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The Pinball Show Ep 119: Big Gifts, Big Prizes, & Big Stern Production Updates

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 25m·analyzed·Dec 19, 2022
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TL;DR

Stern announces 2024 production roadmap: Bond/Godzilla/Elvira with price increases; shipping damage plagues LE deliveries.

Summary

The Pinball Show discusses Christmas gift exchanges within the pinball community, shipping damage issues with recent pinball releases, and major Stern Pinball production updates for early 2024. Key announcements include January price increases across all Stern titles, James Bond 007 Premium/Pro production in January, Godzilla Premium production in February, and Elvira Premium returning to production in February/March at $10,499 MSRP.

Key Claims

  • Stern Pinball is increasing MSRP on all Pro models to $6,999 and all Premium models to $9,699 effective January 1st, 2024

    high confidence · Zach Manny citing dealer communication from Stern Pinball regarding January 1st pricing implementation

  • James Bond 007 Premium production will run mid to late January 2024, with possible James Bond 60th Anniversary limited edition production also planned for January

    high confidence · Zach Manny discussing Stern production schedule and prior official communications about 60th anniversary timing

  • Godzilla Premium production is scheduled for February 2024 with large volume, but still insufficient to clear existing back orders

    high confidence · Zach Manny reporting dealer/Stern communications about February production run and backlog status

  • Elvira Premium is returning to production line in late February/early March 2024 at $10,499 MSRP

    high confidence · Zach Manny citing official Stern pricing and production schedule communication to dealers

  • Multiple James Bond 007 LE units have been damaged in FedEx Freight shipping during the holiday season, with three separate damage incidents reported by Flippin' Out Pinball in Ohio and Florida

    high confidence · Zach Manny recounting personal shipping incidents with specific damage descriptions (glass breakage, cabinet corner damage, facade damage)

  • FedEx holiday shipping negligence is routine and documented, with carriers more likely to damage shipments during peak season

    medium confidence · Zach's shipping broker advised that FedEx damage claims fail regardless of insurance, attributed to seasonal volume handling

  • Stern Pinball typically halts production for two weeks in early January for reorganization and facility maintenance

    high confidence · Zach Manny confirming standard annual Stern practice of January shutdown

  • Godzilla Premium secondary market prices remain strong at $9,000-$10,000 for new in-box units despite price increases

Notable Quotes

  • “This time of year is always heavy. They get into a hurry right now. They don't care about dropping things. They don't care about shoving things, stuffing things in, stacking things when they're not supposed to. This time of year is always notoriously bad for that.”

    Zach Manny's shipping broker (paraphrased) @ Early episode discussion — Explains systematic shipping damage during holiday season; reveals industry-wide carrier negligence pattern

  • “You're going to spend thousands of dollars. I'll be spending thousands this Christmas for James Bond. Why? It's bad enough that we were shipping free of charge for LEs.”

    Dennis Creasel @ Mid-episode shipping discussion — Questions Flippin' Out's unsustainable free shipping policy on high-value LE units; hints at future policy change

  • “Your shipping broker was like, it's FedEx. You're not going to win. You're going to have to pay for that.”

    Zach Manny @ Shipping damage segment — Reveals expectation that FedEx freight claims fail systematically; implies industry acceptance of carrier negligence

  • “It's a top of the charts by a lot of people, and this is of all time. I'm not the type of person that's going to say, oh, people are just in their honeymoon. They're over. I do think it's one of the greatest games ever made.”

    Zach Manny (on Godzilla Premium demand) @ Production discussion — Strong affirmation of Godzilla's staying power despite price increases; predicts multi-year demand

  • “Come January 1st, remember that new pricing goes into effect... every other pro and premium is going to match that pricing. So January 1st comes, all your pros are now MSRP $6,999, all your premiums MSRP $9,699 US.”

    Zach Manny @ Stern production update segment — Official announcement of across-the-board Stern pricing increases effective immediately; affects all pending orders

  • “The new price is $10,499. So it's not astronomical like I thought they could have done. If they really don't want to make these things and they wanted to thin the herd, then maybe you go $12,000 on it, $1,000 below your LEs.”

    Dennis Creasel — Interprets pricing as manufacturer signal to manage demand; hints at pricing strategy ceiling for specialty premiums

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyZach MannypersonDennis CreaselpersonFlippin' Out PinballcompanyFedEx FreightcompanyJames Bond 007gameGodzilla PremiumgameElvira PremiumgameTonyperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Flippin' Out Pinball considering ending free shipping policy on LE units due to unsustainable costs and damage liability; policy change foreshadowed as 'coming change'

    medium · Zach Manny stating 'it may change in the future here for flipping out pinball' in response to free shipping cost/damage burden

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinside Secret Santa and broader community gift-giving: premium machines (Toy Story 4 CE, Rush Pro, RED camera) distributed to community figures and content creators

    medium · Zach Manny and Dennis receiving significant gifts; Toy Story 4 CE given to Les Manley; mystery machine contest for listeners

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Stern maintaining dominance through high-volume production strategy (Godzilla Premium saturation, Elvira multi-year runs, Bond/Anniversary coordination) while boutique competitors struggle with capacity

    medium · Discussion of massive production volumes insufficient to clear back orders; multi-year demand projections; contrast with limited production windows

  • ?

    licensing_signal: James Bond 007 60th Anniversary LE reveal delayed past mid-December; rumored licensing IP complexity may be pushing production back to January or February

    medium · Zach Manny noting missed midweek reveal; speculation that 'this IP is so hard to deal with' may cause schedule delays; dealers not yet contacted with details

  • $

    market_signal: Godzilla Premium secondary market prices remain strong at $9,000-$10,000 new in-box despite $700 price increase; indicates robust collector demand and multi-year saturation timeline

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.255

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:12
The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. This week on the Pinball Show, we celebrate Christmas as I thank Dennis for sending me presents, and I surprise him with one of my own. Hey-oh! We also talked the pinball shipping blues, a big Stern pinball production update, Elvira making her way back onto the production line, the loss of a pinball leader, Scooby-Doo pinball reception and first impressions, Cactus Canyon remake LA production updates, and pinball market trends. Here's hoping episode 119 helps your little Grinchy heart grow three sizes over the next 90 minutes. pinball is a game of skill for some it's a passion and a lifestyle it's time for the pinball show it's pinball with personality christmas the snow's coming down is it coming down where you're at dennis creasel No, it's toasty out. Toasty and warm. Are you by the Yule log? No. No, I don't have any of the logs, Yule or otherwise. This is the Pinball Show, episode 119 with yours truly, Zach. Many alongside the greatest pinball podcaster, the greatest pinball celebrity, the pinbastard of the year, Dennis Creasel. Wow. You're really laying it on thick for some good Christmas gifts this year. I've already got them. I don't even need to. That's a fair point. Fair point. What are you doing this week? Do you have big plans for Christmas? No, not huge plans. My family's all in the area. I'll probably go to my folks on Christmas Day. We haven't hammered it all out yet. So I've got all the shopping done. Almost everything is wrapped. I have one more thing I need to wrap. And other than that, I am finished, which is how I like it. I usually buy some sort of Shopzilla on Cyber Monday. just order everything I can. And then, because I want it done with. I don't. And this year I had almost everything shipped to everyone's house. So, because we used to, like, we'd organize like a game night or something and people would open, but sometimes it would end up in February. And, you know, it's like, it's just weird. It's like, we're almost to the next Christmas. Why are we opening gifts? Do you have, whenever you guys get together, do you have an Aunt Bethany type in your family? the person who gift wraps the cat do you have an Aunt Bethany?

