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Todd Tuckey - TNT Amusements - Episode 41

JBS Show·podcast_episode·59m 46s·analyzed·Sep 13, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Todd Tucky shares 45 years of arcade/pinball operator and distributor history, service philosophy, and YouTube content strategy.

Summary

Todd Tucky of TNT Amusements discusses his 45-year career in arcade and pinball distribution, starting from 1979 in Philadelphia. He covers his evolution from projection services to becoming a major game distributor, the challenges of arcade service and repair, and his transition to YouTube content creation with 47,500 subscribers. Key topics include his business pivots during industry downturns, flat-rate arcade party innovations, and technical expertise in game restoration.

Key Claims

  • TNT Amusements was officially founded in 1979, with Todd Tucky involved in arcade/game rental business since the early 1970s

    high confidence · Tucky states 'Officially, TNT Amusements was born in 79' and describes earlier projection service business starting in 1973

  • Todd Tucky sold approximately 400 arcade games from his driveway between August and December during the 1984 arcade downturn

    high confidence · Direct statement: 'August through December, almost to Christmas...I sold 400 games out of my driveway'

  • TNT Amusements currently has 13,000 active customers in their distribution network

    high confidence · Tucky states 'I still have 13,000 active customers. Active. They sell the game back to us or they trade it in'

  • Todd Tucky pioneered the flat-rate arcade party model, which he was forced into by local zoning restrictions that prohibited quarter-based arcade operations

    high confidence · Tucky explains regulatory pressure: 'I can't continue unless i put a firewall...I paid three thousand a year to have private parties...I wasn't allowed to take quarters'

  • TNT Amusements purchased a 5,000 sq ft building in 1986 for $34,000 down payment (provided by father) and added an identical 5,000 sq ft building in 2007

    high confidence · Direct statement about 1986 purchase and 2007 expansion to total 10,000 sq ft

  • Todd Tucky graduated from Temple University film program in the same class as Bob Saget; both received A- grades (teacher's policy was not to give A's)

    high confidence · Tucky: 'I graduated with Bob Saget. He was in my class...only Bob and I got an A- because the teacher says, I don't give A's'

  • Todd Tucky's YouTube channel (started 2010) has 47,500 subscribers with average 1,500-3,000 views per video and generates approximately $500/month in ad revenue

    high confidence · Direct statement: '47,500 subscribers...my average view per video is between 1,500 and 3,000...I make about 500 a month'

  • The most common service call for TNT Amusements is customers who have lost cabinet keys; the second most common is power switch issues

Notable Quotes

  • “Big mistake, but that's too late now.”

    Todd Tucky @ ~8:50 — Humorously describes how he accidentally entered the pinball/arcade business, setting the tone for his 45-year career

  • “Daddy can fix this. Relax. And we usually can.”

    Todd Tucky @ ~45:00 — Articulates his business philosophy of problem-solving and resilience that sustained TNT Amusements through multiple industry downturns

  • “If you're a quarter arcade...you'll walk out, and you'll still have quarters in your pocket. You only got $4 out of the guy. But if you tell them for $20, you can stay as long as you want all day, flat rate of $20, $25...they don't play $20 with the games they don't they don't play it it's a good move they think it's a good deal.”

    Todd Tucky @ ~40:00 — Explains the business logic behind flat-rate arcade model that became industry standard; he pioneered this approach

  • “I make about 500 a month. I'm certainly not going to retire on that...YouTube was primarily to get my name out there.”

    Todd Tucky @ ~110:00 — Clarifies that YouTube revenue is minimal and secondary to brand-building and lead generation for pinball/arcade sales

  • “I sold 400 games out of my driveway...August through December, almost to Christmas, when it was even cold and you could see your breath in front of you.”

    Todd Tucky @ ~20:00 — Demonstrates TNT's growth during 1984 arcade crash; became accidental clearinghouse for surplus inventory from other vendors

  • “The last Varkon I sold was perhaps eight or nine years ago, and I got like $2,800 for it...Now, of course, they're crazy.”

    Todd Tucky @ ~28:00 — Illustrates secondary market appreciation of rare arcade games over decades; early inventory becomes investment

  • “Virtually nothing that can't be solved over the telephone we're sending apart...most the biggest issue there's two big issues with pinballs and video games, cold solder connections...and leaking capacitors.”

    Todd Tucky — Core technical knowledge base built over decades; identifies common failure modes affecting classic arcade/pinball hardware

Entities

Todd TuckypersonTNT AmusementscompanyJamie BurchillpersonWormhole PinballorganizationBob SagetpersonTemple UniversityorganizationKurtperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Regulatory/zoning constraints forced TNT Amusements to innovate flat-rate party model; local township prohibited quarter-based arcade operations, required firewall construction and $3,000/year licensing fee for private events

    high · Tucky: 'somebody was upset that we were competing...township said i can't continue unless i put a firewall...I paid three thousand a year...they do not want an arcade'

  • ?

    business_signal: TNT Amusements operates 10,000 sq ft facility with 13,000 active customer base after 45 years in business; demonstrates sustained viability of arcade distribution/repair model despite multiple industry downturns

    high · Tucky: '13,000 active customers' and inventory of 'about 60 games' in showroom with additional storage; purchased building in 1986, expanded 2007

  • ?

    community_signal: Todd Tucky's YouTube channel (47.5K subscribers, started 2010) serves as content platform documenting arcade/pinball history, repair techniques, and business practices; generates minimal direct revenue (~$500/mo) but significant brand awareness/lead generation

    high · Tucky: '47,500 subscribers...average view per video is between 1,500 and 3,000...I make about 500 a month...YouTube was primarily to get my name out there'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: TNT Amusements claims unique market position as longest-dedicated year-round arcade game dealer/distributor; pioneered flat-rate party model that became industry standard

    high · Tucky: 'we've been doing games the longest i think dedicated home sales...we were the only year-round people for years' and 'I was the first person to do it' flat-rate model

