New owner for American Pinball New American Pinball to reimagine Ali Williams games Interview with Gary Stern and John Buscalia Interview with Kevin Waite from Classic Playfield Reproductions Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston. I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined by... I'm Martin Eyre and I'm the editor of Pinball News. Jonathan and I are here to look back at all the excitement through the pinball world throughout the month of January 2026 in our very latest edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast. And, well, it's been a busy old month, hasn't it? Yeah, well, there's quite a bit of news No new games Contrary to expectations Yeah, correct But The news that there is a New owner for American Pinball Is something that I didn't see coming Although we knew the company Wasn't doing that great But I had no idea it was Available for sale So let's start with that and then we go through the other companies as well. So, American Bimble, the company and all its assets have apparently been sold by previous owners, Ametron, who established it, and it's been sold to J.B. Vincent, a private investment company which is based in San Python Anghelo in Texas. Which is really in the middle of nowhere. We're just having a look at that to see whether we could pay them a visit. But, yeah, Right out on the far west side of the state. So, anyway, it's run by Brian Vincent, and he's been speaking on various outlets, including podcasts and also on Pinside as well, which is good, about his plans for the company. Yeah, great interview he did with Kerry Hardy, or as you say, Kerry Hardy did a great interview. and so his plans include keeping design and manufacturing of games at the Palatine facility in Illinois on the outskirts of Chicago which is one that they share with the previous owners Ametron, not sure how that's going to work out but I think it would seem to be a very amicable sale and no no bitterness or anything about that about having to sell the company, I think it would seem to be a friendly takeover. Yeah, well, I assume they're just leasing the space from Game Tron, so there has to be a... Yes, and of course, they're also buying the boards for the games from Game Tron as well, the circuit boards. So that deal is continuing, at least for the immediate future. So who is this Brian? Interesting, yeah. He made his money in LED lighting, and is also apparently a long-time pinball fan, which is a good start. And in the interview, he said they're all... In fact, on Pinside, he said they're all be working on securing licences for upcoming games and sees rebuilding trust in American pinball as a priority, which certainly is a very positive way to start. I think that's something which has been an issue with potential customers and existing customers as well. he said we are planning one title this year and one to two titles in each year going forward after the first game so ambitious plans but those who were wondering how he was going to be able to produce that many new designs each year were quickly informed of that when 11 days after that announcement of the purchase The company also revealed that they have a deal with Planetary Pinball to license seven of the classic Bally Williams titles and make reimagined or remake versions of them, which kind of puts them alongside for Jersey Gaming and Chicago Gaming in remaking Williams Bally titles. It's not clear exactly how much reimagining it's going to involve, where it's going to be remaking them with modern technology like Chicago Gaming do, with medieval values, Attack from Mars and Mount Sebastian, and Texas Canyon, but basically keeping the game the same, but adding dot matrix display, taking dot matrix out and turning it into an LCD, putting LED lighting throughout and enhancing that, and RGB lighting everywhere. Or whether they're going to completely change How the game is designed And how it plays Right Also, we also don't know Who is going to be programming Those games because I don't think there's that many Programmers left at the American Football Although they did release An update for Galactic Tank Force That's true, I think that was Actually done by the team In their spare time as a sort of passion project. I know that something when David Fick said when he left the company that they were going to carry on working on it in the background and along with the company's blessing they would release the updated version that gives it the features that they always intended. But also, what we also don't know is which the titles are going to be. So they apparently licensed seven titles, but we don't know how old they are and Presumably they're not ones which have already been licensed by anybody else. Well, I suppose that's part of the strategy also for planetary. You don't want to have two different manufacturers producing the same title. I can understand that you want a certain exclusivity if you license a certain title. and the interesting thing is it's easy to take things the wrong way in the sense that when they are saying that they have been working on securing licenses for upcoming games you might tend to think that they are going after a movie license or something but in this case it turns out to be licensing already existing games which should, in theory, make it easier to reproduce them in the sense that you get all the drawings for the bill of material so you know what you need, but that doesn't mean that you actually have the part available yet because you need to find vendors for all these parts as well. Yes, that's right. Another thing I was going to mention was that if you look at what's already been reproduced, and things like Funhaus, Maneuver Madness, Attack from Mars, Cactus Canyon. I'm also going to include Monster Bash because, I was going to say, those are all unlicensed titles. So, although they've been licensed from Planetary Pimple, they don't include licensed assets. Monster Bash different, it's got Universal Monsters in it, so that's another license that has to be negotiated, but it kind of limits, in a way, some of the titles you might want to go for. You know, you would want to do I don't know, Twilight Zone for instance which is one which Chicago Gaming are really working on then obviously you have to license Twilight Zone from whoever the owners of that are right and the music as well from Golden Earring and yada yada yada yes indeed although I still, well if it's a reimagined game I suppose all contracts are void and you have to renegotiate everything Yeah, that's right. Well, it's reimagined. You may not be using the same assets at all. Or it could just be you take something which is a license and you reimagine it into an unlicensed version. You know, possible. I can't imagine. But anyway, we'll wait to see exactly what they come up with for that. But interesting that they seem to be proceeding at a pace over American pinball after basically just treading water for the past couple of years, really, and not really producing anything much, other than selling off existing stock. So, yeah, we wish them the best of luck, and we will bring you more news on the company as and when we hear it. Right, yeah. But all in all, positive reviews for the hobby, for the industry. Very optimistic timeline, in my opinion, my humble opinion. Understanding that the aim is to have their first game available to be played at Trimble Expo. so that doesn't mean it's on the production line yet, but probably a prototype. Still very ambitious, I'd say, even if it is a reimagined game. But, oh well. We've seen in the past that it's hard to start a pinball company, and if you buy a pinball company, it doesn't make it any easier, I suppose, although you do have some part there. You come to a certain amount of assets, and you've already got your board set lined up, you've already got your cabinets designed and manufacturing arranged and playfield cutting and all that stuff, and a certain amount of stock. But yeah, you're right. If they can do it, and if anybody can do it, American Pinball could do it. You remember how quickly they managed to get a Houdini game into production after showing the John Popadouk version at Pinball Expo. Within six months, I had Joe Balcer's version on the line. Right, yeah. Right. Oh, well. Good luck. I wish him the best of luck, indeed. If you want to hear more from Brian Vincent himself, I do recommend the earlier mentioned interview that he did with Cary Harder. Look that up on YouTube, and that might answer a lot of questions for you. Very good. Right, moving on to a company which is producing a new game sooner than that, but not as soon as we thought. And that is called Stern Pinball. And there was no cornerstone game announced, which we were expecting to be able to bring you the full details of in this month's Pincast. But in previous years, that game would have been announced shortly before the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. in the beginning of January and shown there and then shown at EAG Expo in London for the European market the week after. But that didn't happen. No new announcement at all. So, yeah, we were... We did. Well, we were at EAG and we did talk to, well, a couple of employees from Cernur present, which we'll get into in a second. But on this subject of the new game, I understood it's basically licensing approvals that have not been approved yet, causing delays. But that could also mean, if something is not approved, and it could be related to a mechanism on the game or something else, that they have to redesign part of the game. Yes, could be, yeah. Pure speculation, but... Well, what we do know is that the game is going to be launched soon. Yes. Let's cut to the chase. We believe it's going to be Pokemon. There's no confirmation on any social media from CERN or external facing white publicity yet. Yes, widely rumoured And also heavily rumoured To be a Jack Danger design To be finished by George Gomez Because Jack Danger Got another position Yes, that's right Doing their social media And streaming and stuff But anyway, what we do know is That they're going to be holding an open house Media open house At Stern Pinball on Wednesday the 11th of February where they will be showing off this new game. We were obviously both invited and unfortunately... Yeah, unfortunately. No plane tickets included in that game. Yes, an invitation and meals and chances to interview various members of the team and get some obviously good pictures and video of the game itself. but unfortunately we can't make it can we? I guess I can't I would be surprised if we manage to get access because we ask every time and it's like yeah sure we can make sure that the team is available for questions through Teams or Zoom or what have you and in the end it never works out so I'll put in my request once again to see if we can have an interview with their lead designer or other members of the design team about this game, which either would be Jack Danger or George Gomez. And it would be great to have George Gomez come on our show. I don't think he's ever been there. So it's about time, George. But so far, these requests have all been received with a very positive response, and then we never got a point. Oh, well, I'm sure they're very busy at this time of launch. But what we do know is that, as I say, first of all, the media open house is on the 11th of February. But according to the social media publicity from the Texas Pinball Festival, they will be the first public showing of the game. Now, that Texas Pinball Festival is about five weeks later than the open house. Yes. So, what's going to happen in those five weeks? That's what we're wondering. Is Vizier going to launch the game around about, or very soon after, the open house on the 11th? Usually two days after. Right. So, basically, we've got four weeks or more between that and anybody actually seeing the game. Yeah. Well, there could be two explanations. one could be there's no other big show in between those in that period because Pinball at the Beach Festival will just have finished once the game is announced so that already took place so you can't show it there and if the next show on the calendar is Texas Pinball then that is the next show that doesn't mean that the game will not be available any sooner but that's also speculation they're saying it's the first public sharing of it that kind of implies that it won't be available to play publicly elsewhere right well we'll just have to wait and see how that turns out I'm also curious whether let's say the media gets a chance to see the game and play it on the 11th of February let's say they get two days to prepare their articles and videos and what have you so on the 13th of February or the 14th well the 17th they launch a Pokemon so the 12th or the 13th you get a public review it would be very odd if there would not be any gameplay until Texas pinball festival when people get the chance to play it themselves and film it themselves. Yeah. Oh, well. I'm sure the plan worked out. But this delay... Well, the plan could be to sell as many before people see how it plays. Oh, yes. Certainly seeing as many people who are predicting it's going to be a smash hit. I mean, it is Pokemon. It's not everybody's capital. Well, it's not mine, that's for sure. But certainly... There seem to be plenty of people who are very excited by the theme, if that is indeed what it is. Yes, well, it's an interesting demographic because, generally speaking, I like to think that there is a younger audience that might not be that very familiar with Pokemon. Pokemon is actually having its 30th anniversary this year, if I'm not mistaken. And so we're talking about kids in their, well, mid-30s to early 40s who grew up with Pokemon, the cartoon series that is. And then later on you got the Pokemon Go games and all the cards, which turned out to be a great hype. I still don't see that many of them buying pinball machines but it could be a great game for to operate on location because it still resonates with a lot of people and it might attract a completely new audience to pinball so in that sense it could be a very interesting yeah and also the gameplay and the design is suitably interesting and let's face it, with Jack Danger and George Gimmer both working on it, there's every chance that it's going to have a fascinating and well-shooting play field. It could overcome that license anyway and just sell itself on gameplay. We've seen that happen in the past. Right. Yeah, with movies that are completely intact. Yeah, I mean, look at The Shadow and, I'd say, Demolition Man to an extent, although I didn't think that was such an awful movie, but... Congo. There you go. Congo's a great game. I didn't know that movie. Congo? Oh, Demolition Man. Oh, yeah, Demolition Man. I agree, yeah. Anyway, we're digressing. We were talking earlier about EAG Expo and the fact there wasn't a new Stern-Cornstein game there. What they did have was five machines that were on the Electrocoin stand. They had... I'm trying to work out what they did have. They had Venom, James Bond, Uncanny X-Men, Dungeons & Dragons, and The Walking Dead Remastered. Of course, they didn't have Star Wars, Fall of the Empire, because that's not available to buy in Europe. and that contrasts with what they had at the CES show in Vegas the week before where they had Walking Dead Remastered Dungeons and Dragons, The Uncanny X-Men, two of the Star Wars Fall of the Empire on one row of the stand and another Walking Dead and another Star Wars Remastered and another Star Wars on another side with a C3PO actor walking around in full gear they did four Drinks with Jack interviews with our friend who haven't interviewed yet, George Gomez Seth Davis and Gary Stern together Brian, Eddie, Elliot Elliot Eismin and Keith Elwin together as game designers and Zombie Yeti, Chuck Ernst and Stephen Martin as artists so they had quite a presence at CES but much reduced in their display at EAG where it's on the Electrocoin stand with five older titles although for many people it was the first chance for them to play The Walking Dead Remastered. But they didn't get the chance to play Star Wars however, if you're in the UK and you do want to play Star Wars I can give you a little hint that it's actually available to play at Pimble Republic in Croydon in London so you're not frozen out little Star Wars joke there frozen out completely you can still play it in the UK anyway while we were there we had a chance to sit down as we often do with Gary Stone and this time he was joined by John Brescalier and you may remember that we mentioned before that certain people were opening a new European sales office in Amsterdam which is going to be headed up by John Buscalia so obviously that's right we want to talk to them obviously about that what they hope to achieve in the new office what the scope is going to be how it fits in with their other European sales promotions the issues with licences seeing as Star Wars wasn't there and I'll give you a little clue here that Gary admits that they made a mistake with the Star Wars licensing and vows that they won't allow that to ever happen again and talk about much much more about what's going on at Stonehenge along with a couple of what's cooking with and let me chime in here to explain to our listeners the situation. So this is a trade show. We've been there all day at the somewhere around 2.30 Gary Stern and John Buscalia showed up. They've been in meetings in a special area upstairs and I asked whether they would be available for an interview. And they were. So I texted Martin, who was also at the show, but he was just recording his infamous walkthrough. Yes. And so I didn't get a response from Martin because he's filming and he can't answer his phone because he's walking through the entire show, which takes up an hour. Yeah, that's 30 minutes for that show. It's not too big, but yeah. Right. I couldn't answer. So anyway, what happened is I went upstairs with Gary and John, and, well, obviously, they had plans of their own, so we did not wait for Martin to show up. But we, well, started off with a little chit-chat and so on, and before you know it, basically everything being said is pure gold, and we intend to use it. So you're going to get basically the whole conversation that went on up to the point where Martin's walking in. I might edit that a little bit. And then we do the interview as we normally would do. But by that time, I already had two recipes coming from Gary and from John. It would be a pity not to share these with you. So enjoy my conversation and Martin's with Gary Stern and John Buscali of Stern Pinball. We didn't come here to talk about that. We came here to talk about that. Don't say Insider Connected. Insider Connected. No. Don't say the word. It's a future. Why is that? I honestly don't. Did you find your buddy? No. I texted him, we're in room 7, and it's up to him to come up whenever he feels like it. Oh, okay. Because we're going to talk, and I'm going to go take a nap before having to go to the next event. So, should we talk about recipes again, or something like that? Well, that's for John. We discussed your recipe. I got some rare recipes. No, no, I gave them the new cook. Oh, God. You know, the chicken leg. Did you see what we did with that? Yeah, I think I did, yeah. We actually printed that in the text. Yeah. I thought it was hilarious. It works. Yeah, it works. It really works, you know. All you need is a microwave. Right. I had lived in a townhouse, and so it had