medium confidence · Zach Manny observing secondary market data and speculating on saturation timing

  • Elvira Premium back orders stretch back to early 2021, representing nearly three years of unfulfilled demand

    high confidence · Zach Manny citing backlog data from Flippin' Out Pinball operations

  • Stern has not officially determined whether the February 2024 Elvira Premium run will be the final production; additional 2024 runs remain possible

    high confidence · Zach Manny quoting Stern's response to inquiries about whether remaining Elvira orders will be canceled

    • @ Elvira Premium pricing discussion

  • “We're receiving less than about 30% of our order... we're receiving quite a few but it's still not touching our back order for Elvira premium.”

    Zach Manny @ Elvira Premium production discussion — Reveals severe supply/demand imbalance; even February run will not clear existing backlog

  • “I would guess mid to late January as well as James Bond Pros. We may see some more pros in January. They have been running some.”

    Zach Manny @ Bond production timeline — Indicates heavy Pro production preceding Premium run; suggests manufacturer capacity allocation strategy

    • Craig Bobby
    person
    Keith Elwinperson
    Jurassic Park Home Editiongame
    The Pinball Showmedia
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Pinside Secret Santaevent

    medium · Zach Manny observation of secondary market pricing; prediction of Godzilla as 'one of greatest games ever made'; comparison to Metallica Pro saturation pattern

  • $

    market_signal: Stern implements $700 across-the-board MSRP increases on all Pro ($6,999) and Premium ($9,699) models effective January 1, 2024; Elvira Premium specialty edition priced at $10,499

    high · Official dealer communication; multiple price point confirmations from Zach Manny

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern's three-tier pricing model (Pro $6,999 / Premium $9,699 / LE $11,000+) creates pressure on Elvira specialty premium pricing at $10,499, just $1,500 below typical LE pricing

    medium · Dennis noting Stern could have priced higher to 'thin the herd' but held at $10,499; some customers canceling due to sticker shock

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Stern's 2024 January-March production schedule: January Bond Premium/Pro + possible 60th Anniversary LE; February Godzilla Premium + Elvira Premium early March; standard two-week January shutdown

    high · Dealer communications reported by Zach Manny; prior official announcements about 60th Anniversary January production

  • ?

    product_concern: Multiple systematic shipping damage incidents on James Bond 007 LE units (glass breakage, cabinet corner damage, facade destruction) during holiday season by FedEx Freight

    high · Three documented damage incidents in Ohio/Florida; pattern attributed to holiday season carrier negligence; shipping broker confirms FedEx claims fail systematically

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Severe supply/demand imbalance: Flippin' Out Pinball receiving only ~30% of Elvira Premium orders despite major February production run; back orders stretch to early 2021

    high · Zach Manny reporting on fulfillment rates; Stern refusal to cancel remaining orders suggests additional 2024 runs planned