  • $

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.179

0:00
Hello, my name is Jamie Burchill, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents.
0:10
Today, I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today, I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today, I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from Arizona. Hello and welcome to the Wormhole and our podcast we call Wormhole Pinball Presents. And for episode 41, I brought out a big gun. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome two-time Twippy Award recipient, YouTube star, PNT Amusement's own, the one and only Todd Tucky. That's me, guys. How are you? Welcome to the Wormhole virtually, Todd. Well, James, I was thrilled you invited me. Thank you. Well, you know, I first met you in the 2021 Houston Arcade Expo. We have a booth. The Wormhole has a booth. And we brought, I think it was a Big Bang Bar. You did? And you made one of the special after ones made. That's right. The three extra parts.
1:13
Yeah, we got that from the banning auction of the Museum of Pinball Collection. Yes, you did, and you got banged over the head for it, too.
1:25
We got it, though. But you got it. It's one of your 204 games. It is. I sent you the list. I did. I'm looking at this list. I'm amazed. Yeah. I have not seen or played a bunch of these. We're going to showcase a lot of those at the Wormhole East Museum that we're building in downtown Houston, and that will be a 2027 initiative. So we just don't have the space at the Wormhole, but we have a 14,000 square foot building that we're putting all these machines in. Yeah, I'm sorry I'm going to miss the Houston show, but it's the exact same weekend as my film show. I do that twice a year religiously. I do not miss it. Well, we're going to miss you this year.

high confidence · Tucky: 'Our number one service call. Number one is they lost the key...Number two service clock is the on-off switch'

  • Todd Tucky founded arcade birthday party services in 1987, making TNT Amusements among the earliest (alongside potentially Chuck E. Cheese) to offer exclusive arcade parties on flat-rate model

    high confidence · Tucky states 'in 87, we started birthday parties' and claims 'the only person doing parties that long the only company was maybe chucky cheese'

  • Revenue X arcade games suffer from leaking surface-mount capacitors on logic boards that cause power-up failures; TNT Amusements is planning to repair multiple boards by replacing capacitors

    high confidence · Tucky describes discovering 'eight or nine' leaking capacitors on Rev-X boards causing power issues and planning to 'shotgun a whole bunch of these Rev-X boards'

    • @ ~55:00

  • “His film won an award. Mine didn't. Now, I do have my film up on YouTube...12 minutes long. It's a story about my father. I wrote the music myself.”

    Todd Tucky @ ~75:00 — Reveals his film education background and creative pursuits beyond arcade business; demonstrates multi-disciplinary expertise

    • YouTube
    platform
    Space Invadersgame
    TriZonegame
    Gorgargame
    Revolution Xgame
    Terminatorgame
    2021 Houston Arcade Expoevent
    Museum of Pinball Collectionorganization
    Philadelphialocation
    Eastern Musiccompany

    market_signal: Secondary market for rare arcade games shows significant appreciation over decades (Varkon: $125→$2,800 over ~40 years); suggests ongoing collector demand and scarcity premium

    medium · Tucky: 'The last Varkon I sold was perhaps eight or nine years ago, and I got like $2,800 for it...Now, of course, they're crazy'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Kurt identified as key TNT Amusements technical/creative staff; directed infomercial production and provides warranty service work, suggesting institutional knowledge concentration in long-term employee relationships

    medium · Tucky references Kurt directing infomercial ('he took care of all that') and providing warranty service calls

  • ?

    product_concern: Systematic failures in Revolution X arcade game logic boards due to leaking surface-mount capacitors affecting multiple units; TNT Amusements planning bulk repair intervention

    high · Tucky: 'six or seven Revolution X logic boards...surface mount capacitors on the board, and they're all leaking...We just ordered a boatload of them, and we're going to shotgun a whole bunch of these Rev-X boards'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Cold solder connections on 20-40 year old arcade/pinball header pins and leaking capacitors identified as two primary hardware failure modes requiring ongoing service interventions

    high · Tucky: 'two big issues with pinballs and video games, cold solder connections, the header pins along the edge of the boards...and leaking capacitors...games are 20, 30, 40 years old'