a stove with a microwave, and I had a microwave from before at a Jen Air Grill. So with a microwave. So steak, potatoes, and vegetables. The steak goes to defrost for five minutes. You throw it on the grill for five minutes, flip-flop, and at the same time the baked potatoes are in one of the microwaves. The other one, of course, has the vegetables for five minutes. And, you know, 10 minutes, you got, you know, the whole thing. What do you mean an air fryer? Air fryer makes that big potato crispy. I have an air fryer now, but I don't know how to work it. It takes 20 minutes. No, Babbage gave it to me. I said, no, I can't have an air fryer. Everything's white in my kitchen. So he found a white air fryer, and I have it. It's a big toaster, an air fryer. But it works nicely. I don't know. I got a little toaster that I use on top of it. I never use the new one. I think my kids might have used it. so that tells you all about pinball and what we're doing that wraps this up thank you if you want an easy quick recipe I can tell you what it's my version of Italian wedding soup and it's very very simple first thing you do is you take a little olive oil and you fry it you crush garlic and I use a lot, I'll use at least 10 cloves you fry that up and then you take a cup of chicken broth. And when the garlic starts to get brown, you throw the cup of chicken broth in there and you cook it down. It almost becomes like a little bit of a juice, right? And then you throw a little bit more chicken broth in on top and you have the extra flavor. And then what you do is you throw in, I use spinach, right? Yeah. Maybe, I use a lot of spinach, but you use a good amount of spinach, at least two or three cups of spinach. I'll throw the spinach in there, and then I'll use basically any bean. You can use any bean. But the best bean is the northern Italian, you know, cannelloni-type bean. You wash those off, obviously. You throw one can of that in there. And then what you do is if you have leftover tomato sauce, two tablespoons of that. If you don't, you can put a little bit of tomato paste in there just to add a little bit of that particular flavor. And then you can either, you know, cook a little bit of elbow macaroni on the side or whatever you want to do. Throw that into that. And then if you really want to get crazy, you buy some, you know, meatballs on the side. Like, you know, I used actually meatless meatballs. And you cook those up. You put them in the broiler or you just even, you can even put them in the microwave. Five or six meatballs. Stick it in with the, you have the broth, right? There'd be a juice broth, then the extra cup of broth, then you have the spinach in there, you've got the cannelloni beans, you throw in the meatballs, and then you make sure you salt and pepper it to taste. But the key is you buy the best Reggiano Parmesan cheese, and you do a lot of it. And then when that thing's served up, you put the Parmesan cheese complete the whole time, and you have an amazing Italian wedding soup. Okay, so this starts with garlic. A lot of garlic. And this explains John's dating life. 100%. The good news is my kids all smell like me. Hey, Martin. Hi, Martin. Yeah, you're late. We're almost done. You knew what I was doing. So, what have you seen here? What's been exciting? Not much. A pretty disappointing show, I'd say. Think so? Well, let's see. We've got cranes. Where would go cranes? No, cranes are much more popular today. You know, this is a trend. In America, we have crane arcades. No, not rest stops. People are opening crane arcades. They're just cranes. You know why? Because it's easy to operate because you don't need anybody there. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. Eunice is very big on their brand of crane. Do they brand them with a theme? Eunice has some theme on them. I can't remember what it is. You'll have to look into it. But cranes are a big trend in operating in America. And crane arcades, no, nothing but cranes in them. Nothing but cranes. It's a little bit different than in Japan where you've got cranes with toilet paper in them and cranes with the little plastic kinky sex dolls or whatever they are. All kinds of different stuff in Japan. You need to get Japan chosen. That's all I hear. It's tough to run low on toilet paper. I'm learning new stuff. And all the... He knows all this because he knows what's going on in the market. But all the, you know, the Chinese game. First of all, Chinese stuff is cheap, and that's been... It's disruptive to the game business right now. Here, a $5,000, $6,000 driver versus, you know, a $15,000, $25,000 American driver. Yeah, in the arcane, maybe people don't make that differentiation. the same way that those in the industry would. Yeah. It's a driving game, but it's not Daytona. They're getting better. They're getting better, though. They are getting better, and they're getting more reliable. You know, reliability is still the answer to things. So we have a lot to talk about here. Well, I thought all we're really going to talk about is... We already talked about it. No, no, no. We're going to talk about insider-connected. That's all. Well, that's what you want to do. Seriously. I told Gary not to talk about insider connected for a change I'm not all that possible I've built into your DNA now I really don't understand why anybody especially operating a game would operate a game that's not connected because connected it gives you so much information to it and now with home leaderboards home leaderboards with the all-access and the home leaderboards. Yeah, we're not going to talk about all of that. I am interested in the sheer amount of data you must be getting from these entirely connected games. Now, what on earth are you going to do with all that? You must have to throw away about 90% of it. You know, from your real business, the whole thing of connectivity is two-way street. And the data that we get, to better games, to see where they're earning money, to see when they're being played and so forth. And, you know, we have hundreds of thousands of people playing on Insider Connected now. Of course, but the vast majority of that data must be useless to you. I mean, there's gold in there. It's like gold prospecting, isn't it? There are a few little nuggets in there which are really good. It's not that it's useless. It's that prospecting it. There's so much that you have to set up systems to retrieve it all. But Seth is on top of all that. And with Erica, who's our CTO, who worked on creating, you know, when she had a separate company, they created Insider Connected. They're mining some of it, you know, already. You know, they have been mining some. but your point is right it's a two way street you can't drill down to specific instances of that data if you want to know how long a particular game is played for in a particular location you can get that information or that type of location you can get it but on the other hand how many times do you actually need to know that well there's some of it that is helpful and some of it could be helpful if you could figure out how to get it or how to use it. But there's also, I mean, all the data from people playing at home is basically useless in the sense that if you want to find out more about what's being played on location... No, but what's playing at home is... 70% of our games are at home. That's very good. You know, 70% of our play is on the street and 70% of our games are at home. and that we know because why? Data. We know that. And so it's... And you can compare to how games play in the home to how they play in locations. That's true. And all kinds of stuff. Designers can see what features are being made and there's just... It's a very different way of playing games than when you're playing them at home to when you're actually paying to play the game. That's probably true. Yeah. It's something about paying for things. Yeah, people have an expectation when they're paying. They already paid for it and now it's in their home. It's not usual to dislike your first ball and restart the game if you're paying in a pub. Right. But we are here. I was going to say, I do apologize to our listeners. I'm not really part of this. I can leave now. Oh, no, no. No, you are part of it. No, definitely are. Yeah, yeah. But, so, just to catch up, Martin, John Buscana just shared a delicious recipe with us. Oh, fantastic. For what? Cooking with John Buscana. And what's the dish? It's Italian morning soup. My version of it. My single-man version of it. Vegan. Well, actually, no. I crossed the border when he started adding chicken feet. Well, you can use vegetable broth and make it vegan. Yes. But I made the commitment that if and when I ever have the opportunity to live and visit Europe, that I'm going to be moving away from my vegan diet, which I have done. I've seen them eat meat. I've seen them eat meat. No, it was ugly, but I saw it. I had this interview. No, no, but I had this conversation with my daughter, a long conversation about it, is that the one thing when I was a vegan diet for four years, the one thing is that people start to associate your identity with the fact that you're a vegan. And the one thing that I never really liked is for people to associate, you know, me with an identity that wasn't. And, like, I'm a huge animal activist, and I love animals, and I care deeply about them, And I'm a huge supporter of the humane treatment of food processing, which is one of the reasons why I became a vegan. But what happened was is that you all of a sudden become invisible with regards to going out to dinner and ordering and nobody even notices. And then all of a sudden you go out to a business dinner or whatever and you say, Nobody notices. Everybody notices. No, if you're not. If you're not a vegan. I'm saying people just eat, right? But when you go out to a business dinner and you're at Gibson's Steakhouse and everybody goes around, I'll share the 55,000-pound thing with Gary, and then they come to me, and it's like, well, I'll have a baked potato and some mushrooms on the side, and everybody stops talking. They're like, what are you having? And the reason is because as a vegan, all he ate was carbs. Well, it's just shocks me. So one of the things I'm really trying to do is I don't eat a lot of meat, and if any. Now, if it's a specialty to a culture, like, for example, I was with a gentleman in Austria, in the boonies in Austria, and we went out to his special local restaurant, and they had meals that, you know, I've never even heard of before. But he culturally said, this is from our region, and you have to try this, and you have to try that, and they brought, you know, a soup with the stuff in it. Thank God you haven't been to Africa yet. Right, right. And honestly, it was very uncomfortable for me to say, oh, I can't eat any of that, I'm a vegan. So that's what got me actually off of being as disciplined to saying, you know, I'm a vegan and this is a part of my lifestyle. Because being a vegan was really more a part of me just supporting the humane treatment of animals. But humans and their culture and them wanting for you to be a part of it by exposing it to you was something that I'm also very passionate about and that kind of started to break me down and introduce me back to eating meat. Okay, I understand that. But that's not why we're here. We're not going to detour. We're not going to get connected. No, no, no. Here's the disappointment of your European office now in Amsterdam. Yes. And has that happened yet? No. It hasn't happened. I've spent several trips visiting Amsterdam. And, you know, first of all, I would start with this scenario. You know, I came to Gary, you know, five, six, seven years ago. And when they hired me, you know, originally. That was more than six, seven years ago. That was 2012. Well, I mean. 2013. But when they hired me, I had the ability, which was wonderful, to get involved with setting up a distribution channel. We called it the Harley-type model. And we set up dealers, and we took a lot of what the Harley dealers were doing at that time with showrooms and the way that they sold and accessories and all that stuff. And, you know, I had that in my prior background to a certain extent. and it was fantastic. It was wonderful. We were a small little organization. You know, I had two or three people reporting to me and it was great. It was a very small business and we grew and we grew and we grew and it got to the point where I had, you know, over 60 people reporting to me with all these different areas and we sat down as an organization saying, okay, you know, how do we now organize so that we can be as efficient and as effective as possible in order to continue to sustain this growth. So we very selectively brought in some, you know, very high-skilled individuals to help the organization, such as Seth. And then we brought in, you know, a marketing guy from WWE, Matthew, and Activision. And we brought in Erica, who had a huge background. So all of these different areas started to, you know, move away from me, right? And where I was just focusing on sales initially and setting up the distribution channel, I started setting up, you know, working with the tech support and building out Pat's department. I started working with the pan division and building out accessories and parts and hiring end of staff. I built the logistics department that used to just be Shelly. You know, it became so large and it became so overwhelming, honestly, that, you know, I went to Gary and I said, hey, Gary, listen, if we ever have the opportunity someday where I'm able to split these departments out, I said it's always been a dream of mine to live in Europe and to work in Europe. And I applied for dual citizenship years ago for my – Yeah, to be an Italian dual citizen. And I wasn't able to. I went through this big process and even went down to Miami to try to make this happen. Because I have family that are still here in Europe, still in northern Italy. and I have a huge passion. I got married. I don't think you're generationally right. My father was actualized before. My grandfather came here as an Italian citizen. He got actualized before my father was born, so it disqualified him. So I wasn't able to get it. Yeah, if your father was Italian, you'd be able to do it, but your grandfather doesn't work. Well, that's right. That's right. And he was. My father was actually. And not with the detour. Okay. But anyway, to make a long story short, So I said to Gary, I said, Gary, listen, if we ever get to the point where the company grows, I would love, because this is what I'm passionate about, building distribution channels. And I'm good at it, and I get it, and I know it. And at that time I said, because this was six years ago, I said something like, no fucking way. which we have changed our direction in the sense that which John will explain in a minute we've had tremendous growth in America we haven't had the similar growth here and part of it is the systems that we set up that we are changing what kind of systems are you talking about? so systems would be when you take a look at overall distribution, you have to look at your pricing structures. It all comes down to the four Ps, really. You have the products, which we do far better than anybody in the history of pinball, and then you have the price. The pricing in Europe is different than the way that we price in the United States. Before John joined, I explained to our European importers, distributor importers, that the growth area was the home business. You know, not just the enthusiasts, but, you know, the general public, the first-time buyer. And they finally, it took about two years, and they finally accepted that. And they used the model that they used in commercial, where they sold some games direct to operators. I wish they had done that with the consumer business. And they used jobbers in those days to augment. Because you had so many operators that everybody had their own favorite to buy from. so some of our distributors went to sell direct and to jobbers or dealers and some of them gave it all to dealers which added especially during COVID too much margin so John came to the conclusion that the prices here were when the in his research when the buyer here the end user looked at, forgetting that, which is outrageous here, that's another question, looked at our MSRP versus what games were being paid for in American MSRP, that it was way out of line expensive here. So Johnson went to, can't control prices here, but went to encourage fairer pricing, the elasticity of demand. Yeah. Yeah. So you start with that P, and then you start to build a playing field where you empower your distribution partners, you know, to really take a look at the business in several ways. We have new first-time buyers, and we have the community, and certainly first-time buyers within the community. And we really put a laser focus on how we're going to support each individual group. And some of it's done through marketing, you know, whether it's investing in lead generation to get new first-time buyers, which in the United States we've had tens of thousands of new-time leads that we've been able to generate with incredibly high close rates. And the new first-time buyers in the United States is at an all-time high as we continue to grow that out. Within the United States, our dealer business is growing at a very significant rate year after year after year. and it's a lot of the things that we've done to not just supplement and to support the community, which is huge for us through things like enthusiast trade shows. And in Europe, I'm going to place a major emphasis on clubs. Jonathan and I talked about that, which is also huge to make sure we support it. And then in the United States where me and a group of other people created the Stern Army, we want to also leverage that so that we're supporting the clubs. as well as Insider Connected and also taking a look in Europe at the locations that are doing well with pinball. So if you have a location that, let's say, has four games in it, I would like to know, you know, who owns that location? What's the operator in that location? What condition are the games in? Are the games set up? Are they set up with Insider Connected? Do they have a leaderboard? And then start to really build out those locations and have those as seeds, as well as continuing to grow and expand out the club business. And then the other thing that we're doing and that we're looking at is we've created a relationship, and it's not exclusive, but a relationship with the Dutch Pinball Museum, which they are going to get games first in Europe, and we're going to make sure that the games are expedited to get them the games. And we're going to be working with Gerard to do, you know, amazing things with live streams and introductions of the product so that Europe's not always lagging behind. And you know so with us taking a look at you know making the games affordable so where people can buy them and then supporting the distribution channel with lead generations so that we can continue to attract not just new first consumers who are in the enthusiast world, but also people that are new first-time buyers. Because in the United States, it's a little bit different here, I believe, because of the size of people's houses. is when we get a first-time buyer, there's a 50% opportunity or chance that they're going to buy a second, third, and fourth game. The reason we're building out the clubs over here, and I want to put