoever, you know, five times just just on the power driver board you know I had to replace two bridge rectifiers four transistors three resistors and I had to remove a couple of hack jobs that I found where they you know spliced wires and had you know lead connections running from one to another to bypass certain things
    5:58
    But I got it, and I got it fixed, and it's always nice when you can do it yourself. if you're not familiar, NASCAR has some of the most complex things going on inside of it, namely around the test car mechanism where it goes up and down. It's a bash toy. It's got a vertical up kicker. It's a scoop. It's got targets. And inside of that, it has a lot of mechanisms, you know, wires and everything very close together, moving in unison up and down, side to side, getting moved around. So it's notorious for shorting things out in the process. And that's what has happened over the years because no one was taking care of this machine. Every time they kept just trying to forcibly operate it, it would short circuit something. And then down the chain, it would create further problems.
    6:40
    Got it all squared away. Thank God. But yeah, that was a fun weekend with the multimeter and the soldering iron for sure. Replaced the batteries. When I got it, it had batteries and they were corroded. Luckily, it wasn't corroding on the board, which was nice. but for God's sakes people spend the $50 and buy NVRAM and put it in your game. The test car. So the original one is just like this molded plastic grody looking gray thing. I always thought that was kind of hokey. I understand why they did it. You know, it's meant to, you know, get a steel ball bashed into it repeatedly. So you don't want to make anything too aesthetically pleasing. But I found there was actually a big NASCAR store in my area. so I went in went inside and I found a couple of diecast cars that were you know almost identical size and shape and everything so I replaced the test car put the actual diecast car in there and actually have a small piece of polycarbonate that lays underneath the test car and the test car is just far enough back to where the ball will actually hit that piece of polycarbonate which is incredibly strong and you know so much stronger than acrylic or anything like that it's made to you know get smashed around i played 100 plus games on this already never had an issue with the polycarbonate chipping cracking doing anything so it'll definitely stand the test of time plus it prevents it from actually hitting uh the diecast car there unfortunately they don't make any talladega knights themed car that size it's either very little or very big so i couldn't put an actual talladega knights car in that test car spot which is what I really wanted to do but I went with the 1993 Daytona pace car I like the look of it like the color scheme I had the red white and blue and everything so I thought it was you know a nice touch made my own shooter rod for the game uh the original one just you know standard black OEM one uh smashed the end off of it and then I got an actual shift knob uh that's you know five speed and it has uh the f-bomb on it which is very on brand for old Ricky Bobby here I thought uh if he to actually have a shift knob that you know wasn't restricted to pg-13 movie requirements he would probably go with this one so that's the one I went with I think it's again you know ties with the silliness of Caledonia nights there was some inner cabinet gouges on this thing so like at some point somebody had clearly like lifted the playfield and dropped it and got it off the rails and then never like tried to restraighten it or fix it there's a metal bracket on the back of the playfield they got bent and in doing so every time somebody would raise and left a playfield it would literally dig and gouge into the side of the wall so repaired all that else oh yeah got rid of the chrome t-molding that comes on the back box but blue because I'm going with the blue theme here because there's tons of you know shades of blue on the playfield plus I just don't like that chrome t-molding I think it looks kind of hokey but you know it was 2005 everything was chrome back then I replaced the standard you know DMD with a LCD color DMD I'm the weird guy that likes the LCD solid you know color I prefer it over dots but you know teach drone the cool thing about the LCD version is if you like the dots you can actually change the setting and make colored dots but I like these solid look personal preference so the cabinet itself all new artwork top to bottom um this had been out there for a couple years because there was a couple of people on pin side that you know tossed around the idea of you know re-theming a nascar to talladega knights i'm definitely not the first person to come up with this but somebody had already made this this is you know one of the promotional images from the movie but works out great as a back glass so pick this up uh you know nice red white blue america whoo go rick bobby um Cabinet, sides, front, back box, everything I designed, just low-key stuff, nothing too crazy. There's very limited resources or options out there as far as high-resolution, high-quality images of the cast for this movie. 2006, people didn't really care about promotional images, and Blu-ray and all that kind of stuff was in its infancy. So things like that didn't necessarily make it out there. but there's only so many images that are high resolution quality that you could stretch and blow up to this kind of size and scope so it was limited in what I could really do but just basic cast characters, logo blue checkered you name it, got it on there DMD skin here, came up with this is a snapshot from an actual Talladega Speedway race, got the NASCAR driving on the track you know the grandstands the crowd and everything you don want to tie it in there with uh talladega knights of course course What else Oh yeah I made copious amounts of my own plastics
    11:35
    Definitely wouldn't recommend doing it my way, but it's just the resources I had available to me. So I made these all out of polycarbonate. Like I said, it's immensely stronger than acrylic and everything like that. Hand-cut them all. Basically scanned all the original plastics and then made stencils, cut them out to shapes, water slide decals on all the polycarbonate and replaced all the main, you know, plastic. So I got my slingshots, you know, just added some different characters, different images, replaced the truck, if you will, the hauler, made it Wonder Bread themed because, you know, obviously none of this stuff was Talladega Nights themed. You know, added an Applebee's sign over here on the tower. It's supposed to be like a NASCAR tower, but in reality it looks kind of like a restaurant because it's covering up the little diverter over here and it's just windows and people behind the windows. So I'm like, hey, that kind of looks like a restaurant. And since Applebee's is an important part of the Talladega Nights movie, I was like, hey, let's add an Applebee's sign there.