    • 2:09
    I was asked to come, too, but I'm going to sadly miss it. Will you be at Expo in Chicago? No. Okay. So TPF is your next trip then? TPF will be the next show. Okay. Then after that would be the Pintastic, which is in the – we love that one – in Massachusetts.
    2:31
    So that's a lot of fun. So real quick before we get into the interview, I'm from New York and New Jersey, but I lived in Clinton, New Jersey, which was not far from Philly. Not far. And so I spent about four years there, and I love Philadelphia. My issue with Philly is your sport fans are a little nutty.
    2:52
    That's right. I mean, you guys are crazy. Who else but Philadelphia can have our sports fans and the mummers?
    3:01
    Mummers are the most unique group, groups of people in America. Unbelievable. Tell people what they are. Mummers are, this goes back like 100 years. Yeah. It was born in South Philadelphia. It's the home of the cheesesteaks and a lot of really nice little tiny restaurants on side streets. I mean, you can, you will never go hungry in South Philadelphia. The mummers are a lot of men and now women that make up these elaborate costumes, feathers and they're outrageous costumes, but they're stunning. And then they practice all year different routines to try to win and compete and get awards. The mummers have been strutting down Main Street for like 100 years. occasionally there's been a detour for problems with the road or something like that or too much snow it happens on New Year's Day so you're kind of contingent on weather lately the weather's been great, no snow and it's worked out well but you can imagine that rain would not do well with the feathers My cousins live in Philly and they send me pictures every year of it. And it is it's wild. And everybody listening to your podcast has heard Golden Slippers.
    4:38
    And you've probably heard the Mummers string bands playing that song. I mean, it's really hard not to get that out of your head. You could hear it and then it's neat to see it, too. But they do modern songs, too.
    4:53
    That's really cool. So let's talk about on your website, TNTamusements.com, you have a really great history section that kind of outlines your story. So we're going to delve into that a little more, right? Sure. How did you start as an operator and how did you fall into the pinball arcade games? How did you fall into this? Big mistake, but that's too late now. Too late. Oh, Michelle will get the phone. We got involved in 1979. Officially, TNT Amusements was born in 79. Before that, in 73, I actually opened my first business, which was TNT Projection Service. I used to bring a projector and a screen and films, and I could be hired to mostly do birthday parties. They did hundreds of birthday parties. But I would bring the projector and screen. This is before videotape. So the group would have a film that was shipped to them, maybe a bell telephone. There were a lot of free films you could rent, buy, or borrow. And then we would run them on a screen in whatever room or setup they had. And I did that for years and got my initial cash so I could start buying arcade games because think about this. The Space Invaders was $2,000 in 1979 money. That's about $5,000 today. These games were not cheap. Now they sound cheap. The first brand-new pimple I bought was closed out. It was TriZone. It was $1,300 because the new Gorgar was coming out, which was $1,599. And they wanted to get rid of the few tri-sims they had left. And, wow, I could save $200, which is a lot when you're adding up your money. Of course, Orgar made a lot more money than Drizak. Sometimes it doesn't work out as well as you hope. But I got involved actually initially in the early 70s buying games from my uncle's boat dock down in Tennessee. He wanted to have a game. And I said, oh, I see games around. So I'd buy a couple old mechanical pins.
    7:17
    Jukeboxes back then, 45 jukeboxes weren't expensive. And they worked because they weren't that old. See, now when you look at it, the 1960s or 70s jukebox now is now 50 years old, 60 years old. Yeah, they're hard to find the 45s. Back then they worked very well. Oh, 45s are old. Yeah. Never have any trouble getting them. But I started tinkering with arcade video games, pinball machines. Back in the old days, video games were black and white. Like, buy a plane. Remember when I bought that? That was like $400 used. And we had a bunch of stuff in his game room. But I never thought of it as a business. Okay. But in 79, it looked like everything was booming. Everybody was going nuts. that's when space invaders came out and pac-man asteroids and i'm thinking bye i could be part of this huge business and i started investing all my money i had another business two films the projection service buying and selling movies and i took all that money and bought games so that's what started this mess 45 years later i'm still doing it but i have a huge customer base I still have 13,000 active customers.
    8:40
    Active. They sell the game back to us or they trade it in or don't have the game anymore. I remove them. They're no longer active. But we've been doing this for so many years. It's just amazing. It is amazing. And that's why I wanted to have you on. I mean, one of the things that we're doing is at the Wormhole with these interview series, we're just documenting what's happened. And thank you for sitting down on this. Sure. how many machines did you have when you started selling them in front of your house I had a very long driveway and it was on a very busy road Northeast Philadelphia it was a snow emergency route and it was lots of traffic a bus route went by so everybody drove past my house and I used to throw games out put them in front of my house and people would come and take them I just put four games in the back of TNT to throw out, too, hoping somebody takes them. But that's the way you got rid of the stuff. People would come by and pick it up. You put it out two or three days before trash day. And it worked out well. I got rid of a lot of games. But my partner and I had a partner for two years. And things were bad. In 1984, the games were not making any money. Arcades were closing. like Valley was closed for arcades. It was bad. And I told my partner, I said, we've got to get rid of this stuff. We've got storage lockers filled with games. They were all in my garage. I said, let's see if we can sell a few. So I rolled a game out to the front property, two or three, and put a big poster board that said, arcade video games, $100 and up. And let me tell you, August through December, almost to Christmas, when it was even cold and you could see your breath in front of you. I sold 400 games out of my driveway. 400.
    10:43
    I had, now a lot of them weren't mine. I was selling so many games, I got rid of all the extras we wanted to get rid of. Vendors were dropping games off at my house. They'd bring a pickup truck, clear out their storage unit. I would pay $25 for a working black and white game, like Star Castle, Crash, Asteroids, Deluxe Asteroids, anything black and white, 25 bucks each, anything color would be at least 100, sometimes 150, sometimes 200. It depends. But I only paid $100 for Tempest and Missile Commands because they were the hardest, the Tempest hardest to keep working. Yeah. Missile Command, you couldn't convert it because it had that big track ball in it. Nobody wanted to use Missile Command as a kit. So that was $175, my cheapest color game. Tempest and Sega's Eliminator, which was a vector game, were my next two cheapest games, $225. I sold 10 brand new Eliminators from my driveway.
    11:55