    • 2:54
    not anymore now growing up my great not anymore God rest her soul so growing up when we would go down to Arkansas my dad's side of the family a lot of them are in Arkansas my mom's side is in Alaska so when we go down to Arkansas my great grandmother Almeda what's her name when we go and visit her at her house She lived by herself. I vaguely, vaguely remember my great-grandfather. He died when I was very, very young. And so every time we would go to her house, though, we'd go and we'd sit and we'd talk to her. My sister, myself, and my mom and my dad would always mow her lawn. He'd go out and mow her lawn because otherwise his dad would mow her lawn. Wow. And when we were there, she would always give us a gift. And it was always something she already just owned, like a knick-knack or something. She wouldn't even wrap it, though. She just re-gifted to you right there. And I think one time my mom said, I gave her that years ago. Like a pepper grinder or something. So, yes, great-grandma Almeda was the re-gifter. She made no bones about it. She's like, here, take this thing.
    4:02
    Damn it, Bethany, he guessed it. Thanks for coming and talking to me. Here's this thing. So I had that. And then if you want to go full Christmas story, like relative who gave the bad gift. She tried. I don't – I – my – well, I have an aunt who – I don't get gifts from her anymore, but I think it was her who it felt like every year always got me a turtleneck. I have not and never do and never will wear – A Steve Jobs turtleneck. I mean they were probably colors other than black, but it doesn't matter. I never liked turtlenecks. I always found them incredibly itchy. I don't like how they look. and so I just had every year I'd just be like turtleneck I'd check it to see if there was cash safety pins to it because often there was and then I would throw the shirt away the blessing that's good I have to double check those shirts because one year I accidentally threw away 50 bucks you serious Clark see I didn't find it that could have been a pinball machine with inflation that's right it could have been a replacement for that damned ugly turtleneck so yeah I've had I mean we've got the I had the experience with the bad GIFs. I had the experience with the re-GIFs. I've had all the sort of stereotypical experiences. Speaking of GIFs, there has been, listener, so many people around the world, around the country that have been receiving pinball machines as GIFs. I was able to be a part of the Pinside Secret Santa and the real Santa Claus. Not the Pinside Secret. The real Santa Claus has been out there and has been using his little old sexy little elf, Zach. to help deliver brand new pinball machines. There was two. There was an individual out there that gifted two pinball machines to complete strangers. We're not talking home edition games. We're talking a Toy Story 4 CE. Toy Story 4 CE to Les Manley, who coordinates the Pinside Secret Santa, just as a thank you for being who you are and doing what you do, which I thought was sweet. And then this individual secret Santa, the person who he – Recipient. Recipient, yeah, the person he pulled, he received a Rush Pro. Wow. Holy crap. But sadly, some gifts come as a Jell-O mold. Do you not like Jell-O? Not the shit with the meow mix in it, no. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I get what you're – Sadly, we've had a couple James Bond 007 LEs that have been thrashed by FedEx in shipping. FedEx? Yes. FedEx Freight? I pay more. I pay insurance. Well, I'm glad it's insured. So I'm assuming this is FedEx Freight then. Yeah, it's FedEx Freight. What's going on with that? Well, no. Here's the deal. It is insured, but it's not. You're a boy. That doesn't make sense. You're going to spend thousands of dollars. I'll be spending thousands this Christmas for James Bond. Why? It's bad enough that we were shipping free of charge for LEs. Yeah, why do you still do that like no one else does? It may change in the future here for flipping out pinball. We call that foreshadowing, folks. That's right. Somebody opened Friday and said, hey, Zach, there's a little hole in the box, but it doesn't look bad, but I can see there's bad glass everywhere in this box. I'm like, oh, all right. So I had an extra LE of my own. I shipped it out to him the very next day. he's covered i'll wait for the 007 one yeah like number seven of well not the 007 but i was like what one would zach have had from his personal collection 007 i think it was uh 456 i think was the the le number so we sent the other one back so he would have had to wait two to six months for a new one to be repaired but he's got a brand new one uh as of today so we're Good there. Then I get another call. Zach, the corner of this cabinet is bashed in. The outside of the box, we accepted it. The outside of the box looked fine. And then we open it up, and yeah, there's the corner of the cabinet is broken. I'm like, oh. So since he signed off on it, we can submit for a concealed damage. But my shipping broker was like, it's FedEx. You're not going to win. You're going to have to pay for that. Such confidence. Yeah. So she's like, we'll submit it. We'll submit everything. We'll fight. I'm just telling you what's going to happen. That's going to come out of the off pocket. And then I get a third one. You know where the head folds up on the pinball machine and it sits on the base of the top of the cabinet kind of thing? Where people put their hand up when they pull up the back end of the cabinet and put under a stool setting up a game where they shouldn't. A little hole where all the wires go down. Yes, I know what you mean. That facade or that piece of wood was just shattered out of it. But, again, outside of the box looks fine. So they opened it up. and that's the Christmas present they received. Wow. That's going back as well. I can't take any more LEs getting broken. And these were all three were LEs? All three of them. And that's not counting the West Coasters that will probably get their games from flipping out pinball early this week. Oh, no. Gosh, so there's a whole area of the country still yet to call you. Yeah, this was just Ohio's and Florida's. Oh, shoot. So I'm terrified that I'll be... I mean, you know, this is very unusual. Like, what do you think's happening? because, I mean, obviously damage and shipping does happen on occasion, but this seems to be... This time of year is always heavy. Oh, is it? Yeah.
    9:23
    They get into... That's what the shipping bro is like. Look, they're going to throw your shit around. They get into a hurry right now. They don't care about dropping things. They don't care about shoving things, stuffing things in, stacking things when they're not supposed to. This time of year is always notoriously bad for that. I mean, that does make sense. My theory was going to... Obviously not knowing as much about freight and shipping was going to be that the games, in the case with James Bond, are just, like, they're lighter because, well, because there's so little code in them.
    9:55
    That they're just kind of getting tossed around. Merry Christmas, my homie gomi. Too soon? I'm just saying. Rumors are the licensor is being very slow. You know, I heard a rumor corner that the licensor is slow on the approval of those assets. They've got so little coils, They can't even individually power each pop-up. No, not the cross. That's the weight of the software. Just the software. That's the thing. It wasn't the max. I don't know what it is, but they're getting jostled a lot. Just as an FYI for all of you listening that buy new and boxed pinball machines, once you sign off on that game, there's little that can be done. It's just not fair, but it's life. I had a customer not even sign off. They didn't even make him sign because they were like, yeah, that's fucked up. but they left the game with him because they were like, we can't take it back, which is a lie. Left the game with him. He didn't call me, but that's okay. But now I've got to pay FedEx to go pick it up, this broken game, and then pay for the repairs from Stern.
    10:56
    I'm a giver. I feel bad for them, though, because that kind of is a sucky Christmas. Well, yeah. I mean, you make a big purchase, and it comes, and it's broken, and no one wants that. No. No one wants that. And speaking of being a giver, you were a giver to me. Ladies and gentlemen, Dennis Creasel went way overboard. Enjoy that Toy Story CE is all I'm going to say. We can move along.
    11:24