a major focus on that, is because I want to create that same type of thing where we get that new first-time buyer and then connect them up with a club. So if they don't have the space in their house, they don't have a reason for not buying that second game. So we get them more involved in the clubs. Gary and I both are motorcycle riders. I'm very familiar with clubs. And, you know, we want to take a lot of the things that are, you know, that are fun, that work in what we're doing in locations in the United States and really apply that to clubs to even add more oomph and excitement and power to generate that experience, that customer and consumer experience from the enthusiast level. So what can clubs do then to contact you to become part of this? I say that one more time. What can they do? We've got a pinball club. We have 60, 70 machines there. Yeah. We've got a lot of new stones in. But what can you do for us? I mean, to help us. Yeah. I mean, he's developing it. He's just learning about clubs and so forth. And what you can do is, John.Pascalius. Starts pinball.com. Everybody, load his email box up. I'll do it. If you're a club, please, do reach out to me. And then he was going to create a program. What's that going to look like? Okay, well, first of all, it would look like this. I would like for the experience to be, you know, energized. I know that clubs do different things with regards to having events, tournaments. They're open certain days a week. You can, you know. Is your club an Army location? I think it is, but certainly part of the IFPA's turn to it. Yeah, but is it an Army location? So what we can do with that club is if you break that club down, you can say, okay, what type of events can we do there? Well, we can certainly have tournaments. We can certainly have parties. We can certainly have – Parties. What's that? Launch parties. We can have launch parties. Unofficially. Well, not just launch parties. Here's one of my other ideas. He's talking about having support. But I'm also talking about if we have a pinball location, right, maybe we can have a party there with a big corporation. You know, maybe one of the tech firms wants to do something as a Christmas party and we can turn that club into a really fun, you know, get a band in there or whatever, if it works. And we can do other things. The main thing is to create as much excitement and energy within that club, around that club, so that we can expose as many people to pinball, not just maintain the people that we have that are currently in the club and enhance that experience, but also create new experiences to just creative thinking in terms of what that club can offer. That's great. I mean, we already do a lot of that kind of stuff already. Yeah. And we're looking to see what you can do to help us. We can promote it. You already do that, but other clubs don't. No. We can promote it. Yeah. We can... How many clubs in the UK, do you think? Less than half a dozen. Half a... Give or take half a dozen? Yeah. Okay. We can... Do most of them, most of these, are they the clubs with their own clubhouse with games in it, or are they clubs where people go from house to house? No, no. They're all single locations. Okay. There are clubs also where people... Where people, members of the club, bring their own machines to it. Yeah. And, of course, to my left is the expert on pinball clubs. You are, of course. He referred to himself and Ketsel for the main organizers of the Dutch Pinball Association. The Dutch Pinball Association has a very different model to the way that we operate. Most clubs operate, to be fair. You are. I'll introduce you to the Dutch Pinball Association. I'm really excited for all that stuff. Because, you know, I've always, and without getting into too much detail, I mean, I wasn't planning. When I left Pops, I went back and, as you know the story, I got my master's in early childhood education and was enrolling in a doctorate program so that I could become a college professor and teach when these guys called me up. And the reason that I didn't pursue my Ph.D. is because of the community aspect. And the company that I had worked for prior, you know, Stops, was a huge lifestyle brand with a massive community. And when you're doing something and you're working for a company like Stern or for Stops, the people that are involved in the hobby, just like you guys, right, we're not selling peanut butter here. I mean, and you're not even just selling fun. We had Headhunter looking for somebody that had sales marketing and brought us various people in Chicago that sold chemicals to Walgreens, drugstores, and this, old this and that. There was one person from outside of Chicago, and the resume said Topps, which is the trading card people. And I said to my partner, never having met John, and I said, he'll be the one. He's our guy. Yeah. because we were doing collectibles in a sense the LE's were collectible now we're way past the collectible business we have a collectible aspect but we're way past that but that's you know the sales marketing guys who ran sales forces that sold to Walgreens or what have you generic-ish products So at what point did you decide, okay, we've got to have a European office? Okay. Within the last year. Yeah. And why? Well, the main reason is that we reached the point in the organization where, you know, I think two things have occurred. I think within our U.S. distribution, I personally, along with a few other people, I opened up Costco, which is one of the best marketing things that we've ever done. So many people have been exposed to pinball. And literally, I had a call from some guy who said, I've now bought my 15th LE, and I started off with a Costco game. And it doesn't compete at all against our current distribution. And the games are the home units. They're under $5,000. And it's tremendous, tremendous, you know, get people interested in the hobby. So we did Costco, right? And we brought in some amazing talent, you know, from a marketing perspective and an IT perspective. And, you know, and again, we brought in Seth Lee, the organization. And the numbers spoke. The numbers spoke. And the numbers were we're growing in America, and we've got a population of 300 million. And Europe has a population of 500 million, and we were not getting the growth here. So we're doing something wrong compared to what we're doing. And are those skillsets accurate? Can I take what we've done in the United States and grow Europe? because Europe is such a... Adapting it knowing that the Europeans are different than the Americans. Well, they have a very different market, of course. Each has their own rules and regulations. Each has their own language. Well, let me interrupt him for a minute. He recognizes and points out that America and Europe are different. Their population is certain. Certainly, we follow each other in styles and so forth. not only are America and Europe different, but each country he has to deal with is different. You sell a car in France and you talk about the quality of the leather. You sell a car in Germany, you talk about the motor and the horsepower and this or that. There's differences of how he's going to attract it to different countries. Nonetheless, Europe is one market with differences, but it's one market versus America. It's a different market. And also, you have one thing in common. You have incredibly passionate consumers that are involved in a community that tie people together. If you take a look at the base of who likes pinball, who is an enthusiast or whatever, a competitive player, that's a global piece. finding out the best way to distribute the products to get as many people involved in our enthusiast community is something that you're going to have different tactics and different techniques to get there which is what excites me about following and finding and learning what those tactics are yes, they're different certainly in every country they're different in Asia they're different in Australia they're different in the US they're different in Canada and they're different in Europe and I'm extremely motivated and excited about learning about those different things, which I've already learned a tremendous amount about and have a lot further to go. So, no, the way that we distribute products will not be a cookie-cutter model of the United States, but the way that I work with the community and the way that we work with tactics to bring new people into the community, because as people would say, rising tides raise all ships, we want to grow out. We want more people involved in this, in what we are and what we have, which is the main reason why I'm still doing this, which is the main reason at my age why I even want to move to Europe, because I want to continue to have more people involved in this. Now, the one thing I like to say, and I know I'm rambling on here, but people that I've met in the community have a special connection to this. When I greeted people at Expo, and I greeted 1,200 people, I was the guy who met everybody. As the parking lot, you were the first one to basically get everybody off the bus. That's right. And the reason that I took that position to do that, everybody I met was just, they were thrilled. They were excited. They were motivated. They couldn't wait to see the experience. And that's what's different about our community. Pinball people are unbelievable. They're very, very good, gentle, loving people that love each other. and this is, you know, I'm involved in a business helping to bring... As long as they're not online. When was the last time you saw a brawl at a pit bull? The last time Canada was there. Seriously. And that's a true story, by the way. But no, I mean, I love this community, and I'm very, very passionate about it. Okay, so you decided to set up a European office. Why Amsterdam? Well, first of all, why not Italy? I tried. You tried Valencia? Yeah, Valencia. Rotterdam is one of the largest, if not, you know, it's the second largest port. You know, so if someday this business grows. I think I can invest in, so that was just corporate stuff. You know, you look at companies that come here, they often go to Amsterdam, they got good ports. But they have good tax laws for corporations or companies. They have good – it's the normal place that you're going to go. It's got good airport transportation. So it's just – it's central, good – you know, central, good port, central. Not that we should think ourselves, but – It's a smart business place. Yeah. It's a business thing. So we actually, a couple of years ago, had commissioned a study of different ramifications of being in Germany and being in, which is a bigger market than Amsterdam, than Holland, and being in France and so forth. And the conclusion that you get from the business consultants is Netherlands. I'll take that. They're all wrong. That's what Jonathan said. So he can help me get around. So what's the first benefit that we as Stone People players and collectors are going to feel from you having a European office? Well, I think the first thing that I'd like to see is I'd like to see the prices of the games to the end users be more affordable. That's the first thing. And I'd like to see a more competitive market in the standpoint where we raise the bar in terms of, you know, access to the community, enhancing the community, whether it's through clubs or locations or people's houses with leaderboards. I'd like to see the communication process greatly improve. That's why we're working programs like with the Dutch Pinball Museum, which is fantastic. And we would love to have other, you know, whether it's clubs or other museums or whatever, in order to continue to build that out. and to make the community much more aware of each other. One of the guys that I'm friendly with who lives in Amsterdam, he happens to work for a guitar company. He's a director of European sales. And I asked him, I said, you know, what are some of the challenges? What are some of the things that I should be clear on? Are we talking about Nate? Nate, yeah. And Nate said it's hard for me to connect to other people in the community because there's not as many locations to go play at. Which goes back to the clubs. Which goes back to the clubs. And he goes, I really miss it. I miss being in the United States and pretty much having something to do every night with pinball. And I would like to make that more prevalent. I'd like to give people the opportunity to connect on a more frequent level and looking at all the different places and all the different ways that we can do that. But those are the things. strengthening the community, really focusing in on the enthusiast shows so that, you know, in the United States, as you know, my God, we've done, when I got here 13 years ago, I was working with Mandeltort and Marco, and, you know, the shows were in little holiday inns with, you know, 45 games, and now, you know, they're in convention centers and Midwest Gaming Classic and Southern Pride, that show in Georgia used to be, you know, nothing, And I'm going to place the same level of focus and attention on building out the show programs that I did with Paul and have an integral part with that and worry seeing some progress from some of the things that we're doing. So really giving people the chance to play more often, more frequently, and to connect with others in the community and also giving consumers the opportunity to buy games at more affordable prices. As you, you know, you're talking about this, it sounds like we just made a decision yesterday. We, John hired somebody, Lloyd, in Europe a year and a half ago. Yeah. So the process was, I said that we did research a few years ago as to where, again, Nate's, where's Nate located? You mentioned Nate. Well, Amsterdam. Amsterdam, because that's where you go. instead of Valencia or wherever it is. John did this great PowerPoint. It was really good of how he should move to Valencia, right? Yeah. And so what did Dave say to you? So I did this amazing PowerPoint. It was beautiful. And Valencia is like a lot of startup gaming companies are going there. And the culture is very hip and it's very vibrant. And it's the number four port city in Europe. and I did this amazing PowerPoint and the owner of the company wrote back and said, looks like a great place to vacation. Maybe you could stop there when you're on vacation at the Amalfi Coast. You could stop at Valencia on your way to Lake Como. Yeah. You're going to answer that. So I didn't quite make Valencia, but maybe I'll make it for vacation. But in comparing what you could do in Europe to what you do in the US and the shows there, you obviously worked very closely with Marco there. Well, he did. Yeah, I know. But they were able to go to a whole bunch of shows across the country and set up impressive-looking Stern Pinball stands. He doesn't work with them anymore. He stopped working with them. Yeah. He took it over himself. History. this is how you're able to have a very impressive presence at these shows but you haven't got that kind of single distributor or network here in every country going back to your distributor network which you've been pushing that for a long long time but it's kind of broken down a bit in the US in that it's not so segregated anymore it's where people can buy games from They don't have to buy it from their state distributor. They can buy games from you for a start. Not really. We don't sell direct. We sell a few. Only through... Every game launch, there's a certain number available. Yeah. For an inside on LA for two minutes. Yeah, for two minutes for the... For the lucky few. Yeah, the people are insider connected. All assets. So the point is that it's a lot less segregated over there, the market, the distributor market over there. And it's in Europe where, no, in the UK, for instance, where we are now, there's one distributor. And you can't really buy a game from anywhere else. Well, you buy from Phil. Yeah, exactly. You buy from Phil. But UK is unique in that it's not part of the European community. So it's got, you know, the genius of Rexis was, you know, yeah but if you're in France and you're probably going to buy it from the French distributor you're not going to buy it from the Italian distributor you're not going to buy it from somebody in Belgium probably well you know your European law with passive sales versus active sales pretty much has taken down so we're listening to it having taken down the restrictions because there's no restrictions on passive sales. No, but that's something which has kept prices artificially high over the years. Where are we saying? The lack of competition. John has addressed that. Yes. We have addressed it. So there's going to be a lot more flexibility in how consumers purchase in the future. and we'll make some recommendations on what we think are margins that the consumers will be happy about, which basically will allow them to enter the consumer market, whether a first-time enthusiast buyer or a first-time new buyer from somebody outside of the industry, at a more competitive price. And I'm going to be very, very watchful with, you know, the impact on what's the right level of price elasticity without, you know, we can't control anything, but we can only make recommendations and such. But that's a big piece. So the consumer will have more flexibility where they can buy and who they can buy from. And the pricing will have some recommendations that we feel as a company are healthy for the market to continue to grow or to grow at a rate that is acceptable. On a slight technical aspect to that, which is probably not something you want people to do, But with the Spike 3 system, do you still have that 50 hertz, 60 hertz? Yes, we do. Check. You do. So you don't want people buying games from the U.S. That's correct. Okay. Because we think that the market is better served. It's a whole different issue. Oh, I know. It's a different issue than being able to sell games all over Europe versus bringing games from a totally different market without a service organization at all behind it and without, there are different requirements in the EU for radio admissions and things like that than in the U.S. So the games that would be shipped from the U.S. would not meet the standards. We use different standards for the U.S. so it's a different issue than cross country selling here versus bringing games from the US that's why I say it's a technical question but I know a lot of people had that question when it was introduced by 3 it still do that it still has that but again concerned with meeting the legalities a bunch of games coming in here that aren't compliant would not serve pinball well. Whereas games coming from France to Germany or Germany to Italy does not have any of those kind of problems with it. Now, since you're going to be focusing on growth in Europe, part of what I assume results in sales is theme choices and licenses. Does that mean that you might be focusing on licenses that are appealing to Europe more than the U.S.? We have in the past. And how did that work out? Worked out okay. Iron Maiden is not an American title. The band. James Bond is... Well, James Bond's worldwide. I know, but I'm saying in Europe. It's a very good title. Most of the titles are very good for Europe. But, you know, Iron Maiden in particular is not such a popular band in America, whereas here I go to a event in Belgium and everybody was wearing Iron Maiden sweatshirts. that's just an example of picking a title that is better for Europe than for America