    They were either still in the box or returned. The game never made any money. And Eastern Music sold me them for $125 each. I remember Phil says, Todd, I'll get them to you for $104 a piece.
    12:11
    And baby, I sold 10 of them. I also bought the pinball machine Hyperball, brand new. They were all returns because they had little issues and things. $125 each. And they had maybe 200 plays on them.
    12:27
    He's probably sold eight of them. But we had a lot of problems with them because they didn't make the wood that caught the balls correctly. It was working. And remember, it was trouble. We sold them for $4.50. Brand new Hyperball for $4.50.
    12:42
    But they weren't real pinballs. And I still sold them. But it was a – I won't say they – I'm not unhappy I got them in. But what's really funny is I'm starting to get some stuff back that we sold years ago.
    13:02
    I mean, other brand new games in the box. Omega Race 150, Zaxxon 200, Sinistar $200 in the box. Nobody was playing it. And the distributor wanted them out. Donkey Kong Jr. were $200. Donkey Kong Jr.? I put a lot of gold in the Donkey Kong Jr. Donkey Kong did. But Jr. turned out to be a bust. I like Junior.
    13:27
    Now, the cabarets were different. He had a bunch of cabarets. They were 500 each. Okay. 8-Tracks, Robotron, Stargate. I bought all the ones he would sell me. They were like new. They were near new. There was no cigarette burns.
    13:42
    I guess you could say that was the golden days. But then again, we were only marking them up a few hundred dollars and blowing them out. Right. I had two Varkons. Two.
    13:55
    $7.99 is what I sold them for. There you go. They came back. Then I got more money. The last Varkon I sold was perhaps eight or nine years ago, and I got like $2,800 for it. It was one of my original ones.
    14:12
    That's great. Now, of course, they're crazy. So you grew so much, you bought the building in 86? 86. I was running public storage the public storage people I had all these units they wouldn't give me one cent off you'd think I got eight of these units you'd think they'd give me a discount no discounts there's the fee we don't like it get out so I rented a warehouse nearby it was a brand new building and I rented part of it was 1500 square foot I moved into that it was 600 a month which was fine and then suddenly I was offered this building and I bought this building It was
    15:04
    Of course, we had $34,000 down thanks to my father. And I got a mortgage. That's how I did it. We bought this, and then in 2007, this is 5,000 square foot. okay 2007 i bought the building next to me the same identical space to 5 000 foot and that went that was only it was 440 it went up somewhat yeah but you know but so now we have 10 000 square foot unbelievable did you hear we've been doing games the longest i think dedicated home sales a lot of vendors around the country or even the world would sell games mostly at Christmas time. You know, they'd end games, clean them up and sell them for Christmas presents.
    15:56
    We were the only year-round people for years. Then I had some people jump into it and start doing it. Most of my competitors had arcades anyway, and the arcade would be the showroom. So I did something similar here. I said, you know what, I'll have the showroom, and then people could come in. I could fit about 60 games more or less here and there. And one of my customers said, I would love to rent your space for an hour so me and my kid could play. And I said, wow, that'd be a great idea. So in 87, we started birthday parties. And this is before this whole back end was done. We literally had the offices up front. and then as soon as you came through the two doors in the party room uh it was just space and you could see the hulking cabinets behind it because we had rows of cabinets we turned all the lights out so you were under a light where the the birthday the tables oh yeah and then when you looked you could see all these games but just like the shadows of them it was kind of neat a little spooky too but we booked tons of parties unbelievable we were yeah so uh the township somebody was upset that we were competing in the birthday party business and the township said i can't continue unless i put a firewall and then i had to get licensed so i paid three thousand a year to have private parties that can't be open to the public they do not want an arcade so that We don't say arcade. We said you can book our showrooms for private parties.
    17:38
    And since covid, we started doing small groups. You know, one to 10 people can now come in as long as it's not booked already. But I can't have two groups in one at a time. They're getting a private rental, basically. And that's how I'm able to do the parties. So if you think about it, I've been doing parties since 1987. the only person doing parties that long the only company was maybe chucky cheese so we've been doing exclusive arcade parties flat rate so i started the flat rate arcade we pay one price everything's free i was the first person to do it because i wasn't allowed to take quarters oh there you go good move stumbled at that but now everybody's take taking me up on that. You see all the flat rate arcades that are all over the place. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's what we're going to do when we open the place. That's what most people do. It's the smartest move. And here's why. If you're a quarter arcade, you walk through the front door, you walk around and see what you want to play. You haven't paid any money. You look around and say, well, there's 60 games here, but I only see three or four I want to play. You go to the change machine, you stick a five in, or maybe a 10, you get a handful of quarters. You play those three or four games, and then you're done. You'll walk out, and you'll still have quarters in your pocket.
    19:05
    You only got $4 out of the guy or $5 or $6. Right. And maybe they'll come back, but probably not. But if you tell them for $20, you can stay as long as you want all day, flat rate of $20, $25. You can even go out and have lunch and come back.
    19:23
    It's all different. watch what they end up playing they don't play $20 with the games they don't play it it's a good move they think it's a good deal you should have copyrighted it yes you blew it I should be copyrighted I wish I was so you've seen multiple slowdowns you saw the Atari slowdown you saw the 90 console war slowdown, the death of arcades, you've seen, even early 2000s with pinball, what's been your success?
    20:04
    Perseverance, service, I can't tell you how many people call to get games fixed they bought from Joe Blow. And Joe Blow doesn't have service.
    20:16
    And we've offered free phone service for years. I have fixed hundreds and hundreds of games ever since, honest to God. Our number one service call. Number one is they lost the key. Yeah. No kidding. I can't help them. We had master keys for years. So I would buy, you know, a thousand locks with this certain key number. But once those keys and locks were gone, I'd say, oh, you don't have that number. You have to get a new number. So every two or three years, I'm on another number. Well, I don't have any of the old numbers. When people lose it, I said, I don't have a key. I can't sell you one because the key's not available. So we fixed that about five years ago. We put in a lock that snaps tight, but it's turned with your finger. There's no key. Nice. If the guy's putting it in the store, I keep locks. So I can give him a lock and a key. But that turn button. The number two service clock is the on-off switch.