    Now Toy Story is going to get the Christmas jabs. Ho, ho, ho. Dennis gifted me a wonderful, he knew I got the new camera. Oh, yeah. You haven't talked about your new camera on this. That was a really, whoever did that was really, really nice. Unbelievable. There is somebody out there. They know who they are. I see Chris Hedda. They were a fan of Greg and I's work on Straight Down the Middle. And they gifted us our dream camera. We had a dream camera. And somebody was like, well, how did they know that that was camera? Like, they had asked me in passing maybe almost a year ago. Like, hey, I know you guys are up in your quality and stuff like that. and you're taking donations for PayPal, what's your PayPal? So maybe I can throw you a couple bucks. And ultimately, if you get enough money from everybody, what's a dream setup that you're hoping to get? And I just was like, I'd love a RED camera. Like a cinema series. Yeah, the cinema, yeah. Yeah, like a RED. It's a RED Komodo, but a 6K roll shooting feature-length film. I would just like something like that. Amateur videographer. And didn't think anything of it. damned if somebody didn't send us a brand new red camera. Wow. Yeah, that's really cool. I was speechless.
    12:47
    I freaking cry. I've never had a gift like that. So, yeah, to that person, I'm indebted to you forever. So we were thrilled with that. And then to make it even better, you were kind enough to send an external LCD monitor, hdmi monitor that you you have to have for those types of cameras so you can uh so you can see your shot better and focus and stuff like that you gifted that that's like a needed thing uh that you knew to get and batteries and everything so Dennis you're gonna be a producer on anything we make now no I uh I actually tried to look at lenses they're so expensive and I didn't know what you already had. Oh, God, yeah. And I was like, well, I'm more like Secret Elf, not Secret Elf. So we got to scale it down. Those monitors are expensive. They're expensive. And you nailed it, too, because Greg has been on my ass for months. Like, dude, we need an external monitor. Oh, yeah. You probably haven't been using one on you. So when I got my little Panasonic Lumix or whatever that I use for my YouTube, I made sure I got one that the screen could flip, at least, because otherwise Because I really struggle lining up the shot if I can't use a monitor. And even with the screen flip that we have on our Canon that we use, it's so small that if you're doing manual focus, you still can't tell if you've got it captioned or not. And I've run into that where I've done stuff and I've realized, holy crap, I wasn't in focus the entire time. I couldn't tell because the screen's so small. Yeah, so it was the perfect gift. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, dude. Thank you. And Greg was giddy too. I was like, well, it's not yours, but you're going to be using it as well. He can use it, but that's up to you because it's your gift. And I didn't know what to get you this year, Dennis. I was like, he's picky. Do you get him a mod? He don't like toppers. He shits on all these games. What am I going to get a Dennis Creasel? Is that your phone ringing? Yeah. Do you never have your phone? Yeah, but it's fine. No, actually, you may want to pick that up.
    14:56
    Hello? Hey, hey, this is Jerry, the delivery manager from FedEx North Pole Division. It appears that you have been on the good list this year.
    15:08
    I'll tell you what, with the latest spooky pinball saltiness, that's a big surprise. We've got someone special looking out for you, I guess. I got a package here sitting on the Donna loading dock. We gotta get it out of here. It's super busy this time of year. I gotta confirm a few things though, okay? This is Dennis Creasel, am I correct? Yes. I see here that you have opted for the Christmas Spirit Insurance Package on this delivery.
    15:40
    I gotta let you know though that this does not cover any internal damage not declared before the acceptance of the package. Do you understand? Yes. Okay, it also does not cover reindeer-related urine. One job. They often get quite excited this time of year. So, I got you right here on a Donna Loading Dock a 6x6 candy cane pallet which weighs approximately 350 pounds or 2,500 gingerbread men.
    16:17
    Tell them it's only an hour and a half show. Fuck. Oh, okay, I see here also included is the gingerbread topper.
    16:26
    It'll be strapped on top of your package. Do you understand? Yes, I understand. Good. Jeez, this thing was $2,500 option. Someone must really like you.
    16:38
    What is he doing? Merry Christmas, and please remember, do not eat the yellow snow. Okay, thank you.
    16:50
    All right, thanks. What the? So, Dennis, I don't know what the hell that was, but what? It was pretty weird. I don't know what that was. I like the accent, though. Thank you for helping, question mark caller. But you are receiving from myself for Christmas, because you mean the fucking world to me. You're receiving a brand new pinball machine this week. It's coming, Dennis. Merry Christmas. It's the most wonderful time of the year.
    17:47
    Can't wait for you to receive it. It shipped out Friday, and I think it takes two days to get to you. So you'll get a call from not that idiot that just called you, but from FedEx Freight to receive it. Now, here's the question. What is it? What machine is it? It could be anything. You know, I do have inventory. Well, you said it was new, so it's not going to be like a nip it. I've got inventory of some stuff that's been sitting, though. So you got a new pinball machine. What I thought could be fun, Dennis, is to include our holiday listeners. Here's what I want to do, listener. I want you to email thepinballnetwork at gmail.com and submit to us what pinball machine and model you think Dennis Creasel is receiving for Christmas. And not only one lucky winner, but every single person who submits that is correct, that nails the game and the trim model, is going to be receiving one hell of a prize. Wow, that's really... I'm really shocked. I won't refuse it because it is a gift, but it's way too... Unless it's damaged. It's really way more than what you should do. I do the show because I enjoy it. I know, I know, but that's besides the point. Run with the bit here. but okay what could it be folks wow that's right i knew i knew you'd be humbled and angered at me for doing it but uh but no regardless uh i think it's something that notice it wasn't a fucking red camera like it should have been guess what youtube just watches so much better god that elf had so am i supposed to guess because i obviously don't know look you can guess my hint to people would be my hints will be this. Oh, you're giving hints. I believe it is something that you will really like. I believe it is a game that may have not been your first maybe not been your first choice because maybe you weren't considering it.
    19:58
    Damn it, Dennis. You're going to like Toy Story. Actually, I liked Toy Story. It's a fun shooter. I did message your EGP co-host, Tony, and messaged him. And I said, Tony, I need your help. You reached out to Tony? Yeah, I even reached out to the Tone. And the Tone Bone was like, wow, that's awesome. I'll help you as much as I can. So we got our heads, because I'm like, you know, I know Dennis to this degree. Tony knows Dennis to just a whole another degree. With our great genius minds together and sexiness, we can find the perfect game for Dennis. And he was at a loss too. We kind of whittled it down to like three or four. And he was like, honestly man, he would freaking love any of these so I think you're going to be fine. But yeah, he even had trouble like saying one for sure got to have Dennis game. So I thought we'd make it a fun little contest for you listeners. So Dennis has no clue what's coming now i don't know in a couple days reshuffle contest on tuesday night at midnight no longer submit you know we submit once what game you think dennis crease was receiving for christmas and everyone that correct every single person that correct will win a prize and that machine will be revealed on the next episode of the Pinball Show alongside what you winners will be receiving Oh, the love and support is in the air. Christmas cheer. I wonder what Craig Bobby's up to this Christmas. Canadians, they celebrate Christmas, don't they? Yeah, but maybe it's like Thanksgiving and they do it in a weird month. Oh, that's right.
    21:41
    March. when taxes are due or something. June! Craig Bobby is busy this week. Craig! He right now is helping Stern Pinball set up their new factory. And as the mahogany table, he's going... Disguised as the forklift. Yeah, he actually got shipped right into Gary Stern's office. So he's being hush-hush and trying to figure out where in the hell James Bond's 60th anniversary game is by Keith Elwin. But until next episode, I think I speak for Dennis when I say, Craig, we wish you a very Merry Christmas. We couldn't do the show without you. And what you have up your sleeve come 2023, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
    22:25