right obviously you do a lot of Marvel licensed titles and so on is that more well Marvel is also worldwide but maybe this is my personal perspective but I sense it's bigger in America than it's in Europe I don't sense that Okay. Movie statistics don't sense that. Those are international titles. You get Disney, Lucas, Marvel, they're pretty international. Okay, on that topic. Mickey Mouse is everywhere. Yeah, obviously we don't have Star Wars for the M.I. here. That's true. Can you tell us a little bit about why we don't have that? they bifold the license and we there are a few territories that we normally get that we thought we were going to get and we didn't that won't happen again why would it not happen again because we're not going to allow that we're not going to buy a title that we aren't sure that we have this has sprung on you this was sprung you weren't expecting this we weren't expecting it and we expected that we would overcome it and we did not so who got fired? I can't be fired is this something which you're seeing more, I mean obviously media companies are there's a lot of mergers going on in the media business and movie studios as well as we're seeing now with Paramount and Disney taking over Fox and all these licenses are coming under different companies is that making it more complex from a licensing point of view or is it actually making it easier because now you have fewer people to deal with I don't do licensing like I used to because I was direct You did a lot of them for a long period of time. But you go to the shows. You go to the licensing shows. Actually, I don't anymore. Seth and Jody go. It doesn't need me to go there, too. But having said that, not the mergers per se, but I'm just going to say that licensing is more difficult than it was. Well, you have more competition now, for sure. And not just that. The licensing divisions of these different media companies are, I mean, it used to be an aside. It used to be just, you know, something they did. I think the story is what created licensing in my mind was George Lucas when he did the first Star Wars. and I guess he went to Ladd, who was the head of the studio, and said, well, you owe me money. I'll tell you what, instead of giving me more money from this first movie, just give me the licensing rights. So he calls down the licensing. Well, we don't do that much. Okay, you can have all the ancillary rights for Star Wars, which Lucas had. Now, Lucas is now part of Disney. But that was, what, $8, $10 billion ago that he created. but it was much simpler then I've watched it over the years become much more large departments John's familiar with this because he was at COPS you guys saw the same stuff and we had some of the same titles we still debate about what's the Williams game oh attack from Mars yeah you said they ripped it from you Well, I'm just going to, I won't badmouth anybody, but we had the feeling at Tops that we were kind of taken advantage of. I don't know your company who can tell you what exactly happened. Well, from what I understand. Well, they say very, very clearly they came out with their idea first, long before the movie. well I didn't actually hear that but the movie was they actually had a season it was actually a comic book I'm not sure from a timing standpoint but there was a comic book that we felt that the pinball machine was based upon so rather the movie the change of the name was kind of a slight of hand so yeah but it was easier back then with the license. No Good Gophers was what? Caddyshack. Oh, well, companies have been doing that for years, haven't they? Yeah, I know. But that kind of stuff doesn't, you know, it's not the same today. We would no more do that than the man in the moon today. Well, no, because you actually want the license and then need the assets as well. Well, there's the other point, you know, in the licensing. We use so many more assets than any other product. You know, video games don't use as much assets as we do. They create a lot more assets of their own sometimes, and we get them sometimes. But nobody has to strain on a licensing department as much as we are. But you do that as well, though. You create your own assets for certain. Oh, absolutely we do. Walking Dead Remastered is out there at the moment. absolutely we do there's nothing from the TV series all of which have to be totally approved of course yes of course they have to be created by your in-house office yeah even with Aerosmith with one of the first Spy 2 games I mean all that artwork was generated in-house I mean the the LCD animations we do both we use theirs we generate our own we do both So, going back to the European office, when's it launching? Well, I mean, the office will be my apartment at first. We start small. So will you move in? No, it's open 24-7. So right now, we know the Netherlands market is a tough market. I was talking to Jonathan about it, and hopefully Jonathan can help me out a little bit. But next up is... I'll send you my external... Breakout. Breakout, yes. So I have to work with a real estate agent, and the market's extremely competitive at this particular point. So we're going month by month on it. I'm never invested in trying to find something as soon as possible. I have a dog who's half pit bull and half great Pyrenees. So she's a little bit of an obstacle in finding a place. But once I locate a place, and, you know, sometimes it could take up to three months, you know, to lock in. And then I plan on moving over there. So this year? Absolutely. Hopefully. That's the goal, you know. ASAP. Can we narrow it down to a season? To a season? I'd love to be there before June. I mean, that would be the goal. What can you? Nothing. Summer. Summer. It's better than the winter in... Yeah, and then in my place, I want to rent it out in Chicago. I live in Logan Square, which is a great neighborhood. And I'd love to, you know, it's already appreciated a lot. I'd love to rent it out and hold on to it. And yeah, yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Okay. Yeah. Well, best of luck with that. I look forward to welcoming you to Europe. I look forward to seeing the effect on the European pinball market and clubs. Thank you. Thank you so much. In closing, so I can, obviously this is a challenge for you. It's also sort of an experiment for Stern. So has there been internal talks of how long of a period you're going to get to see how successful this can be? or is there a point at some point that, like, this isn't going to work out, let's stick to what we have right now and come back to the U.S.? I think we're committed to three to five years, and then we can, you know, assess where we're at. But, guys, I'll be really honest with you, and I'm a very humble person, as you all know, I can't imagine not having a significant positive impact on this business. Not just from a selling perspective, but from growing out the community and leveraging the things that we've done really well with things like Stern Army and, you know, establishing locations that support pinball to really helping our distribution channel be more effective at taking care of the customers and giving them a customer experience that they deserve because they're spending a lot of money for this stuff. So I can, you know, I'll be the Babe Ruth and point to the fences, but I can't imagine not having an impact on it. And I've done it pretty much throughout my career, and I think this is easy compared to the U.S. because it's been, I'm not going to say neglected, but the level of focus without having somebody actually with boots on the ground has never been here. So it's virtually just a barren piece of playing field that I can pretty much build with my team and with people like yourself and people that work with us and our distribution partners and our community. I mean, to me, it's just all upside. Great. And please keep us updated with your plans and your programs that you're rolling out. So we can engage with them. Is there a goal or an aim, like what you would like to? a target maybe not but I'll give you a little percent when it was a commercial market and I did the selling here myself we were 40% of our business was here right well it's not 40% right now right so well back in the Gottlieb days I mean Gottlieb sold in the Gottlieb days when Gottlieb was big and then we're talking 60s, 70s well mostly I think mostly existed thanks of Europe well that's because they were owned by the Vesians well actually by Mondau which was who's the other Mondau help me darn it not Vesians huh not Vesians well Ephesian was actually, I think he's a son-in-law or something like that. It was... Oh, God. Oh, man. Oh, my God. The French guy. French. And they ended up owning Gothley. Oh, my God. I should know this, but... I'm blank right now, and I know it, but I'm blank right now. And it's a shame on me. Oh, God. Oh, well, the French guy. No, no, no, no, no, no. God damn it. Well, Godney was very popular in France. That is absolutely true. But even for Belli, I mean, Belli was very popular in Germany and the Netherlands as well. So you're in different time frames. On that slight detail that you just made there, although I'm kind of wrapping this up, I noticed from your new Spike 3 system and the cabinet builds, it would be a lot easier for you to now manufacture games or at least assemble games in Europe is that something that you would consider doing? I mean it's something that Bally did with Ballywolf is it something which Stern could do? could have a European assembly class? Mr Stern, I don't know why you asked that one you never know but that's not something that we're planning right now ok, right just the way your new cabinets are bolted together it wouldn't be flat-piped it's that way it has a lot of advantages more than that one ok you'll hear the answer in our upcoming next month's edition and Gary was hoping to get some sleep he was going to take a nap after this interview but now for sure he will be and find out the answer to the question. He's waking up somebody now. This is right. He wants to be a millionaire. He has a friend. He has a safe voice now. It's going to be your final answer. Hey, sweetheart. Who was in France the head of Mondial back in the day? Bejian was in Europe, in America, right? Who was the... Oh, no, it was Fezian. It was Fezian. Sarkeesian was in America. Sarkeesian was the son-in-law. And Søren Fezian was the French... Yeah, Søren Fezian. We got the answer. You were right. It's Fezian, Søren Fezian. And he was... In World War II, he worked for the Germans and he ran a resistance cell at night. He was a tough guy. Who did you wake up to to get this answer? Frank from Louise downstairs. Okay, thank you. Thank you, sweetheart. Where are you? You're in bed. He's got the power now. You guys have screwed me up. I'm glad we got there in the end. Thank you very much. Anyway, thank you, Gary. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. And we look forward to all the new initiatives you're going to bring to the European market. Thank you. Well, next time we'll get together. we will have another recipe for you. And continue the... It's your recipe next time. We'll have new chicken. We're going to have that again. No, Gary has another one. We actually have two. Oh, even better. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you. Gary, how he's cooking the steak and the... Oh, yeah. Well, that's two microwaves and a general grill and all that. Absolutely. Our new show is ended again. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Well, thanks to Gary and to John for taking all that time and as well as giving us their respective recipes. And it's always entertaining and informative to sit down with them at EAG Expo. And we kind of have the time to have a proper conversation with them, which we don't often have at the other shows we go to, although even then we always push the amount of time that we're supposed to spend with them much further than we need to. And then by the time we finished, the show was almost closed by the time we finished. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and we'll move on with our Stern Pinball news. Yes, get to that code section that everybody loves. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, four games get code updates in January. Star Wars for the Empire. Don't need a pillow for that. Get version 0.89. Get cooperative and team play modes added. New Obi-Wan fourth mission, which we'll be waiting for. Several new feature adjustments, some audio fixes, and a few rule changes. This is a strange one. James Bond 007's 60th anniversary also gets an update. remember last month we mentioned about Star Wars, the Steve Ritchie game getting an update that was for the topper that came out on the new Star Wars The Empire game well James Bond 007 60th anniversary model, you know the exclusive one that got an update to version 1.1 less than 500 units I don't know quite why that seemed worthy of an update but it got several updates including the new service menu the full graphical user interface rather than the dot matrix replicated on the screen fast setups for Wi-Fi and game registration which is now standard on certain games some improved display graphics that's about it really not any obvious reason to update it but hey owners, all 500 of them will be very happy with that. Dungeons and Dragons Star and Die, version 0.99 almost fully featured came out on the 29th as well quite a lot of rule changes actually greatly expanded how the Dragon Multiball works, that's now a much more complex mode, and the associated sounds as well they change they change how you qualify Dragon Multiball, and they added many more monster encounters while you're travelling, increase the points value and they added new controls to reset just one character's progress rather than everyone's progress which was something they originally had you do all or nothing and now you can just do if you want to play one character you can reset that a few bug fixes and a few typos fixed as well and the X-Men, the uncanny X-Men version 0.97 that got a new Nimrod escape mode and a save Senator Kelly wizard mode at last They also implemented the new service menu User interface Added a new skillshot Mike Villicore Named skillshot MXV And new achievements And quite a few bug fixes as well in that game So that wraps up the Code for Stern Pivel In January 2026 Well Not entirely because I do have a question About the Dungeons and Dragons Tyrants I Do you? Yeah, I do. Well, I'm not sure whether... Oh, we certainly do. Ask away, anyway. Well, I do remember that Dragon multiball was very easy. I mean, there was two shots to the three-target bank, and then a right orbit, and you're there. Has that been made more difficult? Well, it was originally simple. simple. Then they changed it and made it much more difficult and decided that it was too difficult, so that they made it easier again. It is just a matter of shooting the target bank in order to start the light dragon multiball, although the number of pre-lit letters on it is adjustable in the settings, so you might have to spell out dragon and hit it by hitting it six times. And that starts the first multiball once you've started you've actually locked the ball but after that it gets a lot harder and also the value of it is a lot more complex now you might start it but you may not get that many points out of it unless you go into it with various conditions already fulfilled so I won't go into what they all are mainly because I don't know what they are but I didn't mean it. Oh well, thanks for this clarification. So I think the basic answer is yes, it is quite simple to start still now. But it's it might be simple to start, but you don't get it on a point if you start it too soon. Right. So moving on. In Texas. Yeah. They will have two of their Winchester Mystery House games at the upcoming Penball at the Feet show. being held. Well, yes, I am able to go, fortunately, being held at St Pete's in Florida in a couple of days' time. They also announced that they have 58 Labyrinth machines left in stock. I think that's quite a lot, actually, considering they cut production short, I think, on that. So those are the last ones. They're not going to make any more, but of course there might be some distributors as well. But those are the ones that Vowels of Fun have in stock. I don't know whether their stock level includes distributor stock in that count. I'm guessing not, as they can just count up how many they've got in the factory. Other than that, they're busy building Winter's Dream History House games. Right. But still, interesting. I mean, Labyrinth is a very cool game despite the theme. There we go again. Yeah. And, well, I understand there's a new code update giving the game a new sound. Yeah, absolutely. It came out on the 30th. Which makes it probably more interesting as well. Even more. Yeah, it was created by Jack Dodson, who did all the music and sound for the Dune game and the Winchester Mystery House. I mean, he did all the music for the Dune game, which includes some of the movie music, but he's the sound designer and composer for Winchester Mystery House. And, yes, he's created an entirely new sound package for Labyrinth, which I don't think anybody really saw coming. I'm very curious, because the original sound package is very... I was... Well, it's an old movie, but it's very true to the movie, so it's a bit that way. Yeah, but, well, it has this high, very relaxing melody when you start the game in the original mode that you start the game in. But it's... I found it very appealing, so I'm very curious to find out what has... what stayed, and what has been improved. Yeah, well, what else has been added is they've added the Shaker Motor Support, which wasn't included originally, some new light shows, some bug fixes and there's an update to the Barrel Ball rules, which is like Straw Ball for Battle and Fun games, which allows you to set the number of players now so the game will also have to end when a certain number of players are out, and you just down to one and they'll be the winner. Plus there's more information or text on how to play it and And also the game starts now with one red shot lit, so don't shoot the red shot, is the basic rule for barrel ball. And on the Labyrinth games. So, yes, all that stuff was introduced into Dune as part of its barrel ball mode, and it's now been retrofitted into Labyrinth as part of this great new code update. on the 30th of January. Interestingly, I couldn't realize this, but you have to load it through a USB stick, because the Wi-Fi updating has been disabled for some reason. I think it was too unreliable. So you will need a memory stick in order to do this. Oh well. So, I guess that's all the news for Barrels of Fun for the month of January. Yeah. yep ok let's move on to Spooky Pinball yes obviously Beetlejuice recently announced game and the first one of those games rolled off the Dutch line and are now reaching buyers which is good news. Haven't heard any reports much about it, but I can report they will have 10 Beetlejuice games set up at Pinball at the Beach this coming weekend. So I'm actually in with a chance of playing a game, a new game, at a pinball show. They've got ten of them. Wow. Yeah, that's exciting. But that should reduce the line, you think? Yeah. Well, I think the tickets are limited anyway, and there aren't seminars and things of such to distract people, so the games should be available for a lot longer, and people should be able to play them when they want. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. The other thing was, remember last month we mentioned about this new add-on for the Evil Dead game called the Dead Bar, which adds lighting under the back panel, or onto the back panel, I should say, in that area where it is quite dark. It's fully supported within the game software and was quite a cheap upgrade. In fact, it was so cheap that it sold out straight away and was immediately out of stock. Well, the good news, in a way, was that the Dead Bar was back in stock. at Spooky Pinball in mid-January, where they had 150 units available. The bad news is that they were sold out straight away, and it's out of stock again. So, you didn't get one of those. Sounds like Spooky have another hit on them. Yes, well, yeah. I think everybody who's got an Evil Dead machine wants to get the Dead Bar add-on. So at least they know how many they will sell eventually, because it's limited by the number of machines that they sold, which was I think 888 wasn't it? Right. Well, if they come in batches of 150 I think they would, yeah. I think if the first batch was that size then they got 300 out of 888, yes. Yeah, and they probably want to adjust software for previous games where people want to install that dead bar as well. Not sure if it fits into earlier games. but well maybe not at the moment anyway but it's possible well there's no code yet but who knows oh well well obviously you need to plug it into something as well I call it something else it can't be Dead Bar it's not an evil dead I guess you could still call it Dead Bar because Evil Dead was the first game that it was introduced on but you could still use it in I don't know Looney Tunes, for example, or Ultraman. Not sure whether it is, but oh well. Okay. I don't think it will fit in total nuclear annihilation, but... It probably doesn't need either. Okay. I think that's all the news we have from Spooky Pimples, so we should move on, and we have a lot to get through. Right. So, Multimorphic sent out a new public update. They did. They said the Portal game kits, Portal being their current game still, are slipping at a very good pace, but unfortunately the complete machines with Portal pre-installed, they're lagging behind, because the full machines are taking longer than intended to produce. So, that would be true for any complete games, I guess, not just Portal. But portion gain kits are available for these machines, but the actual rest of the machine isn't. So they are coming along, but they're certainly not coming out as fast as the kits are. So it's not a one-to-one comparison or production rate. So if you bought the whole thing, you might have a bit of a longer wait. That's the upshot of that. More anticipation. Yeah, it's forced anticipation. in the meantime version 0.9 of the P3 software development kit has now been released and it's available for those who want to build their own games for the P3 and several people have done of course it includes specs for building playfield modules, you want to add a playfield module rather than using a pre-existing one, documentation for the code which is in there and how you interact with the various physical elements of the game. And also the various sizes for artwork on the game, you know, the cabinet sides, the decals, all that kind of stuff, the apron decals and the backbox. All that's there if you want to produce your own artwork for your game. And all this is available to download for free from the Multimorphic website. You just need to log in and register first and then log in. and you can download the P3 software development kit. Okay. Not sure how many people that actually are using, but it would be interesting to find out. Yeah, probably bring more people into the game development side, because we've already seen several people produce games for the P3, one of whom, of course, is Nicholas Baldridge. and we mentioned him last month in one of his well the first video in a P3 pinball service learning series where he was looking at how the P3's flippers work and how they differ to flippers you might be more familiar with from Danny Williams games for instance well he's got a new video out which looks at the rather unique ball trough that's installed in the P3 which holds 15 balls, is it? Something like that. Yeah, 13, something like that. But, of course, it doesn't sit at the bottom by the flippers, it's right up towards the top where the upper playfield module plugs in. So, unique in many ways, and has many different ways in which you can launch the ball, as it certainly is demonstrated very, very cleverly in the Portal game. So anyway, if you want to know how it works and how it differs from, well, how it differs from the standard ball drop, it hardly has any similarities. But then hello to Multimorphic's website and have a look at their P3 Pimple Service videos from Nick. And thanks, Nick, for doing that. Of course, Nick is part of the Multimorphic team. They are working alongside them. As well as developing games of his own, both ones which are currently available and more. which we've spoken about before. Skillbound would be one that he's working on. And who knows, who knows, with the Texas Kindle Festival coming up, maybe, just maybe, we might be able to make a visit to the Morphic, although we haven't asked yet. No, it's possible, yeah. We could make a detour. And if we do, then of course you get a full report of like-wise on this very special pin count. Yeah, it'll be the April edition. It's not about April, looking back at March. Yes. In our round-up of the Texas Pimple Festival in March of course. Maybe something to look forward to. Well, for us of course, we've been there before, but it's always nice to pay a visit. Yeah, okay. So we'd better kind of get on with it because we have more news and this time from Jersey Jack Pimble. Yeah, this is very interesting because I had not heard of this. Actually, I learned from this. I learned the following news actually from you. First time for everything. Yes, okay, good. Well, Jersey Jack Pimble launched their new 3D game viewer for their Harry Potter Collector's Edition game. Basically, it's an interactive 3D model viewer that allows you to view the game from any angle, zoom in on any part of the playfield or cabinet, spin it around, explore key features. And also, which is unique to the mobile version, if you run it on your phone or tablet, using the camera that's built into that, you can put it into an alternative reality where it places the model of the Harry Potter game in your environment and then allows you to move the device around to see how it would look in your home, in your game room, on your line-up of existing machines. And you can still do all the moving in and rotating around the game, but rather than having it in a black background or a castle background, it's in your home. so that's a nice new feature it's only available for the Harry Potter Collector's Edition at the moment but it certainly seems like it would be a very useful tool when they launch future games and want to help promote it by rather than having to send out all these detailed pictures of the game I could just do a model now if you bear in mind it is only a model, it's not a real production game it's 3D rendering of it, real time rendering of it. So it doesn't include all the aspects of it that are actually in the game. If you zoom in you'll see there are no switches in it, there are no wires for any of the lights or anything like that. But it gives you a very good impression and you can certainly see all the inserts and the artwork and how the various mechanisms in the game operate because it has like a track mode lighting going on and all the mechanisms trigger in sequence like the staircase spins around, the clippers flip, the pop bumpers bump and the car in the tree wobbles and all that kind of stuff. So yeah it's a very impressive feat and it seems to work very well on every device I've tried it on. It doesn't seem to be particularly demanding on the graphical rendering capabilities. I suppose these days we're kind of used to that aren't we with modern phones and tablets. It works fine on desktop as well, and works on iPhones, works on Androids. Yeah. It's a very impressive little piece of work, and congratulations to whoever at the Jersey Jack pinball team put that all together. Right. Okay. So, yeah, it's very interesting. Apparently you received a press kit. I didn't. so I'll be reaching out to see why I was excluded that's very odd, yes I'm sure you normally would, but it didn't come from anyone I'm familiar with at the company, so I guess it had a promotional company doing it and maybe a distribution list I've had this in the past names get dropped off the list dropped off the stones in the past and didn't get sent out press releases for games, but a few words in the right ear and we'll get settled and sort it out. Right. Okay. Then, well, I suppose that I think it does, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Trying to think whether any Jersey Jack design member teams or members are attending I'll speak British with you, I'm sure. Right, okay, and maybe Eric Meunier. Oh, well, have fun. You'll be there, I won't. Yeah, I'll send your apologies. Yeah, I'll be sending them myself as well. Anyway, moving on to, well, why not Dutch Pinball? Yes, why not? For all I'm Dutch. Yes. What's the news there? Well, probably because, well, there is no news. Okay, that won't take long then. yeah so no there was a brief thread that we or they actually as as well might be facing another 10% increase because of the whole Greenland situation military impact and what have you but thankfully it took another Dutch person to get the situation neutralized, so to speak, and those tariff increases for Europe have been lifted again. Who is this Dutch? Well, good to know. It's Mark Retto, who runs NATO. Yes. now. And apparently he's, according to President Trump, a close friend. So, well, thankfully, that saves American buyers a lot of money when it comes to buying European games. And saves more grief for Dutch Pinball and Pinball Brothers and Pedretti and all those who try to sell. their games into the US market and having to deal with what, having to work out what to do about increased tariffs again. We thought we'd waved all that goodbye. But, you know, here we are. Speaking of Pinball Brothers, though. Yeah, you see, that's not a safe way. I've been working on this all month. Yeah, I believe that. Well, yes, Predator Sales, the current game from Pinball Brothers, the latest game, I should say, is definitely, sales are definitely ending on the 31st of March, 2036, they say. Definitely. Yes. Definitely. I thought they said they were definitely ending at the 31st of December. Yes, that's right. I thought that definitely. Maybe this is the sell-off period, where they have three months to sell them off. That means that, I'm not sure if that means that the distributors with stock can't sell them, or... No, probably not. Probably means that they have a sell-off period of three months, so they would not be allowed to manufacture them in 2026. But Primal Brothers themselves have a sell-off period the way I read it, of three months. So all the games that they have in stock are still allowed to be sold either to individuals who buy them directly, if possible, or distributors who buy them from Pinball Brothers. After that, I think a distributor can sell the game whenever he wants. Right, because most of their sales will be through distributors. I assume that even Pinball Brothers USA is treated as a distributor in that regard. So they could send plenty of machines over to them and sell them through that outlet forever. And they don't sell directly to the European market, I don't think, either. if you go to buy a game on the Pimple Brothers website it takes you to freepay.se yeah which is still a company on the web then and it's not Pimple Brothers so it's a distributor so they should be able to sell them so I'm not sure exactly who's not going to be able to sell them after the 31st of March but for contractual purposes pros and sales are definitely ending the 31st of March 2026 so hurry yeah yeah okay right and in the meantime they've been doing lots of promotions of Predator on their social medias lots of customer appreciation videos as well they've been sharing the impression you're certainly getting is that Predator's a not a sleeper as such but maybe underappreciated is actually what a fun game it is right we'll see I haven't played the latest version of the code so I don't know quite how you haven't played it at all the line was still on hopefully all the shows are this weekend looking forward to it I'm not sure whether I'll be running into the game this weekend but oh well I'll tell you all about it right okay so that's enough of Pinball Brothers for this month yeah well from Pinball Brothers it's just a small leap to Italy where we have Pedretti Gaming collaborating with Pimble Brothers in Europe, Pimble Corp, so related, or actually well, fairly involved. Interestingly, last month we reported that Pedretti started a collaboration with Arterio. Yeah, Arterio Games. Sam Zier, who we mentioned last month, former Capcom programmer and such. Pedretti now, well, this month, they started introducing new team members as if they were employees of Pedretti, sort of. And Sam Zier was the first to be introduced, followed by Jay Powell, who is a co-founder of Arterio Games, together with Sam Zierer. And they also introduced Frank, who turns out to be Frank Gigliotti, which is an Italian last name, and he has Italian roots, who we know as a programmer for Riot Pinball, who you may know from their Legend of Valhalla game that they licensed to American Pinball and before that The Wrath of Olympus which was a white body homebrew game, very impressive one a very good one too but too expensive to take into commercial production sadly because it wasn't really a cool game and And Frank has also worked in a distant past, so to speak, for Data East and later on Stern Pinball, where he has done animation, dot matrix animations I should say, for Tommy Transformers and Avatar. And obviously, yeah. yeah after that Riot Pinball of course and now he's a part of or team member of Pentrecci where he will be programming as well on the upcoming game there was no point in having him build cabinet so yeah they're in a hurry to do that already yeah so and interestingly well we talked about American Pinball licensing seven Bally Williams titles for upcoming re-imaginations of these titles. Obviously, as we already mentioned, Pedretti Gaming and also Chicago Gaming are also doing remakes of Bally Williams games. In the case of Pedretti, we're talking about Whirlwind, with an update kit and Funhaus 2.0 as a full game, although it started as a kit, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, that's right. It was a really tremendous nightmare, sorry. Yeah. Yes. So you might wonder how does that work, and I'm not sure whether I mentioned it, but I did reach out on Facebook to Planetary Pimble, who is the licensor, of course, of Bally Williams Games. They control that catalogue, so to speak. And I asked about whether the agreement with American Pinball would be inclusive one, or if it's affecting the relation that they have with Chicago Gaming and Patrici. And in a response, Planetary indicated that they well it turns out that the agreement with American Pimple is non-exclusive and they will continue working with Pedretti and Chicago OK agreements so so they're all working on a non-exclusive basis but they will have certain exclusivity when it comes to specific titles as the way it is. Yes, it makes no sense. Multiple companies working on the same title. No. So it does mean that obviously, like you mentioned earlier, about 50% of the Bally Williams titles were licensed intellectual property based on either a movie or a character or a comic book or what have you. and the other remaining games were sort of original titles I think Theater of Magic or Whitewater not related to a movie or anything else these will, seems to me, will be the titles that are most interesting to remake in the sense that it doesn't require that many licensing efforts in the sense that you don't have to talk to a movie studio or actors that have been involved and may no longer be alive or something like that so you have to talk with an estate and they might have a different point of view and yada yada yada yes you actually reminded me I went to American Pinball and obviously back in time when Dennis Norton was working there and got the chance to see I was there as well and you got a chance to see what he was working on which was a effectively a follow up to Whitewater so that would be a real imagining I guess of Whitewater, it could be Whitewater 2 no no that would be a different game well it could use the same title Whitewater 2 I mean that wasn't the title that he had for it but no it could be marketed in that way. Right. But then you would just have to license the title Whitewater, the name Whitewater. Well, you could say it's been reimagined into this game. Right. Maybe that's what some of the reimagining is going to be. Actually reimagining the playfield. I would think that I would probably think that the playfield would more or less stay the same. But you never know. It could be a mix, couldn't it? Some could just re-imagine the software and add an LCD and RGB lighting throughout, and others could be totally re-imagined. Anyway, we're speculating. Well, if we're speculating on that subject, and this is the speculation mode on, Let's say American Pinball, while we're talking about progression, but let's say American Pinball is aiming to re-imagine Whitewater. If they would do that, and it would be one of their first games, then it would make sense to ask Dennis Nordman to finish the Whitewater 2 game. Because all the customers that you just saw the Whitewater game to are now also in the market for the sequel, so to speak. Yeah, that's right. So, here's some free marketing advice to Brian Vincent. Although I don't think he needs it. But it might be interesting to, or worthwhile to see if you can get Dennis Morton back on board. Yeah. Okay, speculation mode off. Thank you. Let's get on. Well, we can do that because the next few companies don't want any news for anyway. Turner Pinball, also in Texas, we were talking about earlier. No news from them. They're just making and streaming Merlin's arcade game. You can watch a live stream of it every Wednesday night through their Facebook page. no news about any subsequent titles coming up although with Texas Pinball Festival only what what is it six, seven weeks away yeah oh wow you might be finding a new game yeah fast, not that fast ok we mentioned Chicago Gaming earlier We've just dropped in the fact that we've got absolutely no news from them at all this month. Lots of rumours about what they might be working on. A few hints and tips given in various places. A few Easter eggs if you look carefully. But no actual announcements from them. And this was after last month where they were taking orders into 26Q3 and maybe even Q4. I can't quite remember exactly how long ago. let me have a good look then we're looking talking about oh yeah MMR manual mag three makes yeah and and RGB kits and oh yeah and Merlin editions as well coming in Q2 this year yeah but no no more news since then yeah but oh well we'll just have to wait Last year they were at the Texas show So that was what they