    12:36
    And I also came up with decals for the aprons, some instruction cards, little things here and there, blue powder coating all around. Like I said, blue is kind of the aesthetic, the look, the theme and everything on this. Top to bottom. And that was honestly what's prevented me from posting this video in such a long time. My powder coating guy had my parts for well over a month and a half before I finally got them back. So I literally had this machine just sitting up on sawhorses waiting, twiddling my thumbs, unable to play it, do anything with it until he finally got my powder coating stuff back. But he does a great job. It just takes a while. Top of the machine. Came up with my own topper. I designed like probably four different variations of cabinet decals and artworks and everything. Made like three topper designs and then ended up just kind of literally like flipping a coin to go with them because I was being so indecisive. But this is what I came up with. I got Ricky Bobby, you know, and Cal Naughton doing the old fist bump shake and bake. In the background, I want to kind of one of those like winter circle backdrops that you see at every NASCAR race where it's got the sponsors, the name of the race and everything. So that's all back there. You know, it's RGB, you know, I can change the colors, whatever I want. The topper itself was actually created and made by This Ability Designs, my friend Angel, he does a great job, I'll link all this stuff in the video description box below, but I, you know, designed it in Photoshop, sent him the images, said, hey, this is the size, this is what I'm looking for, and like, within a day, he had a mockup and a 3D render that I could check out and say, this is awesome, and then he made it lickety-split and it turned out perfectly. It's got a nice base to it and everything mounted on there. Just can't tell you how happy I was that he was able to make that for me because I didn't want to try to hand cut something that big like I did with these smaller plastics because it would definitely not look as good as what he made. Last little bits of the front, I replaced the original start button. It was just a tiny little red LED button. I went with the oversized start button. We've got Ricky Bobby start there, coin decal sticker, shake and bake with the NASCAR logo, key chain itself if you ain't first or last. Little touches there, new sides of the new power coating, everything, new leg levelers, new leg bolts, cabinet protectors, little things here and there. this thing I'm actually kind of proud of this is overkill by far but this is where the traditional plug or the tournament button hole will sit NASCAR is unique in that it has even a smaller hole than all the other games of this era that had that tournament button hole and you can't even put a tournament button in it because it doesn't go into that lock bar so you'd have to finagle your own little tiny push button so that's what I did finagle my own little tiny push button in there drilled it into a die-cast car here that is Ricky Bobby Wonder Bread themed, so if I push the car down, it starts the tournament button. Tournament mode, which I'll probably never use, but I just wanted to make this as fully functional as it possibly could, and you know, I just thought it looked, yeah, nice little icing on the cake, if you will. Speaking of icing on the cake, I've got to give a shout-out to Pinstine on Pinside. The user was doing his own NASCAR Talladega Nights re-theme, almost identical timing as I was I reached out to him and I was like hey what are you doing? How are you doing it? I'm doing a similar thing and he was kind enough to offer his services and he actually created some awesome decal artwork because that was one thing I hadn't came up with yet and hadn't got around to was replacing the imagery on the actual play field so there's NASCAR logo and the cars that are on there different actual NASCAR drivers but he went out and made his own decal set that covers up all those and you know they're all talladega knights you know you got jean gerard car you know cal notton jr and of course ricky bobby's wonder bread and then you got the you know the me car of the cougar he came up with awesome decals that cover the play field i put them on there installed them they are super thin i was worried you know hey is this going to affect the ball path and trajectory are these going to wear away i played numerous games on so far and they held up so far great you can't even tell they're there unless you really start like really microscopically looking at the playfield realize oh wow there actually is a tiny thin decal covering up what was under there so he did an awesome job he does a full Talladega Knights like kit everything you could possibly want I went a different direction but either way I bought his kit just just because I wanted some spares and I want to support him because he was obviously doing some good work but if you got a NASCAR pinball machine out there and you want to kind of do similar to what we've both done he's got an awesome kit for you comes up you know like he's got plastics decals everything you name it for the entire play field you can go balls to the wall he did different cabinet artwork than obviously what I came up with and it was really cool the the plastics he designed versus what I designed it was neat to see you know two different mindsets and what we came up with but it's nice that you know I'll have a back backup in case anything happens to mine but definitely recommend his his decals and his plastics if you're on the market for you know retheming your own NASCAR pinball machine and the last thing that I really needed to do was I added a pin sound board on here that way I could change all the sounds the callouts the music and everything Do you know why I can't join the team? To have a Chalupa and marvel at the wisdom of George W. Bush and the sundry that anyone comes to America.