    Stern Pinball's in the news, as always. Why? Why are they always in the news? Big reasons. They jumped over Spooky Scooby-Doo for this episode of the pinball show. Yeah, because they had a big old production update for us dealers. So what's the update? Tell us. First off. Tell the people. I've got to remind everybody that come January 1st, remember that new pricing goes into effect. We've seen the new pricing already for Bond, so that's no surprise. We were told come January, every other pro and premium is going to match that pricing. So January 1st comes, all your pros are now MSRP $6,999, all your premiums MSRP $96.99 US. Sorry, people waiting for Godzilla still. Yes. I'll apologize on behalf of Stern. Even if you had your order in, even if you've paid, the price still goes up. That's not a dealer thing. Angry emailers. I'm sorry. I love you. They might still email with anger. And they can. And I'll share in some of that anger. And as a reminder, Stern Pinball typically stops production for a couple weeks in early January. So we're not probably going to see anything. They do reorganization in the first two weeks of January every single year. Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, I always forget about that too. Currently online over at Stern Pinball, we have Jurassic Park Home Editions they're finishing up on. And then they're just finishing up on other titles that they, you know, just the finishing run, especially things that they've done last call on that they're discontinuing, probably Turtles, Lead Zeppelins,
    24:02
    Bond Pros maybe sprinkled in there. So they're finishing up the lines for all of that stuff come their two-week little hiatus where they regroup. But in January, it's going to be a James Bonduary.
    24:18
    It's not even clever. January, we're going to see James Bond 007 Premiums. That first run of premiums is coming in January. When in January? I would guess mid to late January as well as James Bond Pros. We may see some more pros in January. They have been running some. So that one's kind of a question mark for me because they've been running a lot of pros, maybe in preparation for more premiums come January. And I don't know if this is true yet, but I haven't been told any otherwise that they aim to do production on some of those 60th anniversaries, unrevealed James Bond 007s, possibly in January. They told us that months ago, whenever they announced that that game was coming, that they were aiming to produce it in January, end of January. They haven't told us otherwise. Now, without their reveal coming yet, maybe that delayed things. I don't know for sure. But come February, we finally get another run of Godzilla premiums.
    25:17
    Mom, that's enough. What? We're out of vodka. Sorry, bet you were doing Godzilla. Mom, that's enough. What? I'm laughing. Here's the sticky, though, Dennis. Yeah, tell us about the sticky. They're going to produce a bunch of Godzilla premiums in February. A bunch? Like, is that somewhere between a bushel and a bundle? I would say Titanic's full. A lot of Godzilla premiums are coming. Well, I mean, I know there are a lot of pending orders. There's a whole fleet of barges that could be filled in need of Godzilla premiums. So even though they're making a ton, I think it's safe to say it's not touching their back order for Godzilla premiums. Do you think the back order slide any with the price going to be $700 more? What do you mean? The new price increase will be in effect for the February Godzillas, right? Isn't it a $700 different? Do you think any people pull out once they get the notification? And so maybe some of that Godzilla backlog leaves and maybe shifts to other games like Bond or something instead? Honestly, I would say no. Okay. I don't think so. I think it's a top of the charts by a lot of people, and this is of all time. And I'm not the type of person that's going to say, oh, people are just in their honeymoon. They're over. I do think it's one of the greatest games ever made, and it's going to be hard to beat that. So I think that no, people will happily pay. Because we're seeing on the secondary market premiums still selling in the nines right at 10. That's new in box prices. I don't see it. I think there's going to be a saturation point for that game because they're going to make more of that title than probably anything they've done in a long time. Yeah, yeah. But that won't come for a couple years.
    27:05
    That's going to be like the Metallica Pro kind of thing. It won't come for a couple years. So, no, they're going to make a ton of them. We're not even able to fulfill, oh, God, not even 20% of our back orders. on that so well and let me pivot a little bit on this because uh obviously you talked about january being kind of bonduary or whatever you tried to say which was an abomination and never do that again it was really bad gold finger so i just last night actually watched the uh documentary of the music of james bond for the 60th anniversary oh nice it was interesting uh awfully heavy focus on no time to die like i swear 20 of the documentary felt like it was just no time to die And I don't know if that's because it was the most recent or what. Maybe. And everyone, of course, was alive and they were able to interview them. But, yeah, anyway. Anyway, 60th anniversary Bond 007. What's going on with that? When are we going to have that revealed? There was a rumor last week that we're going to see it midweek. We didn't see it. Right. Dealers have not been contacted. This is what we're recording this weekend, mid-December here. Have not been contacted. I'm told it's still coming. I'm told it's going to be a hit. I'm told. Well, it's Elwynn and it's limited. I have little concern about it actually being – People are terrified about the price though. They're still terrified about the price. And it's a fair thing to be terrified about. But if they're not making all that many, you don't need to find all that many people willing to pay that price. They have not told us when the reveal is going to be, but I still – something tells me it's going to be this month still. All the indications had always been it would still be in December. But when does it get built if they – I guess sort of regardless. Do you think it's in January? I kind of want to think so, yeah.
    28:51
    I still want to think that they're going to build them end of January, end of February. Okay. But I don't know what they're doing. And maybe they're realizing that this IP is so hard to deal with that maybe things are getting bumped back. I don't know. We know that there's no cornerstone in January like we're accustomed to. Right, right. We're not going to see that until March. March right now is slated, but I skipped over February. Well, only partially. You did the barge full of Godzillas. Yeah, that'll be probably the first, second half of February, but the other half is going to be Elvira Premium. It's going back on the production line officially at the end of February into early March. So, yeah, Godzilla Premium will be early February. Do they have a price on it finally? They finally established a price, which makes me think it's legit. I've been updated like three years on price. Well, it makes me think it's legit now. They're not going to pump it yet again. That's fair. It's been two years since they've made this? Yeah, about two, yeah. We've got back orders. Not counting the 40th. We've got back orders from early 2021.
    29:53
    Wow. Yeah. Those are some dedicated people. I mean, it's a fun game. It is a fun game. I wonder if that's the game that got sent to me, even though it hadn't been built recently. Oh, man. I'd have an old Christy one. Maybe, though. I do have a vault.
    30:09
    MSRP on Elvira Premium. Sit down, people. Uh-oh. It's not as bad as I thought it could have been. Not as bad as I thought. Okay, this isn't the one coming to me. I knew that it was going to be, because the previous one was like, the special price was like $83.99, I think. I can't remember. Yeah, that's before all the other increases that we'd seen over the last two years. Right, right. So people are like, do you think they'll keep the same price? No, they're not. Well, do you think it's going to be $89.99? No. The new price is $96.99 for all premiums, so a studio-run specialty premium is going to be more than $96.99. Right. But how much higher can we go? $10,499. Over $10,000 by Christmas, except it's after Christmas, so I guess not. It's after Christmas, yeah. That's after Christmas. It might still wait until Christmas before you get it. $10,499. So it's not astronomical like I thought they could have done. If they really don't want to make these things and they wanted to thin the herd, then maybe you go $12,000 on it, $1,000 below your LEs. But they didn't, $10,499. And some people are canceling. Oh, I mean it's still like percentage-wise. This is a big – and again, because it didn't have any of those gradual increases over the last couple of years, I can definitely see a sticker shock where you're like, you know, I was okay when this was $2,000 less. Yeah. That's a lot for a spinning house. So, yeah, and it is a wonderful game. People do love it. $10,499 plus shipping and tax and all that stuff. Here's the other thing. They didn't technically say this is going to be the last run. We do have a huge old order, flipping out. I'm speaking personally here from my business. We have a huge order, and we're receiving less than about 30% of our order. so we're receiving quite a quite a few but it's still not touching our back order for Elvira premium and I asked hey you know are the remainder of my order being canceled this time there's a little tricksy way of me thinking well are they just is this the last run period and they said no at this time there's no been no determination and no need for us to cancel the remainder of your order at this time so what that means to me and Sternlingo people we'll see a 2024 run of Elvira Premium as well. I don't think we'll see it again in 2023, honestly, but I think you're going to get a one-time-a-year run of that, and we'll see it in 2024 for all of those who want to wait again. Wow.