might be bringing this year If they are going anyway We did have some news from Wonderland Amusements Remember them? They're producing the 80% size version of Alice Goes to Wonderland And they are like I was talking about Multimorphic earlier they are experiencing some delays in production of their games but they do say containers were picked up earlier this week and this was this week or in fact it was last week and are now staged at the port awaiting departure in a few days they will be sent to distribution centres across the US they say they wish this had happened months ago, I bet they did but they're relieved to finally say machines are on their way to the US because they're US only purchases you might remember the first container is estimated to arrive February the 11th so over a week's time with the second one 12 days later on the 23rd is there any coincidence that the 11th of February happens to be Stern Media Day for I don't think so I don't think that's going to interrupt Stern's plans they say once the containers land they need one to two weeks to get cleared, unpacked, labelled and handed off to local delivery couriers so maybe by the first batch maybe by the end of the month those will be arriving at people's homes no idea how many are in the first container, I have to say but they're relatively small boxes the way they pack them, so there should be quite a few so if you're in on that Kickstarter and these are the first games to go then you should be getting your machines this month so in which case good luck well well transport inside US also takes time so it might be March well by then there might be some more charities to play but yeah anyway enough of that yes that's news from Wonderland Amusements in January right ok so then heading back to Europe Hexa Pinball in France have announced the shows that they will be attending in well this year basically 2026 which will be Pinball at the Beach the Hexa Pinball Festival where we expect to see the premiere of the three must-see shows. They are announced, upcoming title. They will be at the German Pinball Expo, the Austrian Pinball Festival, where you will be going as well. And I already have a DJ booking that weekend, so I won't. UK Pinfest in August, which I would be nice to go again. Pinball Expo, Festival Retro Play in France it is, and the Dutch Pimble Open Expo. Surprise to my surprise, but not sure whether I read it correctly, but there's only one French show in there. Yeah. So far. They used to attend more shows. Yeah, those are the ones they've confirmed so far. Maybe the dates for some of the other shows haven't been announced just yet. There will probably be some others. I think it'd be the trade point for one, wouldn't you? Unless it coincides with another date Yeah, they're going to six of the same shows that I'm going to which makes me wonder whether they're stalking them They want your attention I'll get the hint guys So the first show will still be Space Hunt and then after that I guess it will be Three Musketeers all the way well yeah or both or that Renault game yeah which is Space Hunt yes that's right yeah less attractive I haven't seen any there's also a Louis Vuitton is there oh I bet that's pretty smart yeah I have to get pictures of that. Yeah, with the leather, what I understood... Nine cabinets, yeah. So it has... Yes. So it has that Louis Vuitton, that typical Louis Vuitton look. Yes, okay. Well, they're making good use of the Aerospace Hunt game. Yeah. Right, moving on then. We have a whole bunch of companies where there is basically no news. Absolutely no news. Yeah. So, and we're going to make it very quick. So, Vector Pimble in Australia. Nothing. Home being in Taiwan. Zilch. Pimble Adventures in Canada. I'm not even sure why we're still listening. Well, old times' sake. I mean, sentimental, I would say. Okay. So Rams Pimble in USA No news but they might be Last seen At Pimble at the beach last year So who knows what happens They're not mentioned in any of the pre-show Publicity up until now They're not listed as a vendor So I don't know but Always open to surprises Yeah So Bittronic in Spain Also Nien Although that I would Cardona pinball Cardona pinball in the US No news either Any new remakes or Upgrade kits or whatever you want to Call them FDR pinball in Spain, nothing They are supposed to be Working on a game that has been announced Three years ago and since then it's been Completely quiet Quetzal pinball in Spain I know they are working on it, but I can't talk about it. And then there is other news, because we still have an interview for you. Yeah. And we are already running late. We're always running late. It's just like talking to Gary's job. But, yeah, okay, so on to the other news. And, well, Classic Playfield Reproductions have announced the retirement of one of their co-founders. Along with that, they are having a move to smaller premises. and how holding a back-to-the-basement type sale of surplus stock is now running through their website at classicplayfields.com. But to find out more about this all and what it's all about, let's speak to the other co-founder and the new president of the company. That's Kevin Waite. Oh, thanks for having me, fellas. Okay. Well, as we've spoken about before, there's a few changes taking place at Classic Playfield Reproductions. First of all, the co-founder of the company, Mike Purcell, who is, as I understand, also an Air Canada pilot in his full-time job, is retiring from that role and also retiring from Classic Playfield Reproductions as the president. so he and Kevin were the two founders of it back in about 2005 I think that's right isn't it Kevin? Correct Yeah, yes Okay, and all that time you've been based up in Halifax in Nova Scotia is that where you were both from originally or did you have to move from there or was it just part of the Halifax pinball scene? No, this is where we always lived So we just started it basically in our basements and backyards at the time. Okay. So what kind of got you into doing reproductions of playfields initially and then other products later? Well, it was kind of the initial demand, I guess. The hobby was sort of bereft of any reproduction playfield making. I know Illinois pinball Gene Cunningham dipped his toe into it a bit and ran some what, Kiss playfields way back in 2002 or 2003 from some of the original films that he had, and they were silkscreened. I could be wrong. It might have been Adam's family even as well. Yes, I remember those. So much time has passed. My memory gets foggy, but that was kind of the only playfields that people saw, and they were so amazing to have at the time because there just weren't any alternatives unless people could find NOS to swap into their games to replace their worn playfields. So there was just kind of a need there that Mike saw, and he dipped his toe into it, like you said in your article, with Greg Walker and made Halifax Pinball, and again, sort of a basement operation, working in their sheds and garages and basements, and did that initial run with Gene Cunningham's help for that initial Fathom playfield run. and then when that was completed and kind of dusted off and everything was shipped Mike sort of restarted with me and then we went after Gene to do Center and then we kind of just went from there that was 2005 Yeah, it's very hard for some people I think to imagine how pimple scene was back then because getting reproduction of any artwork product was virtually unheard of and it was very very difficult and a real specialist skill, I think. And it still is, of course, but these days there are a lot more people producing reproduction playfields. So back then, when a new project was launched, there was a huge rush for demand on those, wasn't there? So when you announced that you were going to produce a playfield and it was now available, the orders would come flooding in. And that's what made it worth it, wasn't it? Yeah, it was worth the work at the time. You could count on 100, 200, maybe even 300 customers or orders to justify cutting and gluing and printing and silkscreening all those boards and putting them through clear coat. When it was such a small operation and it would take months and, you know, I think our first year of what just sent our, it took the whole year to get those 300 made or so for Gene at the time. Yeah. Yeah. But what's changed then in the interim that's resulted in you scaling back and a number of sales decreasing, as you described in the article? Yeah, if we suddenly fast forward, you know, from 2005 to today, if you span all those years, there's been a notable fulfillment, I guess, of all the titles, like all of the people that wanted or needed a swap. and bought a reproduction play field are pretty much served. Because as every game gets dealt with and a swap is performed and a restoration is completed, that game is now off the table. So, like I said, rinse and repeat that across 21 years and all of those initial titles that we started with back in 2005 and then 2007, 2010, like all through the years, there's barely anyone coming back to the trough for those titles anymore. So you might sell, you know, in the last few years, the titles that have been around so long might only sell three to five a year. And then you get into just the hobby changing a bit with more of a younger crowd and all us old farts kind of going off. And our collections have been around a long time. The new blood coming into the hobby, those that are in their 20s and 30s and even early 40s that are getting into pinball now, they're being dazzled by the new in-box, all the wonderful manufacturers that have sprung up over the last decade making wonderful games. And reproduction, the old stuff, is kind of taking a back seat to that. I think it's just a natural direction of the hobby. And therefore, even when we release a brand new play field, like say last year in 2025, you had quoted me in the article as saying, and it's true, that we can have a debut play field that's never been reproduced in the hobby ever, and we'll launch it, we'll have 20 pieces on hand, and then at launch in that first month it'll sell six, and then it'll go dead quiet. That's kind of the trend now. It's just so different from years ago. It just doesn't have the oomph that it used to have. So we've really got to play our cards close to our chest for run lengths and planning and just see where the chips fall when we release something. Is part of that because you've kind of done all the A-list titles now and then you're moving into B- and C-list titles, which people are less keen to spend money to fully restore back to a pristine condition? Yes. That's a smart observation. Yes, there's that element as well because, you know, all the low-hanging fruit was kind of dealt with 5, 10, 15 years ago because those were the higher priority titles to get completed. And the stuff that's coming out now is sort of, yeah, I wouldn't call it the scraps, but, you know, C&D titles. So there isn't even going to be an expectation there based on demand or popularity of the machine for needing to buy them either. So you kind of have a double-edged whammy there. well it sort of makes sense I mean with all the respect there's probably not much demand for a hard body play field first of all because the game isn't that popular but as a result of the game not being popular they weren't played that much so the original playfields are also still in quite reasonable condition compared to games that have been played so much that they've been completely worn out correct years yeah so it worked from both ways absolutely true yeah and one of the things which we noticed over the years of course and it's throughout the hobby is the rise in prices and the rise in price of commodities as well so things like wood and inks and of course start as well and now at the peak of your production you were you said you were employing 12 people at CPR, 12 full-time people and a couple of part-time people as well. And there were some floaters. Yeah. Now you're having to scale back your operation and cut the number of staff. So has that already happened, and how did that process take place? yes that's already happened from september through till now um it was actually quite early i think we were all dusted up with the layoffs probably by the end of november and we were in the direction where we were preparing for um where we're headed now so it was um you know it was unfortunate you never want to let family go and everyone within the building was kind of family in a way it wasn't a normal workplace. It was cool, right? It was everyone had their hearts in it and really enjoyed the whole surroundings and the stuff that we're making, right? So it was a cool shop to work at. And not everyone on staff, probably 75% of the people, weren't even pinball people who ever owned a machine or even played one in their life. I mean, they got used to at some of our staff parties that would be held either at my place or at a pinball arcade downtown or Mike's place. They got used to what pinball machines were, but they were hired on for their skill set of what function they were going to be doing. And it's a lot of making playfields and making all of this stuff is a lot of grunt work. And it's not always elegant or spectacular, but when you have to stand at a table and glue inserts for eight hours a day, It just becomes purely that function, right? So of the staff we had to let go and pare things back, it was all of the extra staff, like you said, for the expansion that we did that we started in 2023 to try our dip our toe into doing contract or bulk or wholesale manufacturing of playfields, whatever you want to call it, for the pinball factories that make games, like Barrels of Fun and Pinball Brothers of Pedretti Pinball over in Italy, that's where we dipped our toe in to see if we could maybe get on board with the new direction of the hobby, which is new games. So that was the difference there. We tried that experiment. Of course, we've been talking mainly about playfields, but of course, your product range is much more than that now. You may have started off as classic playfield reproductions, but of course now you're doing black glasses, plastic sets, and then you expand into a range of other products as well. Yes. How much of your business now is Playfields and how much of it is, well, yeah, how much of it is Playfields and how much of it is other products? Well, I mean, Playfields are the backbone of the place. Let's be honest. That's the whole thing that drives it. Glasses and plastics are kind of like needed accessories to kind of go along with it because if you're going to get a Playfield and, you know, that usually means that a swap is going to happen, there's a restoration happening there of a game. And if there's a shedding back glass and there's old yellowed or cracked plastics, you're not going to reuse those when you swap your playfield. Usually, 95% of the time, there's a vision of the customer who's going to buy the playfield for a swap. There's a game restoration in play. And having the glasses and plastics to go along with it to match is almost a given. So they're usually buying them at what we call trilogies. So they buy the playfield plastic set and back glasses like a group, and that ships to them as a whole kit in their order. And that's pretty much how it's gone down. That's why it's been important to have glasses and plastic sets alongside of everything as well. But the playfields are what are propping up the business. If we just went glasses and plastics, we'd be out of business. Okay. It just seemed to me that the glasses that you produce, they are things which anybody can replace very easily. You take out the old one, put the new one in. It could be a nicely mirrored one, for instance, or it could just be a much better quality one with less flaking and damage than the existing one. And that's a five-minute swap, whereas doing a full playfield swap can be a significant investment in time and effort. So I was browsing your site earlier, and we'll come back to that in a few minutes, about what people can find on there if they haven't already visited. And I was looking at the glasses, and I'm going, oh, that's a really nice one. I could get a mirrored glass for my game, and that would be a really simple thing for me to change. Actually, the play field is probably fine, but it's an upgrade to me. and the plastics as well. It could be as well. But it is interesting to see that Playfield is still the bread and butter of your business. So, yeah, it is the bread and butter. You are correct about the plastics and glasses being quick grabs. Like don get me wrong there are orders or customers that just order a glass And you know they want you know say they own Adam family and they been looking at their Translite all these years and they think well it would be a nice upgrade to go to a real tempered back glass with mirror added to it and kind of pimp their machine up. And it is an easy install. Once it comes out of the box, they can put their trim on it and then just lift the old Translite out of the backbox, put the back glass in, boom, you're done in 60 seconds, and it's that little enhancement you've added to your game. So, yeah, there are individual orders for just plastic sets because, again, you slide out your glass, unscrew all the posts, and put your new plastic set on, and then slide the glass back in. No playfield swapping, wiring looms, mechanicals involved. So they are quick swaps. You're correct. You mentioned in 2023 you started to do contract manufacturing for other companies. that you already mentioned. Was that a point where you could all already have experience with the slide in demand, the tapering off of demand for playfields and looking for ways to broaden the business and keep the volume, well, increase the volume properly, even if it meant slimmer margins? Yeah, it was kind of to test a second revenue stream of sorts, I guess. Yeah, the writing was kind of already on the wall back then of the direction, because we can look at our stats, just the website itself can spit out, you know, statistics of what each year produces, or sorry, I guess produces or collects for sales off the website. and then you could see, well, X amount of playfields in 2020, X amount in 2021, 2022, 2023, and you could see the number dropping. Even though we were doing new releases and adding to the mix, and like I described previously, those weren't attracting the attention that previous runs did. So it was kind of like this slow crawl of diminishing returns of attention and sales and so on. So we had to make some decisions, and then Mike and I decided we were approached. Would you be interested in making playfields for our factory? Of course, the first one was barrels of fun. And we seriously considered it, and obviously we went for it, and decided to expand and invest in all new lines of equipment, adding five, six, seven more staff to run that line. And we kind of considered it parallel or separate from the reproduction line. And then all of that equipment and those people could run separate and not disturb the reproduction business and just run it that way, kind of parallel to each other in the building. So that's how we did it at the time. And that's where we went with it. Right. Without wishing to get too much into the business and contractual aspects of it, Why did that stop? Why are you not making those anymore? Well, we ended up, once we were finished, say, for example, with Barrels of Fun and the Labyrinth