    21:24
    Yeah. I can't tell you how many people can say, no, it's not the on-off switch. We turn the games on with a switch on the wall or an outlet strip. I said, just try the on-off switch. I argued with them. I said, if I send somebody out, you're going to have to pay. And if it's the on-off switch, you're going to have to pay because I've sent a guy out, you know, one of my techs, you know, in a truck, you know, gas, you know. Yeah. Then they try it. And then the next thing out of the mess, well, who turned it off? And I said, well, I can tell you, I didn't. Somebody turned it off thinking they were help.
    22:01
    As a small business owner myself, we own a small IT staffing firm, my wife and I. I think the ability to pivot is vital as well. OK, and knowing the market conditions and knowing when I'm able to go, OK, I'm vested too much on this. I need to go to this. And so anyone who's been in business for as long as you have can persevere and pivot.
    22:26
    I instead of pivot, I I say pull rabbits out of the hat. OK, that's what I do is pull rabbits out of that because there's always some kind of fire or crisis and everybody's having a stroke and then we can fix everything. I used to tell my daughters when something was going wrong, I said, Daddy can fix this. Relax.
    22:51
    And we usually can. So in the case of a broken game, we can fix this. There are certain games we don't sell anymore because there's difficulty fixing them. Driving games, Daytona, Sega's Daytona. Nobody wants to work on it. There's a million circuit boards in it. There's so many possible problems, and I just can't offer service anymore. I said, I'm really sorry. Now, we have outside service guys now. I have a nice collection. Actually, we keep this list.
    23:27
    These are phone numbers of people that work on games. Buy every phone in the building. So if somebody calls up and they say they have a slot machine, I can call. I say, well, these two guys work on slot machines. Awesome. But I don't get involved with it. Sometimes some of the people send me, you know, a gift card or something.
    23:47
    A couple of the guys, one guy does free service, warranty service for me. When I sell a game, the first 30 days, everything's covered.
    23:57
    And Kurt will go out and make adjustments if needed. Honest to God, there's virtually nothing that can't be solved over the telephone we're sending apart. because see like a pinball machine we we put all new parts in the flippers new industry switches new cabinet switches coil sleeve inside a new flipper ball a new boot on the top a flip plunger and link we change all those things now a brand new part could fail yes yeah we start out doing that uh i would say that most the biggest issue there's two big issues with pinballs and video games, cold solder connections, the header pins along the edge of the boards, and on lamp sockets too. Ice cold now because the games are 20, 30, 40 years old. Yeah, makes sense. And leaking capacitors. Yeah. Now, we just ran into this. I have six or seven Revolution X logic boards. We got in a Rev-X. The monitor was bad. We put another monitor in, and that board doesn't power up. So we discovered that on that particular Midway board, there are all these surface mount capacitors on the board, and they're all leaking.
    25:20
    There's like eight or nine of them on the board. They're not on Terminator. They're on Rev-X. That's a problem. My guy looked at it on their faces. I think their whole problem is these leaky caps. We just ordered a boatload of them, and we're going to shotgun a whole bunch of these Rev-X boards and see if we can get them running. But we think that's what it is because we can see the acid has gotten under a couple of the little chips.
    25:46
    It's amazing, these texts, though. They're amazing. When you get a great text like that, with years of experience like yourself, it's amazing that you can troubleshoot these things. And, you know, basic knowledge, a meter, some good tools, a good solder sucker, or a gun that sucks the solder out, a good solder iron.
    26:08
    We use the tiny, I always use lead-free solder. I started with silver solder before there was lead-free. I had to buy silver solder. You know, back in the old days, silver solder was $40 a roll. Regular solder was $10. but guess what when you have silver solder and you're reheating all these header pins and the smoke's coming up and you're going one pin at a time yeah I've been using we started with silver solder 40 years ago and then when lead's free soldering which is $35 a roll so it's not cheap you save $5 though you save money so the silver solder I think it was 75 a roll, I think 70, 65, 70, the last time I bought it.
    26:59
    Well, your lungs thank you. Well, nobody's going to get cancer because of the solder. There you go.
    27:08
    So you studied, I'm pivoting a little, but you studied film at Temple University. Yes. What did you do with your degree?
    27:17
    Well, I make YouTube videos. Yeah, you do. You know, I graduated with Bob Saget. He was in my class. I wanted to ask you a Bob Saget story later. And you can tell it now. Give me your favorite Bob Saget story. Well, it was the second semester. There were two semesters a year. And we were in the film class. This was the final thing to graduate with a film degree. And we had to make a movie on 16 millimeter. This isn't the easy stuff with video. We had to film. Back in the day, the standard was Bolex. And a Bolex camera holds 100 foot of film, which at sound speed is three minutes.
    28:06
    You had to make a movie. You were allowed 10 rolls of film. 10 three-minute rolls of film. If the film was going well, they sometimes gave you more film if you needed. but you had to use a cue and you also you got with the camera a heavy duty they called it uh niagara reel-to-reel uh tape player tape recorder this is the same kind they use in the movie studios for years it's the standard heavy as hell so you start the tape recorder on record then it goes to microphones that you've placed around your set and then you start the camera and then you clap it because later you're going to have a separate soundtrack and then you're going to have a separate picture you have to have a way of syncing oh that makes sense the reel-to-reel tape is transferred to magnetic 16 millimeter film and then you can actually you have this what they call a gang of as many scenes as you have so the splices don't show up on the screen when you make your print uh you had to butt one end of one and another here otherwise you'd see this stupid splice they were cement they weren't tape they were cement wow so the cement was on the black leader so you'd have a picture then it would go to black leader and then the b picture would start and then we go A and B so two were just films then you had your soundtrack you had sync sound where you talk and that on one piece of film your sound effects on another piece of film So if you wanted better clarity on like shutting a door rather than the sound you recorded you could lay this on top and the door would sound better. Then you had your music track. So you ended up having five pieces of film running through this gang. Wow. And you're spinning this big reel with five reels on it. And Bob and I spent hours editing our films. The good news is with 15 of us in the class, only Bob and I got an A- because the teacher says, I don't give A's. The best you can give is A-. His film won an award. Mine didn't.
    30:40
    Now, I do have my film up on YouTube. Oh, you do? It's 12 minutes long. It's a story about my father.