    32:38
    March is going to bring us a new Cornerstone game. Venom, finally. The most heavily rumored are either Brian Eddy on Venom or Jack Danger on Foo Fighters.
    32:48
    Those are the rumors. Right, yeah. They could both be totally off. We've all heard those rumors. So I don't know. I know that April is going to bring more James Bond Pro and Premiums, though. So they're going to do some more of those in April as well as they've got a little space in April. I'm thinking maybe that new game that they announced in March, maybe we'll see some more, some premiums run in April of that new game. In May, uh-oh, it's back, and people have been talking about it and yearning for it. It's Iron Maiden Pro and Premium. They didn't discontinue it. You know, I know it's popular. It's been in the catalog quite a while. I'm a little surprised they keep the SKU. I know. And they re-upped that license a year ago. Okay. I remember that license was coming to an end. Either they did a last call or they re-upped something, but they've got the license still, and they plan on making that. Now, you're only going to see that made in May. A lot of these games, these catalog games, I've seen what Stern Pinball is doing. They're giving one-time run for the year. Right. And I think we're going to see that in the future as well. They're not going to catch up on these backwards. They're getting better, but no, they still have a lot of back orders. In June, you're going to see James Bond Pros. You're going to see Godzilla Pros. Remember, no Pros in February. Those are just premium for Godzilla. So Godzilla Pros in June and Jurassic Park Premiums in June. Boy, that tells you that Jurassic Park Premium is selling really well whenever they're just running the Premium and not the Pro. Right. I still haven't played the Premium of that. I like the Pro a lot, though. The Premium is freaking awesome. and as to what is coming in july august september question mark october november december of 2023 that's next christmas pull a little craig bobby you have to wait and listen to the pinball show episode 120 we'll come back here in a week or two and i'll give you guys kind of the rundown of stern pinball's production schedule for the back half of the year oh they don't have to wait very long at all that's right that'd be like a new year present still no word on Rush expression lighting kit, Rush accessories, Godzilla topper, still no word on any of that stuff. 007 accessories? We don't know. We do know that there's new code for Mandalorian, version 1.41, where they fixed the Beskar meter, that progressive.
    35:06
    Oh, for the topper. Yeah, for the topper. I thought there was something. Sorry, that was my fault. I didn't think anything was wrong with Beskar. I got the topper on my mind. No, I remember the don't turn off the game. Turn that machine off. You're in our case now. So now it will progressively keep those totals. Also, you get some topper settings for color preferences. Not a huge update here just to fix that topper code previously. In other stern news, congratulations and huge thank you for an industry icon. Often forgotten and not discussed, but crucial and integral to the growth and the success of this entire industry for the last 20, 30 plus years. Shelly Sachs from Stern Pinball is retiring at the end of this year. Wow, she's been involved since the Data East days. Yes, it was her, Gary Stern, Joe Kamikow. That was the trio. That's who started the Data East company, and she has been right there as an executive ever since.
    36:10
    And, yeah, without her, we would not have a lot of what we love, what we cherish in this industry, and I can't congratulate her enough and thank her enough for all that she's put into the industry. And even working side by side with her as a dealer, she's fantastic. She's the greatness. She's the best. Well, happy retirement. Relax, Shelly. Yeah, happy retirement. I wonder if she has any pinball machines in her house. I'll have to ask her. That was the one thing I was told when I became a dealer. The previous owner of Flippin' Out said, one thing you need to do is make sure you take care of Shelly Sachs. Be kind to her. Help her out when she needs because basically she's a powerful person in this industry. Don't mess it up because a lot of times, like, I don't interact with Gary Stern. He doesn't do a lot of the day-to-day stuff with dealers, but Shelly was responsible for shipping, accounting, like the hands-on, the meat and potatoes of a company. I had the joy of working with her for years. In another Stern Pinball News, this one's a sad one. We lost another pinball icon. Dean Grover from Stern Pinball passed away. He was young, too. I think he was in his 50s, early 60s. Biggest Stern Pinball. He was a coder. He was lead code on a lot of games that you otherwise may not have known, like some of the specialty games. Supreme. Dean was the lead on Beatles Code, Star Wars Home Edition, Spider-Man Home Edition. He was helping on James Bond. He helped on a lot of these games. He's fantastic. And he's huge in the Colorado scene as well. So I know you'll be dearly missed in that area. For more information, you guys can go to Pennside. There's a thread titled Thank You, Dean Grover, where many people talk about their time and their wonderful memories of Mr. Grover and all that he meant to the community and to the industry. So go check that out. Thoughts and prayers go out to his family, his friends. That's a big loss there.
    38:13
    transitioning over to another manufacturer, Spooky Pinball. You had a whole interview with some spooky crew folk. Yeah, they've been all the talk, haven't they? Yeah, pretty much. There wasn't any other news. They recently revealed Scooby-Doo, one of the greatest pinball IPs of all time. Now, before we discuss that, though, there was a Craig Bobby submission. Remember his last segment? It talked about, you know, Surgeon Dr. Joan? Yes. That was sneaky. The blanket. Yeah, kind of seemed to, all of that stuff.
    38:45
    And he did a good job covering for TPS when he was here. I did get an email recently from one of my friends, and I'm just going to read it here. It was titled, Maxiofacial Surgery Controversy. Uh-oh. Sounds like Craig stepped in something stinky. Wait a minute. It says, hey, buddy, I may have a little cold water to throw on old Craig Bobby's recent reporting. Say what? It seems he may have given credit to the wrong maxillofacial surgeon for the early call on Scooby-Doo. Attached is a comment from a spooky Facebook post where I noticed a dog in the picture sleeping on a Scooby blanket, and I asked if it was hinting at something. I think this actually may predate Dr. John's reporting from TPF. They said, but honestly, I don't know. I'm calling, quote, fake news on Craig Bobby, and I demand immediate retraction and proper citation, exclamation point. And, of course, I'm kidding. But I thought it was ironic, given that John and I share the same profession. Just a good little competition between the old U.S. and Australia. Well, how about that? I'm going to call him Dr. Rob. In Craig's defense, I mean, there are so many, what, facial surgeon types in pinball that, I mean, we do. We non-medical people get them mixed up quite often. Oh, my gosh.
    40:11
    It's kind of like if you go to a show right after back surgery and, like, all the anesthesiologists come up to you. Yep, this is pinball. There's more than one.
    40:24