    18:17
    Woo-hoo! Because like I said, that was one of the weaker points of this game to me. That really just made it a fun game. Not so fun just hearing all that. So put the pen sound on there. and I spent, I can't tell you how many hours dissecting the audio from Talladega Nights. If you're not aware, there's multiple cuts of this film. There's not just like a director's cut, an unrated cut. There's like eight different versions of this movie that were out there. They released different versions for different markets and they didn't market it as some different cut of the film. So there's a lot of jokes and scenes that are included in certain movies that are not.
    19:00
    I know that because I'm a super fan of this movie. so I went and got every version of this movie I could broke down all the audio cut it into numerous clips so I've got 70 unique call outs from the movie as well as a couple interviews that the characters did on press tours for this I've got 22 songs, several that are from the actual film soundtrack and then several that are just on brand and on theme with NASCAR and Ricky Bobby as a person a lot of it's southern rock anthem type of things, Lynyrd Skynyrd Things Ricky Bobby would actually love There's Charlie Daniels Band That's got a Talladega Theme song about Talladega And NASCAR that fits perfectly with this But yeah That was the icing on the cake for me To make this truly an enjoyable experience Since this is A YouTube copyrighted video I'll have to put a link up here Where you can preview some of the sounds And callouts So don't get dinged on this video because, yeah, it's all copyrighted music and copyright sound clips and everything. But I spent a ton of time editing, getting all those sound clips, and then putting them in certain parts of the game and then trying to make sure that you didn't hear the same call-out over and over and it wasn't repetitive. And then I wanted to segue certain call-outs to where they made sense. Like when you start the game, it has a couple of things that are starting your experience and it makes sense for the game. And when it ends, it's got some nice little one-liners. just really cool things I replaced some of the jackpot sounds the announcer from NBA Jam a lot of midway games was also in this game as far as the OEM sound package but they used him very sparingly so it's like he was almost an afterthought so I kept some of his stuff also pulled some of his other stuff from other games pulled random audio sounds from games like No Fear that had engine noises and other kind of NASCAR centric sounds put those in there changed the multiball callouts all that you name it just overall changed the sound design through and through for this game to where it was talladega knights kept a lot of the original callouts that made sense for this game because there's hundreds of them and overall i think it turned out all right and then lastly the last few things i did uh did the led pop bumper caps red white blue i replaced all my flasher red white blues added you know led underneath the the test car that's blue so it looks you know stands out a little more during gameplay uh you know checker flag decals on all the wire form uh entrances uh little brackets things like that uh found some uh art blades for nascar theme out there pick those up because i think every pinball machine should have side art blades um pin lights on this brightens it up i'm sure the camera makes it look brighter than it really is but they're a must-have in my opinion. Stadium lighting, affordable, economical, just awesome. I've got them on every single game in my house now. Highly recommend them. And, yeah, just a lot of blood, knuckle, broken, sweat, labor going into this game. But I'm happy with how it turned out. It's super fun to play now. It's enjoyable. I've seen Talladega Nights probably 900 times after editing everything and putting this sound package together. But overall, you know, I'm happy with it. I think it's super fun and guys let me know what you think Do you think I just absolutely ruined a decent game? Do you think I made a decent game better? Yeah, let me know what you think about solid egg nights Cuz except I think it's hilarious Enjoy the content make sure you like button share this video with your friends if you found the information helpful and as always Thanks for watching guys really means a lot
    22:49
    you