    30:49
    I wrote the music myself. And I went to a lot of trouble. I ended up cutting stuff. You take stuff out. I had a whole sequence of sync sound. It probably was four minutes long. And it didn't work. I had it in the film. And I said, this is awful. And I chopped it all out. So that's what editors do. They look at the stuff and they say, this isn't working. I'll cut this out. excuse me no but the film turned out well I was very pleased with the end result beautiful black and white did you ever do TV commercials in Philadelphia? I used to run them yes first I had them produced so cable access was oh my god it was cheap it was insane and everybody was watching cable access everybody's trying to find a channel with something on it yeah and you didn't have that many channels so i did a lot of cable access 30 and 60 second spots awesome we started doing synced up where i would come in and say a little bit and come and rent our place that kind of stuff so i started cable access probably in 1990 yeah 1995 i decided to make an infomercial i had made them up until then but they only ran at trade shows okay those that you we go to now like houston you'd have a booth and right and you could run the commercial home show and you're showing pinball machines you have a tv set and a vcr and yeah you're you're um in you know this is tnt this is how we work on the game i have all those videos up on youtube awesome my 30 minute one is when we we went all out where i you know i actually sat and we put titles in we we did all this extra stuff extra but kurt and i put it together kurt was my um he literally directed everything so he took care of all that and that show ran for years i guess seven or eight years the same show yeah send me pictures. They love it. They watch it. They memorize the dialogue. I mean, it was amazing how many people still remember it. Because your personality is absolutely perfect for the 80s and 90s local TV commercial. I mean, it's... It's Philly stuff. A lot of Three Stooges humor. iPokes. Yeah.
    33:24
    Because you didn't have Crazy Eddie in Philly, did you? He was here. Okay. Crazy Eddie had his infomercial. spots. He did a lot of spots. We had a Crest Brothers men's store. He was the king of clothes and he did these short spots. TV, tacky TV, was big. They had the networks. To give you an idea, years ago,
    33:52
    I could run 30, I could have a 30 or 60 minute spot for $6 or $7. Right. yeah they'd be regions so you could have bucks county then you could book swath for in this so i would book a lot of places and i was all over the tv screens and people found that it was midnight and after but if i wanted to run it on a local channel one of the channels it's network let's say yeah they only gave you spots between like 2 a.m and 5 a.m they were like two thousand dollars for 30 minutes. Forget that. I tried one. No calls. It was like five calls. It wasn't worth it. So I just kept the cable access stuff. Just brilliant. It's so brilliant. I tried it again. Believe it or not, I spent thousands, about $20,000 running cable access again. It was a local channel and I appear in the logs. He looked in the logs. We called the show. Oh, God, what did we call it? Arcade. I tried to get the word arcade game room or something. So people would kind of know what the show is about. I tried, but nobody's switching channels. There's so much material on TV. Yeah. Where they find me is if they happen to look at the titles, you know, the upcoming programs. that's why the title was catchy or All American Arcade that's what it was and I didn't get calls it was like nobody's calling, nobody's accessing I even had the QR code for the last year big QR code that appears 4 or 5 times during the show I asked people how did you find out about it we did a Google search one thing now, Google search we're friends so who gave you the idea to go to youtube and when did you do that 2010 one of the guys working for me he said you know this youtube back then it was only 15 minutes that's right maximum of 15 minutes and there was no money or anything you could do youtube so i said well let's try we'll put the hour-long infomercial up but he broke it a little differently than i would because he ended up putting up in six parts.
    36:23
    I technically could have put it up in four parts, right? But he broke it. It was fine. And that got me on. That was in 2010.
    36:33
    And it did well. We also started filming games that we were selling to people. And I remember once, the first time we did it, I put it up on YouTube and was going to send them a link. Back in the old days, it was automatically published live for everyone. Yeah. I got all these emails. I said, where are they coming from? Because I made the video just for the one guy. And I said, wow, this is great. I got all these new people. People are hungry for programming. Hungry for it. Yeah. But now there's so much. I know. But look at these numbers of what you've accomplished here. 47,500 subscribers, Todd Tucky. A lot of subscribers. But you see now, my average view per video is between 1,500 and 3,000. Okay. Well, there's a lot of content. Now, my old content gets watched and viewed. I make about 500 a month. Okay. The revenues, you know, the stupid little ads that appear in the front. Yeah. The show. I'm certainly not going to retire on that. That's not going to bring me a whole lot of cash. No, it's not.
    37:55
    It's fine. And as I said, YouTube was primarily to get my name out there. And people say, well, I'd really like to buy a Sopranos pinball. And I say, well, here's two videos, a couple I did over the you know, last few years. People watch it and say, well, is that the one I'm getting? I say, no, but you're going to get one just like it. Yeah. And I'll make a new video just for you when it's ready.
    38:23
    A lot of my games are not. My problem is the game isn't finished. And if I send them a video of the game that we have for sale and it's not finished, oh, well, it doesn't look dirty, you know. So I don't want to do that. I only want to send them a finished result video.
    38:44
    There you go. Who does that? We have a few people that, you know, oh, well, I have to see it before I buy it. I say, well, you're not paying for it. You're just giving me a deposit, $500 deposit. I say, then if you don't like it, I'll give you the $500.
    39:02
    But everybody has a different way of doing it. Yeah. It must be unbelievable, the stories you have. and I'm going to ask you a couple questions later about different customers. But staying on YouTube real quick, who does all the video content? Like who edits all your videos?
    39:20
    Oh, I do. How many do you put out a week? Well, things have changed. I used to spend five to ten hours editing videos, floating stuff in, creating title boards. I have an old editor. so when the picture rolls like this or something I have to do it I can't just say I'll just put this effect in and that effect I have to actually create the effect so it takes me more time because of the program I'm using but the problem is I did all that and my live videos still get more views than my edited ones and live I have a set opening title and a set closing title and they're pre-recorded and the opening title tries as you know when you do a live show of any sort you should have a lead in so people get a notification on the phone oh TNT is going live then they get this title board that has the music playing but they know it's coming and it's a minute away Absolutely. And I have two minutes of end credits that have my QR code on there for a while. Big. So and then I also I'm on the cameo. I've recorded a lot of fun stuff for cameo for people. Special birthday greetings. And, you know, you bought that pinball. Did you really need it? You know, that that kind of stuff. That's fun. I usually make a four or five minute video for people that buy the cameo thing.