Project, they went onward and they've got their own, I can't give too much details of Dave and Dan S.'s plans, but he has some directional plans within his own building and factory that we just, I'll just say, we just weren't needed anymore. And then we've hung in there, like Pinball Brothers over in Italy, We went through the, I guess, the Funhouse remake, the Rudy 2.0, whatever it was called, and we're making those two versions. There was the modern artwork and the classic artwork, and we supplied them with all those, and we've hung in there with them. They're still kind of ongoing because they've got projects now. Obviously, Predator is in play, and they've got some future plans. We don't need, with where we're headed and with the shrinkage of the company, we're going to kind of keep riding with them but again it's tapering off so to speak these aren't as demanding to produce or whatever and and that kind of went with it so we're going to basically back ourselves into a an amount of base equipment and and setup especially after the move that will be enough for um kind of tapering that off and sticking with uh with with bringing those runs or contracts to an end, and then producing all the reproduction stuff and reruns and little rebadges that we need into the future. So we're slimming it all down. Okay. You mentioned the move. You're currently in a sort of factory unit then. And where are you moving to? well we're in like sort of a your typical uh business park commercial unit um in the halifax uh business park and and we're moving to a a building of of our own basically um that will um it'll be smaller but we won't have a landlord we're going to kind of structure where we have i guess it's the next logical step for the for business after 21 years where you kind of own your own building. And we're going to kind of make that step an investment. So we'll be shrunken down, but we'll also kind of be paying for it all up front and I guess kind of kiss rent goodbye, which is nice. And we'll kind of use it for the next many years. I'm hoping that under my purview, we'll be going another three, five, seven, 10 years. We'll see. I've got my retirement, in my plans for my future, of course, but that's sort of the new direction that we'll be going, where we'll be, I guess, like I said, a logical step into our own building. So that's the plan. Right. Okay. Now, you've been at Classic Playfields Reproductions in business since 2005. You're scaling down. I'm curious from the top of your head can you name some of your best sellers that people might not even be aware that is available playfields for game X or Y or Z that you were like that was absolutely a playfield that we made so many of basically the question What are your best sellers? Well, the first one is an easy answer. No, no, that's a great question. It's an easy answer. It's Centaur. Centaur has been an ongoing, I wouldn't want to call it a joke, but almost a meme within the business since 2005 and starting with it with Gene. We have rerun that damn thing so many times that I think the last count, and Mike and I chuckle about this all the time, we probably over the last 21 years have made rerun and sold upwards of 3,000 Centaur playfields which when you look at the population of the game I'd have to go on the internet pinball database and check, I don't know can you check for me how many games were produced because then you have to balance that number with how many are surviving today because many got destroyed and were thrown out by operators. So, I guess speaking about a surviving population of that game, we just found that number to be ridiculous. And we don't know where they all went, if they're hanging on walls or stuck in people's closets, but we just thought that was outrageous. That was the highest demand play through we ever did. Hands down. Yeah, that's like three times the next best, which would be Adam's family. Right. And I have close... Sorry, go ahead. Centaur up in the meantime. So there's Centaur and Centaur 2, but the playfields are identical, of course. There's a 3,700 production run of the first Centaur and 1,550 of Centaur 2. Right. Isn't that crazy? So small. That's why it's far from us. Right. That's amazing. Well, it's a very high percentage indeed, yes. Okay, so across all the years that you've been making that, has the technology for making these playfields remained the same? The last run of Centaur playfields that you made, were they Marc Silk-screened in the same way that the first set of Centaur playfields would have been? They were. Centaur we stuck with Marc Silk-screening to the present day because it's a three-color playfield, and we don't have to get into 10, 12, 16-color layouts. like most of the other playfields would require and did back in the Marc Silk screen days. If you just think about it from a practical standpoint, if you think about old school Marc Silk screening, every color went down one at a time and stacked on top of the next. So it's like a deck of cards stacking up. So you start with a blank white wood. White goes down first as the white layer. Then your next darker color goes down, which we'll say is yellow. And then the next darker color, say orange. and you just keep going, going, going until you have a stack of all your primary spot colors, which we'll say is 10, and then the 11th color is the black line or the key line that sits on top and seals it all together like a comic book. When you're doing runs of Marc Silk screening, you're doing 100 plus all on racks, sitting next to a wet running press, and you're feeding them one at a time through. Then they have to dry. We used to have oven drying at one point, but we ended up finding that the heat was stressful on the wood. We started air drying. So that meant with eight hours of the enamel sitting out in open air, you could do one color a day. So if you had a 10-color play field, that's two weeks to print them all, Monday to Friday, Monday to Friday. So there's your 10 days, 10 colors go down, and then you have your batch of playfields. So it took over the shop. Marc Silk screening was very demanding, but most of it was ink drying time. They're just sitting around. and that's how we ended up going digital so you could go one at a time, full color, multi-layer, all coming off the press in one shot. And Centaur, we kept a silkscreen because you're done in three days. On a slightly nerdy point, those silkscreens don't last forever. Did you have to make more silkscreens or would those originals last for the full 3,000 that you've made? No, we make them fresh every time. I noticed Gene Cunningham back in the day. I don't know why I remember this, but I remember pictures. I think it's when we went down and visited him in 2005 to see his facilities, make the handshake deal and fly home with the Centaur films on the plane. I remember he had screens leaning against a wall for it might have been the Kiss playfield it might have been Adam's family I forget but they were cleaned screens that came from the print shop that he used and he took the screens back from them and I guess they were just sitting poised and ready and cleaned and ready for another run someday but he kept the screens now if you're a Marc Silk screener you know that's not what you do with your screens you don't make a screen and shelve it. I mean, I guess unless you're going to use it over and over and over again, and that's in your future. But screens are recoverable, and what you do is you strip them back to their original clean mesh, and then you can recoat them and open new images in them at any time. So we have, you know, dozens, probably there's different sizes of frames, but we probably have a hundred screen frames of all different sizes in sets, and there's a playfield size, a back glass size, and a plastic set size. And sometimes we have multiple sets of each, and you try to have enough to do up to 15 colors in each set. So all these, they look like big drum heads, a big aluminum hard solid frame with a really tightly stretched silkscreen mesh on it. That's why they call them silkscreens, because it's almost like a hard Marc Silk. And you coat them in open images under them. You bake images onto them with a high-intensity UV bulb, and you expose them. you go rinse them, and then all of the openings fall out. It's a really old-school process, but it's recoverable. You keep using your frames over and over again. So every time we went to silkscreen a playfield, it was always freshly opened frames, every single time. And, of course, the technology has changed, as I was saying earlier, but now nearly all your work, I think nearly all of it, is digitally printed. are you now able to produce equally vivid and dense colors using digital printing as you used to be able to do with screens yeah we fought the digital kind of concept till our last breath and i was most of that was my fault because i was a stickler for it i i wouldn't i had my fingernails dug into Marc Silk screening right to the bitter end because I was a purist. Until we ended up, we kind of had to really start going out and looking at some of this equipment and, you know, dealing with dealers and salespeople for this gear of all the different brands and so on, getting samples done. I really had to wrap my head around making them do some real good samples for me and see what the tech could do. So by the time we were doing this shopping, I guess, to consider digital and me fighting it all the way. In 2018-ish, 2017-2018-ish, it ended up, it finally impressed me, and I had kind of this light bulb moment where, if it can emulate spot colors this good, I think we can take the plunge. So we did, obviously. But it's done well. The tech can really emulate solid, like, bucket hand-mixed inks for Marc Silk screening, except in a few different tones. Flesh tone is usually a sore spot. If you look at flesh tone on a digital print really closely to get that tone, it's a mix of you know a six color process on our press it's a mix of tiny little flecks or dots that you can kind of see up close and other there's other colors that show that but most of them don't and it looks as solid as a hand mix ink and that's great the only thing where Marc Silk screening really holds on and it does still to this day is the fluorescence the fluorescence you cannot do in digital There's just no way around it. So fluorescent green, fluorescent pink, sometimes people call them day glow or hot pink or hot green. Those colors have to come out of a true silkscreen ink. So we ended up having to create a process to, if those reproduction playfields use those colors, we have to do kind of a hybrid process where the playfields have to make a trip. They get some layers on the digital. They have to make a trip to the silkscreen press to get one or two hot colors put down, the fluorescence. Then they go back to the digital to finish everything up on top, and then you've got all your layers done with the fluorescence tucked right in the middle. Right. Thanks for explaining the process. I think that's interesting. Now, as I said, you expanded the product range as well beyond playfields, and you ended up doing some other things. structures, toppers, and additional plastic sets. And I can't think what else you had there. Speeders, yes, exactly. But now, with the scaling back of the scope of the business, you're just concentrating on the key playfield, back glasses and plastic sets. Is that right? Yeah, we're kind of going back to our roots. Look, we've tried to dabble in all sorts of little things to introduce things to the hobby to see how they go. Like, I can go way back to, this is almost a joke, but we had a thing that I tried. It was my brainchild. I'll take full responsibility for it. But back in the early days, and it was initialized by when we made the Black Knight playfields, we shipped them in boxes together where you had the lower playfield and the upper playfield, and they didn't, like, tuck into each other, So you had to have them double stacked on top of each other. So in order for them not to rub, we decided, well, the smaller upper playfield needs to be wrapped in something that's protective to put it inside the playfield box, our normal shipping box. So how do we do that? Well, we came up with the idea of slipping the upper playfield into a nice, soft, you know, true cotton T-shirt, you know. and we decided to make a run of, you know, CPR or Black Knight t-shirts at the time to commemorate the run, sort of a little bonus gift. So everyone who bought a Black Knight playfield got a t-shirt in their box with their upper playfield in it. So after that, this is the initial story that planted the seed in my brain, we got into t-shirts for a little bit to go with some of the playfields. When we did Xenon next, we did a little run of CPR Xenon t-shirts just for fun and slip them into boxes as a little bonus item. But then I came up with this little brainchild of, we ended up calling it CPR Fashions, which was a clothing line of Marc Silk screen T-shirts of just pinball stuff. And we tried a few initial designs. I think we started with three, four, maybe five garments. They had pop bumpers on them, just general pinball T-shirts. And we offered them up on our website. well let me tell you um after buying we had our own in-house t-shirts Marc Silk screen carousels garment dry like the ink dryers and all that stuff it crashed it burned it never went anywhere we might have sold a dozen shirts in total and uh so i mean that's that's kind of just a side story of just dipping our toe into trying like little side things just to see what might stick and going fast forward when we got into um trying these toppers from our cpr art director introduced us with a whole line of toppers that he came up with speaker skins and we were adding those through the the latter years here in the last what seven to ten years and trying those um they did okay i mean they weren't bar and burners um you know every month there'd be a handful of smattered across each going out the door and slipped into orders and stuff. They were good little side products to have. But with us looking at the move and limited space in the new site, some of the equipment and stuff that goes with that and, of course, stacking and stockpiling the materials for it and keeping it on hand so when orders come in they're ready to go and make, we're just going to let all those go so we don't keep supply of those anymore. and again, we're just going to go back to our roots, I guess, of the trilogies, the playfields, back glasses, and plastic sets, and just let kind of the bloke and the fluff go, and we really won't miss it. They did okay, like I said, but it was maybe a half a percent of revenue per month. You get what I'm saying? I mean, there are lots of other companies doing the same kind of job, producing toppers. Oh, lots of knickknacks. Whereas playfields and back glasses and even plastic sets to a degree are probably more specialized and rely on tighter quality control, the kind which CPR is well known for. So I don't think people would necessarily think of CPR when they were looking for a topper for their game. It might be surprising to me. Right, it was just kind of there. Yeah, it was there and it was convenient. people making an order for a playfield glass and plastic set, I'll throw the topper in too. Why not, right? It was a little thing that was just sitting there, tempting, and if they took it, they took it. If they didn't, they didn't. Okay, so let's talk about your sale, your back-to-the-basement sale, and what that actually means. Obviously, you're trying to reduce the amount of stock you're going to and different product lines that you're going to take to your smaller premises. So that launched today, the 1st of February. And how long does that run for? And what might people be looking out for across the month? It's going to run all month. So we're going to run it all the way to the 28th, give everyone a nice month window to snatch everything they want to snatch while the getting's good. The least amount of stuff we have to move to the new location, the better. Just as an anecdote, the playfield stock that we have, and you'll notice a lot of aggressive price cuts. You know, there's these playfields sitting around that have been sitting, right, for years even, where there's still 15, 20-plus left and, you know, selling one or two a year. Our idea is, of course, obviously, to blow them out the door, come get them because if this is more in your price budget and you've got a game you always wanted to swap and this is easier on your wallet, we welcome you. Come grab it now. We're happy to see it go because, again, these ones selling one, two a year, and if you get 20 on the shelf, it'll be 10 years to sell what we've got left. If we can get as many of those out the door and start kind of fresh from our new site and really have a look at what we need to remake and whatever. We're quite happy to let it go right now. So that's kind of the plan with the playfields. You'll notice plastics and glasses are not on sale because we make those on demand. So we have lots of raw glass here that's blank and lots of PETG in all of the different master sheet sizes ready for orders at any time. So there's no stock per se sitting here, but people are of course able to grab them with these discount playfields and they are doing that as we speak so there's really no urgency there there's no problem in moving those because we've just got pet g and blank glass and stuff to move and we just get that on demand from the glass and plastic suppliers anyway so there's no urgency there um you'll notice a new we call it the bargain corner it's kind of a clearance section we're adding to the site and we're probably going to keep that. It's not just for February, but its current function is to get rid of stuff that's been lingering around the shop. We've been pack rats for 21 years. We've got stuff in the back rooms and on racks and on shelves that we just couldn't bear to throw away because some of it's cool. And, you know, it's just instead of going to the dumpster, we've held on to reject prints and check-ins and blemish products and stuff, always thinking that maybe someday it'll find a home. You know what I mean? So you'll notice that section will be populating all month. It's getting bashed right now. People are grabbing stuff up really quickly. But there's, like, reject back glasses, misprints, things with blemishes or scratches on them, and on and on and on. Everyone is listed separately and has its individual pictures and descriptions. so people can go in and look at that section all month, and I'm going to be trying to stay on top of it. It takes a little bit of work because you've got to hunt stuff down in the shop, take it down, get it photographed, assign it a code, and get it in the system and up on the website. And we'll be doing that throughout the month in little waves. It won't be every day, but that'll be the plan. So as it's being snatched up, don't fret. There'll be other stuff coming right behind it. So who knows what you might find. It's like I say, there's stuff we haven't looked at in years that will be emerging. And we just want to get rid of it, right? So that's kind of the story behind that. I was looking at it just now, and basically anything is sold out in Bargain Corner except for two items. Oh, that's good. So it would be a shame if we do this interview and there's nothing left. But you will be adding more stock as and when you get to it. I just want folks not