    They all come up to me like, have you ever considered a nose job? I'm like, come on, man. come on a little nip here a little tuck there is that a mole what is that thing moly moly moly moly what do you think about scooby-doo i heard the eclectic gamers podcast you guys were uh highly cynical but uh what was your first take overall well we talked about scooby-doo on our our last episode we did so two episodes ago we didn't get at that point did we get to see it we saw the i thought we saw the art we didn't see any gameplay yeah we didn't see the layout we didn't know but we saw like the we saw like scooby well right now there's a there's a big narrative and push that says you gotta play it before you buy it and you're idiots if you buy it you can't see anything from an overhead or play field pictures or or gameplay videos or a sizzle now everybody's like you've got to put your hands on it before you can actually know what it's like and I disagree with that. I feel I'm of two minds of that. I agree with you that, especially if you're an experienced person in pinball, that you get to the point when it comes to layout in particular, in my view, that you can look at the layout and really judge a lot of it. And they did drop some gameplay footage. It's not very much, but you do see how the ball, like you see the shots. So you understand how the ball feeds. So in that regard, you can get a sense without doing it hands-on. When it comes to new and boxed pinball, I personally do subscribe to the philosophy that I will not spend my money unless I actually have played the game first. As you always have, yes. But, you know, it's a personal preference. I don't do the same for used. Like, back in the day, when you could get a deal on a used game, I'd be like, you know what, I'll take a chance on it. Take a flyer on it, yeah. Yeah, but with a new one. But for me, it's because I don't have FOMO. Because I know I could pick up a game later. And in the case of Scooby, the run is so large, I definitely wouldn't feel – and my understanding is it's still not even sold out right now. So it's not – you have time. It not and even if they all sold new there no harm I think some people are afraid to own used games There no harm in owning a used game But that being said if you are someone who feels confident in their own ability to judge based off of imagery the imagery can be sufficient It's really not that hard to understand geometry. I didn't understand. Yeah, this whole – the tone of a lot of pinball community right now is like people rooting against they're not going to sell out in a day. They're not going to sell. I don't know when this became a competition of whether they sell out, meaning whether indicating whether a product was a success or not. I don't. That's where I'm getting caught up. If they sold out in one day. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a certified hit, but I don't think that's the only indicator here. So I don't. What's confusing me is why in the fuck do people care if a game sells out in the first day or first week or not? And like you said, there's almost 2,000 of these games. That's a lot of games from a spooky pinball. And that's true. And I did have a prediction that they would sell out day one. I thought they might too, yeah. And I based that off of – and maybe this is where obviously why people care will vary on what they're interested in. It's just interesting in a lot of ways to monitor the hobby, of course. So there's – if you're not – like if there's not a dog – I hate doing dog references with Scooby-Doo, but I'm going to keep doing them. They're not a dog in the fight per se. It's just interesting in the context of we know they have day one or near day one sold out on a lot of their prior titles. So it's kind of like some people might just think that's like a standard that Spooky might not even hold for itself. But they, as a witness of pinball, might go, you know, that's just what I expect. I expect Spooky to sell out. Their model seems very oriented to encouraging it, in my opinion. so that could also be an aspect of it but again we have to remember that they are running like over 200 more games what more like what 400 what what what was the like halloween was what 1250 and then they are 1200 and they did 1750 yeah yeah they did something like in the 1700 range so they've added like a couple hundred more games in the total build and it's not split across two different themes this time so this was coming off of rick and morty what did sell out immediately so it was like that rob zombie thing where people jumped into halloween ultra man thinking holy crap it's going to go up in value it's going to sell out immediately i got to get it like happened to rob zombie then that then later fell just like halloween and ultra man are so yes and within context there and i think that's probably uh an angle for a lot of people like me watching that we kind of think like spooky this is how i see it spooky they you know they struggle to sell america's most haunted until they put the limit on it and you know charlie and ben heck had i think done multiple interviews where they talk about that and so when they had the 150 limit they were able to sell them and then people saw and this was you know pre-pandemic pre pinball huge boom the prices on the used ones went up significantly so we have gone and ended up in a scenario now where you then saw people do the same thing with oh we got to buy a rob zombie right away because otherwise it's going to be more expensive later yes and they've sort of ridden that whether by design i do think they have by design tried to encourage that uh all along up until really this point where where and these are things i've talked about on other so like on egp and such, but having you join their fang club so you get the right of first purchase. And then whatever the most expensive model is gets built first, and they have these fairly long tails for them for a single game run where they're like, it's going to be about 18 months for us to finish the builds. So they kind of have structured a lot of things to sort of FOMO force you, if you're susceptible to FOMO, into feeling, okay, I got to buy a CE, I got to join the fang club, because Because I don't want to wait a year plus to get my game.
    46:35
    And then with Scooby, I think you still saw a lot of people join Fang Cullip. You still saw all the whole bunch. I bet CEs are the most commonly sold units.
    46:44
    They've upped the production so much. And one of the things that I myself, early on when they announced this, was just as guilty of is it's easy to forget that 2,000 – because they're practically 2,000 units of a game. That's a lot. That's a lot of games to run. Like, we think and we talk so much about Godzilla that I think we lose sight of the fact that this is not – it's still not the 90s. In the 90s, a 2,000-run game wouldn't have been a bad run either other than like in 92, 93.
    47:16
    Well, even comparing to other manufacturers, like I wonder how many Toy Story L.A. sold. I wonder how many Led Zeppelin sold. I think would it surprise you if we found out that Led Zeppelin sold 2000 under over Toy Story 4 LE it wouldn't surprise me if it was under yeah so these are big numbers for a manufacturer so it's not a and the thing is does Spooky's model require them to sell out of the games I don't think so but But what I think it does is it's not so much about the day one. It's like what happens in six months? Do they still have inventory? And then I think that means as a business, they have to ask themselves, okay, do we want to lower our count and build smaller runs and just sell out and move on and kind of progress like that? Or are we trying to grow our production and then make certain decisions? Like if we say it's going to be an up to like we don't sell all one thousand nine hundred and sixty nine. Do they build them all out anyway? Or does that just mean the in the run early? Oh, I can answer that. They build out nineteen sixty nine of them. Absolutely. Because I don't I don't think there's any harm. And then we saw this in the past with TNA one point. Oh, that's how I got my because I won't play there. I don't agree with their preorder model. I don't agree with giving zero percent loans to companies. And so that's part of the reason I don't buy direct from spooky. unless they have the game in stock. And that's what they did with the 550 units of TNA. They finished out that last build of 50. They had games in stock, and I bought one direct from them because I didn't have to preorder it. And clearly, that wasn't a quote-unquote failure. They ended up doing a TNA 2.0 run. So even though I had expected, just on the strength of the theme, them to sell out, even with the increase by a couple hundred units, that they didn't, I don't think it's so bad. I saw a lot of people say they still went in on this game. Here's the thing. I can say from experience, because I'm a new spooky dealer, whoo, flipping out pinball. I can say definitively from a sales perspective, for spooky pinball, for its distributors, it is easily a huge success. The numbers of sales have been gigantic, gigantic. I know that after speaking with some of them over at Spooky Management and executives over there. After day one sales, they told me they're ecstatic. They were hoping to celebrate because they were able to sell more titles in one day than any title they've ever released in their company's history. They said that we've already met success, and they didn't even understand. They're like, we don't know why everybody's getting hung up on this whole did we sell out thing. They were like, we're ecstatic with what we're bringing to the market and the numbers that we're seeing. And I would guess, personally, this is just me guessing, I would guess they're probably in, with dealers and direct orders together, probably 1,600, 1,700 sold.