    41:06
    It's a good way for me to end the show. Plus, the live, you have the live chat. So you can immediately respond.
    41:17
    I do have the chat when I do an edited one. Like we just did an edited one on Spectrum. It was very little editing, but I think it came across well. We got a lot of views on that. Very misunderstood and maligned pinball all those years. Now everybody wants it. Now they want those. It's like TX Sector. Yeah. I don't know if we have one of those. When you do a TX Sector right, the game is frigging terrific. Yeah. And the music track on that was the same guy that did Tales of the Arabian Nights in the Theater of Magic. This was his second pinball.
    42:01
    Zebras. Those are great machines. And he did so much great sound. And I made sure I pointed all out. So this guy went all out. This is his second machine.
    42:13
    So he did a great job. Let's not gloss over this achievement, sir. You're a two-time Twippy Award winner. I should be three and four. I loved watching you at Twippy's as a host. You did a fantastic job with Emoto. Oh, God, I wish we did that again. We had so much fun. And, you know, it's funny because, honest to God, I never knew if I was going to win. But the first two times I lost. But what I did, they asked us to produce a video acknowledging a win.
    42:47
    If we did, and they'd run the video. if you couldn't be present. But I did both. I was the only one that did both. I would do a loser. So like the first time I lost, they said, lost? They said, Zach, they won. You know, it was so fun. We had all this fun. So I did losing videos just in case. So I did have a losing video for the two times I won.
    43:14
    So let's ask you, let's hear your opinion on this, sir. Should we help bring back the Twippies live and in person at TPF 2025?
    43:23
    Tell me that one more time. Did we bring back the Twippies live and in person at TPF 2025? Oh, I think, you know what? Did you see all the people in there? Yeah. I went against it because I was streaming upstairs the tournament in the Space City Open. And Wormhole streams it. And I took a break and came down just to watch you and Emoto. I mean, it's just fantastic. Everybody loved it. I really. Look, I love Colin Alzheimer of the Kineticist and This Week in Pinball. He's a huge proponent of what we're doing here in Houston. But we're here for you, Colin. Okay, what we want to do. What can we do to help? Todd and I are here. We're saying 2025 TPF. Let's go back to live. Emoto. What do we need? Everybody would love it. Everyone would love it. Roger Harrison, Paul McKinney, I've had you guys on the podcast. You're TPF organizers. Give us back the room, and let's go. Let's go to the live. I've got a host right here. He's ready to go.
    44:28
    I would do it. Yeah, you would. Give me a chance to get in a suit again. There you go. Well, you did a good job.
    44:38
    Rebecca Solem, she was like the pregame. She did great. Everyone did great. You know what? It was kind of the at the Expo Pinball Expo They used to have a banquet saturday night that was the high point of that show everybody was in suits dressed up there were a few that didn't but it was like a nice classy ending to this show and uh he's i guess he was having a hard time selling tickets I don't know. It was always packed, but that disappeared. And the Twippies was a real classy way for everybody.
    45:21
    The place was packed. Yeah, it was fun. It was a fun atmosphere. You had all you know, not only for the content creators and I'm not going to win and shit the Twippies. I don't care, but I just want to be there and get nominated and watch you guys do it. And maybe they could have fewer categories. You know, I don't think, you know, especially with pinballs, when they say the best pinball.
    45:47
    But this mod is a great category. Yeah. Well, we're not saying, Colin, that this is all on you. Here's what I'm saying. I raise my hand. I'm willing to help. Wormhole's in it. We will help you bring the Twippies back to TPF 2025.
    46:04
    And God willing, I should be there. Absolutely. and you will host and win your third Twippy. Congratulations. I'd love to win. It's kind of bad when I give myself the award, though. But I don't know. There's a lot of newbies in videos. Retro Ralph, Carrie Hardy. There's a lot. They do a good job. Don's Pinball Podcast is doing videos now.
    46:33
    There's a lot of competition. We kind of fell into the live videos because people seem to like it. And, you know, we can bounce around and do different things that are fun. Last week we featured a very rare video game right here. I bought this brand new. It's a Sega game called Digger.
    46:54
    D-I-G-G-E-R. Beautiful color. It came out in 1979. As far as I know, this is the only surviving cocktail table. there are uprates. Doc Mac has an uprate digger. The problem with anything but a cocktail is this allows interactive play. Two people opposite each other and they play against the common enemy, the crabs that are trying to eat you. That was a beautiful, great sound. Segi did a wonderful job. It was just difficult. Once you learn it, it becomes you love playing because every screen is different. There's zero patterns to the mazes. Zero. The crabs are blind. They have no idea where they're going to turn. Are you selling it? No, no, no. My wife will when I'm dead. I just didn't know if you would send me a 10% commission if we sell it right here. No, no. I already have two people that want it badly, But I'm keeping it here because it deserves to be shown to people. Yeah. And we'll occasionally play it on our live show. But we played it extensively last show. And I was able to show people, you know, the fun. We turned the lights out. I think ideally I should take the top glass off so there's no reflection at all. But it looked good, I think, on the video playback. It looked pretty good. we have a wormhole discord channel and we received a bunch of questions from the group uh for you so i'm going to go through some go ahead questions from my discord channel cory westville asked what pinball machine have you seen the most come and go from your work pinbot okay we have sold uh probably 175 different pin bots.
    48:54
    A lot of them over the years. Condition, a lot of them, not a lot, but probably 30 or 40 of them were rough and they were much cheaper. No topper. See, remember in the old days, nobody was reproing anything.
    49:12
    Yeah. Broke a plastic on a game that was 10 years old. That's it. you had to make your own out of lexan so a lot of these games um you had you were you had to fix yourself i remember before we had painters and stuff now we're talking about when we were selling pin bots for 11.99 12.99 paint was really beat you spatter painted it it was a black texture paint and people loved it back then now of course you can the beauty is you can wash it off and our Steve can repaint it, the original colors, silkscreen it, or you can put new artwork. So there's a lot of things you can do, but there comes a time when you have to decide. So we call them beaters. It means that we don't really play great, but, you know, they're beaters. Probably number two would probably be F-14 Tomcat. Okay. A lot of them, a lot. and I'm going to say maybe two dozen of them didn't have the domes anymore. Okay. The vendors took the domes off the top. They threw the mechanism out, so you just had a piece of wood on the top.