to fret. Like, don't worry, there's more coming, and I'm happy that this stuff is going to go into homes where, you know, they'll be able to put it up on their game room wall or maybe even put it in a game. Like, whatever their plans are for it, I'm not worried about, but I'm just happy that these things are finding homes. It's almost like having an animal shelter, and you want the cats and dogs to find good homes. That's kind of the gist of it, is just to finally get it out of here, because we just, we don't want to move it. There's not going to be the room to have all this stash. And now's the time. So that's the story behind it. Yeah. Okay. So aside from the bargain corner being very popular, well, the news got out today that you're, well, you're not closing down, but you're reducing your footprint, moving to a new location, and sticking to your, like you explained, playfields, plastics, and backplots. How's the response been on the news that you're sort of downsizing? I think people are just happy that we're still going to be around. This isn't doom and gloom. It's just a big, it's like changing gears on your vehicle. We just have to downshift in order to really have a future, at least under my purview, where going forward, I want to happily take this forward in a way that it will last and be around a long time. So, you know, I do have a retirement coming just like Mike. We are two different ages and Mike's in his retirement now. I still probably have a good eight to ten years in me. So that's sort of my vision, and I hope for the best, and the hobby will still sustain this all that time. I don't see why it couldn't under this new format, and that's why we're changing into that because it was for the sustainability of it that we looked at where the revenue has been and has headed, and it's like, God, if we can move into this model and that size with that amount of people and this amount of product and introduce this amount of new stuff every year, we can ride this train out for the next eight to ten years, I think, unless something severely changes in the hobby. But we have to do it. There's no getting around it. We can't stay big and bloated and, you know, in this giant business park unit that was built around a lot of the stuff that we've let go and on and on that we've already talked about. So I think the vibe, I hope, out there will be positive. I have seen some congratulations to Mike, and we all feel the same way. I mean, Mike will still be around and good buddy and watching us closely and will certainly be helping us out from the sidelines. But he has his own plan with his wife to truly retire and put their feet up and have a new phase for their life as well. So that's very important. And it's just mine is a ways away. so my greatest concern is to keep the ship afloat, prosperity, keep everyone happy, and keep these products alive and available in the hobby. It's just going to be under a different framework, and it won't be as aggressive. So people are going to have to have some patience where if something does sell out and we're going to start allowing, as we said in the press release, what's new here is going to be this cooling off period. Yeah, do you want to explain that? It means that, say, yeah, just to make it clear for everyone, this cooling off period means that, and this is different from the past, let's say, I'll just take an example, let's say eight ball deluxe playfields go sold out. The shelf goes empty. That never used to happen. We either had like 15 or 10 coming behind it quickly, like we saw the last one or two coming, and we were aggressively chasing that tail. so if it did hit sold out it was only for a matter of a week or two because they'd be coming out a clear coat a fresh match going right behind it um that's how we worked things we were aggressively allowing a shelf not to hit sold out the new way is going to be we will allow a play field we'll keep eight ball deluxe as the example we will allow that to hit sold out and then we're going to allow this cooling off period, meaning three, six, maybe eight months will go by, and then we'll consider a rebatch of another 10 or whatever. And we'll do that very mathematically based on sales rates that we can see in our system. It's easy to dump that kind of data from the website and so on. If 8Ball Deluxe sells five a year, well then, if that's the rate it was at, we'll consider maybe making a batch of five or seven to re-put it back in stock, but maybe six, eight months later. And then we'll have enough for another year or more, right? So it'll be simple mathematics, very logical, and there'll be these cooling off periods where those who are hunting for an eight ball deluxe flavor will just have to wait, but they'll come back and then there'll be another long period before they get sold out again. So it's just sort of a reduction in aggression, I guess. And we're just going to kind of play it by ear, very logical, and just not overextend ourselves. Does that make sense? I mean, when looking at demand, I'm guessing you won't be including sales from the current back-to-the-basement sale because I'm looking at 8-ball deluxe as you brought it up. It is sold out. It is out of stock, it says, on your website at the moment. so but presumably it sold quite a large number of those because the price has come down from $899 to $699 and that's the amount of demand and got those people who were on the fence about purchasing one to actually do it but presumably you can't capture what the demand is at that price so you know It's out of stock. There isn't a button that says put me on the list for that and let me know when it's available. Yes. There's a simple wait list or there's a button there. Like anyone who's signed in as a CPR site member, they can hit that button and it'll just send them emails that instantly tell them it's back in stock and it's auto-generated. The system does it all on its own. So very, very simple to do that. Yeah, they can certainly opt in for a wait list, and they'll be notified. So, yeah, if 8-Ball Deluxe is sold out now, that means, okay, there's an easy example from the story I just told. That will now go into its cooling period, quote-unquote. And let's say it's February now. it will become a consideration maybe by August, September to have another small rebatch done. And then on it goes. So perfect example. Right. So maybe a little bit off topic, but obviously you're moving to a smaller facility. You're having this bargain sale with the products that you're offering. But will you also be offering any machinery and stuff like that that you use to make all these products that we love so much? Well, not to the hobby, but locally amongst businesses here in Nova Scotia, yes. We have people kicking the tires on different gear and so on. Some of it's already gone. Some of it already is proposed and so on and is available. Yeah, all the industrial equipment will have homes, and, you know, it won't be there for the move. But yeah, that's how we're going to play that, where it just sort of moves out as different businesses around Halifax and throughout the province come truck it away, and it'll live on in a new building with a new purpose, and that's where the equipment's going to go. Okay. It's not like somebody was listening and thinking like, hmm, a t-shirt line. That might be something I'd be interested in producing myself. And they figure, like, let's reach out to get some Marc Silk streaming equipment from you. No point in reaching out, I suppose, because it's all gone already. The garment stuff? Hmm. Well, actually, if you're specifically asking about the garment silkscreening gear, that actually is still in storage. Now, we're not letting our silkscreen press go. No way, no how. The one we've had since the beginning has been a workhorse forever, and we love it. But I guess the carousel and the garment, the curing heater and all that stuff, that's still in storage. We haven't even tried that. I don't know. It's an older tech now because everyone, I guess, just like everything, even garment printing has gone digital. I don't know if you knew that, but websites like teespring.com and so on, if you notice, they have millions of T-shirt designs, but they don't have a million different millions of T-shirts in stock in all six sizes. They, and then, you know, dozens of colors. They wait for you to place an order on the website. And if you pick, say, a shirt with a pop bumper on it, and you like the adult XL size in gildan cotton in the color green, and that's your order and you pay for it and check out, well, that goes on their manufacturing list that day to take that blank shirt from stock. They just have to stock all the blank shirts and all the sizes and fashions. They grab that shirt. It goes to a digital garment press, and the design comes from their server, goes on it, and they make one shirt. One shirt goes in the package and then shipped to you. So they just wait for orders all day and make them as they come in. That's what garment printing is today. It's, I mean, 99% of it. Look, there's still Marc Silk screening around. there's a big garment Marc Silk screening business that's been around here for 40 years in Halifax that we're actually good buddies with and they still have their giant 10 color carousel that could put through a thousand shirts an hour it's incredible to watch it and there's different schools and things that still get true Marc Silk screen uniforms and shirts and stuff like that it happens but they've gone they have a whole digital division now as well because they have to keep up with the times. That's just the industry. Right. Okay. So on a, well, bargain corner related matter, you mentioned you will be adding more items throughout the month of February to the bargain corner. I've experienced, not you guys, but with another party where I would place an order and I call them the next and I'm like, hey, I'd like to add that, and they're like, it already shipped. Will it be possible for people to order an item from the bargain corner and ask you to hold it to see whether they will be adding up so it can all ship in one package, or is that too complex? Oh, wow, yeah, that would get really complex fast. You're basically discussing what we call layaways, where their order is done, paid for, but they're like, wait, don't ship it yet. You know, hold on to it. I might add things later. Yeah, we can't. We're just going to have to let this flow naturally. I wish that something that complicated could be executed on kind of a running basis. That would be a utopia. but I think people can understand the logistics of that is just going to be foolishness. If you want something, put it in the car checkout, and that's your order, and that's going to go into packaging and ship out as a unit or your order, and we can't, like, just, I guess, hold on to, like, hundreds of requested orders until something has to go, like, weeks from now that you may buy or may not. So we just can't. I'm sorry. It's a good question And on that slight subject Jonathan is obviously in the Netherlands, I'm in the UK all these products are available to be shipped worldwide are they? Yeah, if people are willing to pay the shipping, I know it's always unfortunate for the overseas folks, whether it's Europe, Australia, New Zealand, all the big pinball places that are overseas the Americans have it easy Unfortunately the UPS shipping rates, even with our huge discount, because all our posted rates are approximately 50% off the counter rates that you would get at, say, a UPS store, and they're still outrageous. So, yeah, if people overseas are kind of considering dipping their toe into taking advantage this month, I would say get some buddies together, maybe do a bulk shipment, because the more you get into the shipment, you don't have to pay for the trip all over again, and it's just kind of per pound or per kilogram. The UPS algorithm is weird, but it calculates the more you pile into it, and it gets, I guess, cheaper per weight the more you put into it. So if you're just going to order one plastic set today, and that's it, you know, it's going to be X amount to ship it to Europe. But if it was a playfield glass, five plastic sets, three bargain corner items, And the more you bulk into it and take advantage between yourself and maybe a couple friends, then that makes it much more economical, even though the shipping is still outrageous, I think, to get it all done. So that's what I'd advise. Right. And then just place it all in one order and not five different orders. Exactly, because you're ending up paying shipping all over again just because UPS Treats is a fresh shipment and a fresh trip, which it is. Right. Right. Well, I just wanted to ask one question, which I think you've probably already answered, in that it's been a bit of a roller coaster with CPR. You know, you started small. You expanded hugely around your product range and the business. And now you're scaling it back. Do you think, do you foresee any possibility that you will be able to grow the business again and maybe expand your premises and bring back some of the highlights of when CPR was at its peak? Well, I guess the hobby will dictate that. We have to treat it as a business, and we have to think of sustainability and longevity. If there are uptrends, I guess, in that direction, and we see it, I mean, we're going to follow that wave. I mean, we'd be stupid not to. But I don't know. I guess we don't know where it's all going to go. I mean, if you knew futures, I mean, you'd be an investment expert and ride. You'd make very well out for yourself if everyone had that foresight. But I guess we'll just have to see what the hobby behaves like, what the trends do. There's just so much new stuff coming, especially in the realm of the full machine manufacturers and stuff. It's extremely exciting, right? So who knows? I mean, my eyes will be open. We'll be watching the ground and how the feet pitter-patter and walk the path because we'll want to be right alongside it. So I'm not going to say no. I mean, I guess it'll just have to prove itself and become and materialize itself, I guess. We'll just have to see. Okay. Well, I haven't got any more questions. So, Jonathan Hess? No, I think we covered most of the stuff that I had in mind that we would be discussing. I guess all that's left is to point people to the website of Classic Playfields Reproductions, which is classicplayfields.com. And, well, they can have a look around, and who knows what you might find that you're like, I had no idea that was available. I'll order it right now. on the bargain corner, I guess, and other reductions across the whole of the month of February. So thank you for your time and explanation. Thank you very much, Kevin. We wish you the best with the new classic playfield reproductions in your new form and in your new home. We're looking forward to it. Okay, thanks very much, Kevin. Plenty of news from classic playfield reproductions and, of course, as we say, we wish you the best for the future. now, other news and who knows, there might be an update on that once they're all set up we're going to keep following the progress of the company we have a little bit of other news there was a large auction of pinball and other arcade game artwork taking place at Heritage Auctions which is online, they're both in Texas actually and but you can bid and can view the items and bid on them online. There's 140 items in total, including back glasses, cabinets, playfield artwork, concept art, some apparently good prices at the moment. Some of the things in there don't have any bids apparently, and seem to be like $1 currently, or $5, very low. But there are lots of extras to be added once you start bidding on any of this stuff. there's a buyer's premium of 25% of the successful bid, or a minimum of $49. So even if you buy something for like $1, it's going to cost you a lot more. And add on to that tax shipping, which is a minimum of $14.42 domestic. You see I've been researching this. So yeah, I watched out in the end, even a $1 item, if you buy it for that, it's going to cost you $70 by the time all these things are on. And that's just for one item. but you can bundle things together and save on shipping but that's about it everything else is going to be expensive but there's some interesting items there and certainly worth having a look there's some moulds in there as well for some of the parts that we've seen probably good stuff for Gerard at the Dutch Pinball Museum to acquire yeah so what I understood is all these items are actually coming from Planetary Pinball flies, who are, well, the well, responsible, they basically license the rights to anything Valley Williams related. And took ownership of a whole bunch of physical assets. Well, that's the part that I don't understand. If you license something, how can you take ownership? Because a license is for a certain period, and after that, the license expires, and you don't own it anymore, or you can't... Yeah, but also it brought all the assets from Gene Cunningham, didn't they, as well? Right, and this is probably stuff that probably... Which came from Williams and the first... Williams factory in the first place, and other companies as well, Capcom included. Yeah. Yeah, so... Oh, well, it's interesting. from a pinball historian point of view it is definitely interesting to see some early sketches and things for artwork for games in this concept surprisingly there is a lot of Benny Williams stuff but also Data East Sega items I believe there is even a place of sketch for Total Recall prototype and Playboy artwork for the Data East version of Playboy. Yeah. So, very interesting, worthwhile to take a look. The link is ha.com That's the main website and then you just look for pinball stuff. Yes. That will take you to the proper pages. And even if the auction has already ended, it's still interesting to just take a look at the photos. They have been well documented. I mean, even the molds, I think, of each mold, there's at least three photos in different angles, so you get to see all angles of such molds, so you know what you're getting into. So, we look forward to seeing how that pans out. other news well there was only we mentioned before about pinball at the beach taking place this weekend St Pete's in Florida as I said I'm going Jonathan hopefully can't make it the ladies are invited for DJ bookings in three days so yes I have to make a living I think I know where I'd rather be but well you haven't played me you haven't played me that's why I said it Anyway It's a full report On Pinball News And of course We're reporting about Next month's Pincast And on that note We will be back Jonathan and I Will both be back At the start Barring any G-Day bookings But back at the start Of March With our next Pincast Looking back at all The exciting events In the pinball industry throughout this month of February. So, until then... Which include Pimble at the Beach and, of course, a new cornerstone revealed by Stern Pimble. So, something to look forward to. Yep, so... Oh, well, yes, or will it? That's the question. Yeah. Licensing, licensor pending approval. Yes. So, anyway, until the start of next month, the start of March, when we're back, that's it from me, Martin Ayer, with Pimble News. and me Jonathan Yosten of Pinball and we hope you have a fabulous February and look forward to seeing you again at the start of the next month for the next edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast bye for now bye bye