    50:25
    But once again, it was a cheap pinball in the old days. Games like Gottlieb's Amazon, there were a million of them in Philadelphia because Stan Harris, one of the biggest operators on the East Coast, and he got the games directly from Gottlieb. He was the Gottlieb tester. He got every Gottlieb pinball ever made. He got Kubrick's quests. He got 15 of them.
    50:55
    I mean, nobody had them. There's so few out, but he would beat the hell out of them. I mean, they got millions of plays.
    51:05
    Cabinets were beat, and we were buying them at Christmastime, 200 bucks each. All lined up. He strapped the head to the body with a steel strap on the legs, cutting in the paint. 200 bucks apiece. Amazon hunts, ice fevers, jacks to open, royal flush, rack them up. 200 apiece. We'd sell them for $7.99 at Christmas. Nice. And we got a lot of pinballs in the homes. Over 35,000. We went over 35,000. That's what I wanted to ask. Okay, because Brian Feuchtig asked the next question. Can you estimate how many machines, both pins and arcades, you sold? 35,000? A lot. I mean, you know, pinballs are more difficult to sell than Pac-Mans. I've already sold 2,500 multi-cades. Oh, wow. 60 games. and Ms. Pac-Bans. We sold two or three thousand Pac-Bans, Super Pac-Bans, Asteroids, tons of Asteroids, probably two or three hundred Asteroids. Space Invaders.
    52:12
    In the old days, I kept records on Rolodex cards. Sure. Then we got a DOS computer, I think an 84, 85. I started having limited access because we couldn't. The computers were so stupid. You couldn't have a ton of information.
    52:35
    And then, but then, of course, and now there's Excel and everything. So we can keep better track. We're converting our DOS files, all that into a master list. So I can instantly type in asteroids and it'll bring up every asteroids I ever sold. Now we back them out if they get traded And they're sold back I just did that we just took a hot hand out I sold it to this lady In 2000 She didn't want anymore she paid $9.99 for it No longer worked She bought it in the year 2000 So 24 years ago I bought it for $400 cash She was thrilled Because they had it for 24 years And it only cost her $600 So she was happy and I got the game in. We ended up having to put our supply board in. The game was dirty.
    53:30
    We'll run it through our shop. We'll paint it if necessary if somebody wants to pay the full retail. That'll be back in the marketplace. We took her out. We have no record of her anymore. The record is gone. That hot hand will, when somebody buys it, go back into the system.
    53:50
    What's the next question? No, no. This is now our rapid-fire question-and-answer game. Go ahead. This is called the Hurry Up. I'm your game show host, Todd Tuckey, Jamie Burchill. These questions were written by my co-host on Twitch, Donovan Wade, and Nudge Magazine's own Ian Jacoby. Are we ready? These are my rapid-fire. Which Philadelphia sports teams fans are the worst? Philadelphia 76ers, Phillies, Eagles, or Flyers? Eagles. rarest pinball machine you've ever worked on or sold not Varkon Joust Cocktail you studied filmmaking a temple what's your favorite movie oh Wizard of Oz do you ever watch Wizard of Oz with the Pink Floyd I have watched it It's called like the Wizard of Pink. It's hard to believe it matches up. I know. It really, really, really does, though, and it's really cool.
    54:57
    We're going to do a showing at the Wormhole. All right. Sorry. Back to the show. Out of all the awards and recognitions, which one is the most special for you?
    55:05
    Well, I haven't gotten a lot of pinball awards, but the Twippy. I think my most exciting award was the second Twippy I won. There you go. Everybody standing up. I was flustered, and I couldn't believe it. I was near tears.
    55:28
    I think that was my most exciting thing. There you go. Todd Tucky's number one preventative maintenance tip for pinball machine owners.
    55:38
    Wipe it down. Clean it. Clean the play field. Lemon Pledge is fine if you don't have pinball wax. Keep the play field clean.
    55:47
    What's the weirdest thing you found inside a pinball or arcade cabinet? Four dead bats. Okay. Shuffle alley.
    55:58
    Best American founding father that you would have liked to have partied with? Ben Frank. Absolutely. That's the only answer, right? He sounds awesome.
    56:11
    Three Stooges or Marx Brothers? Three Stooges. Pats or Genos? I would say Pats He's also a customer of ours Oh, well there you go Cheese whiz or provolone on your cheesesteak? I like provolone, I don't like cheese whiz Yeah, me too I like ketchup on my Philly cheesesteak, Todd So do I Is that sacrilegious, yes or no? And steamed onions I like sauteed onions No onions, just provolone, cheese, meat And ketchup for Jamie all right and finally what is your favorite expo to attend i'm gonna have to say fantastic all right it's become a favorite now i'm sure they love having you we have a lot of fun we do todd thank you i liked it at the old hotel but it doesn't matter they get too big they got to move to new hotels i mean this these things happen uh todd thanks so much for coming on the podcast can't wait to see you again tpf 2025 is when i'll see you again in march yep 2025 we will work on uh the the twippies we're going to work on this it would be fun to do it again it really would it would be really fun and i know it's a lot of work and i'm not calling anybody out i'm just saying god that was it was so great everybody had so much fun They did. And that drew a lot of people there. It did. People talked about it. It was fun to vote.
    57:42
    And, you know, it worked out well. It was fun. It was really great. All right. Please visit TNT Amusements dot com for any and all information on how to purchase games, as well as pinball repair and all the information regarding their showroom. And if you're not following TNT Amusements on YouTube, you're making a ridiculous mistake. That's right. You better. Let's get them to 50,000. How do we not want to get 50,000? Come on. Subscribe. It just takes a second. One second. By the way, every Friday at 9 p.m. we go live. There's a few Fridays we don't, but please join us Friday night. We go live for at least an hour.
    58:20
    All right, Todd. Thank you so much for your time tonight. I appreciate it. I got you out of here right before the hour. You did. You promised to. I promise and I did it. It's perfect. Good night, folks. Good night. Todd Taki thank you that was fun who else should I showcase on this podcast hit us up on Facebook, Instagram or email us up at warmupinball at gmail dot com next week I have another edition of Arcades Across America and I'm excited to announce that part two of that podcast I'll be joined by my co-host Co from Quarter Drop Arcade we'll also be joined by the guys from Lynn's Arcade in Seaside California And I'm really looking forward to catching up with Matt again. And the one and only Rob Burke from Past Times Arcade. I hope to also have Tim Hood from the Wormhole on that podcast as well. So it'll be a great podcast, not only showcasing Past Times and Lynn's Arcade, but picking their brains as we roll out our new building, Wormhole East, and everything that we're doing here in Houston, as well as help out my boy Co on his journey to open the Quarter Drop Arcade. All right. Thanks for listening and watching. Numbers have just been amazing. Let's keep it up and tell your friends about us. For Wormhole Pinball, I am Jamie Birchall. Remember, don't be an asshole.