    50:28
    And I'm being conservative there. I think there's probably only 100 maybe left, maybe, if I were to guess. I know and I can't say a fact but I know that they've sold pretty close to uh this thing will sell out and if not there's no problem with it being an inventory for people I kept getting accused this week everybody's like so you didn't sell out I'm like what okay like I don't know what you're wanting me to to say we sold a shitload of these things we were allotted uh we're a new dealer so our allotments not built up you know like some of these other spooky dealers but we got more than I thought we would initially. That was very kind of the team over at Spooky. We sold them. Bam, those were gone. So I messaged them and said, hey guys, I just want to let you know, those were gone. If for some reason you have any more, you're kind enough to, and they issued me more, again, more than I thought I'd get. Boom, those were gone immediately. And I posted on our website, you know, we're sold out. And then I told Spooky again, hey, congratulations. I'll start forwarding people interested directly to your website or to other dealers and they were like you know what like if you're wanting some we had the the whole debacle with our website and stuff we'd be happy to to send you out some more would you take you know this many more i was like yeah i'll take those so i said hey you know this is our last bundle of them and they've been selling very well i think i've got three spots left so not not bad Not bad. I can say that I've sold more Scooby-Doos than I have – I've sold more Scooby-Doo CEs than I have most every other manufacturer LE.
    52:10
    So that says something, I think. Well, it's kind of weird, though, because Spooky – Everybody gets the CE. Right, right. It's limited. That's kind of a – well, Spooky is going to run the way Spooky wants to run. It's not my call. I kind of wonder if maybe they are at the point with the size of their runs now that they can drop just even giving a number. That's why people are comparing to it. They're one of the few where the entire run is announced as a build count. So if they were just to start saying, you know what, let's say they did Flintstones next. We're doing Flintstones, and we're going to allow people to buy up through. Maybe they draw a line with like we're going to take orders up through a set period of time, and we're just going to build until we're going to cut it off. That would increase the FOMO for sure, but I don't know if they're interested. I think legit they kind of just want – if everybody wants that top model, they can get the top model within reason of the total limit. I think it's unique. I don't know if from a business perspective it's the best, but I think from a community perspective and a customer perspective, it's unique, and it's kind of cool. I mean, I don't know. I kind of wonder about them not even doing the limit, just saying, yeah, here's the new game, like all the other manufacturers. And then they just keep building. And eventually they're going to be like last call. And they don't do any reliance on FOMO whatsoever. Because they still use it as a bit of a crutch. I know. I like it as a limit. In fact, I think it's more than a bit of a crutch. I think they lean on that FOMO crutch so much. Look, if I had a pinball company, I wouldn't be able to do it. I would limit it. I would say. I'm not saying it's right. It's not that it's wrong. It's just – obviously, it's a very different strategy that – but the thing with relying on a FOMO thing is you essentially box yourself into being quote-unquote small. But their run sizes at this point don't – and that's where I think maybe that's part of the – where this discussion can be interesting is they're acting like they're still a boutique company, but they're outbuilding a lot of the other manufacturers at this stage in terms of quantity. They're not boutique anymore. I think that's a misnomer. They are – in the world of pinball, they are a major manufacturer. And because of that, they – I'm kind of like you've shackled yourself to the FOMO thing. You still can't bring yourself to let go of it because it's what initially worked. But the run sizes are getting so large that we are at the point where people are going to be like, why are we FOMOing over these games when they're going to make 2,000 of them? That's very true. Does it make sense? That's very true. And all manufacturers do it. They all do it with their LEs. Exactly. And that's where I'm just curious if we see in the future an evolution in their approach where maybe they're like, you know what? We're going to set the limit on the CEs now. We're going to say you can have 500 CEs and then knock the price up $4,000 on those and FOMO that and then just do the rest as a more traditional. We're not going to announce a limit. You can buy it if you want it. The whole rhetoric there, you have to play it before you buy it. Don't be an idiot.
    55:07
    Who's going to argue with that? I'm a freaking dealer. And I would tell people, I've told people this last week. They're like, well, I'm worried about the code or I'm worried about, you know, how it feels or I'm worried about. And I'm not saying, well, put those worries aside because we've only got a couple you need. No, I'm like, look, if you're worried about this, there's almost 2,000. You'll always be able to get one. It's not a big rush. You don't have to buy it now. You don't have to. But if it does sell out, you'll have to buy used or buy somebody's spot. Like that's just the facts of the facts. But if you ever feel uncomfortable about whether you should buy a game, that's probably an indication, yeah, maybe hold off. But there are a lot of people that it's like Scooby-Doo. It's freaking loaded. It looks badass. And I'd like to get one as soon as I can, so the quicker the better. And that's the type of buyer I am. But, yeah, that's just, oh. And I feel like they gave people enough information to make a choice on whether or not they want to buy a game. I don't understand that argument. We had a fucking whiny-ass podcast that was like, we need to see gameplay. All these pictures, all these interviews with information, that's not enough. Then they show sizzle. We need to see gameplay. And then they show fucking gameplay. It's not enough gameplay. We need a stream. You're not going to make these people happy. That's why I told Spooky. Look, there's so many people out there who's going to cry, bitch, and moan no matter what you do, no matter what you give them. Stop trying to please everybody. Put out a good product, and that's all you've got to worry about. And I think the game looks phenomenal. I've got one on order myself. Here in the city I live in, there's already four that I know of that are going to be in Evansville. It's a small town. People are excited about it. You said it was fanny-ish layout? The lower section. Yeah, very fanny. I'm not enthused by the layout. I touched on this on EGP. Tony and I talked about it. No, I don't think I really commented on the rules other than some speculation based off the insert. So I don't know yet where the code is planning to go. The layout looks pretty safe to me. So I'm not thrilled with the layout. I went back this morning and watched the gameplay video, and I think I counted three horseshoe shots, which I think is way – pushing it as is, and three is an awful one. One on the upper, and then on the lower, there's one on the left and one on the right, for sure, that just horseshoe around. I could see one, like the horseshoe shot on Stern Star Wars. It's pretty fun. I like a quick horseshoe. I wouldn't want two more of them, because it feels like you're doing the same shot. You see what I'm saying? It's a personal preference. Hold up, though. Dennis. Why are you challenging my subjective judgment? Because whatever they give you, they're going to give you a couple more. Like a Halloween. Eh, you need one Mike Myers scoop. I can give you three. Let me. Now it's like, you get one horseshoe loop. No, we're going to give you three. Let me. This is Dennis's rule of pinball design. You can trust me because I've done zero homebrews and zero actual professional designs. That's how you know that what I say is authentic. Legit, yeah. Never should a pinball machine have more scoops than it does flippers.
    58:24
    I'm just saying. And to add on to that, never should you have more horseshoe loops than you do. Now, they've kept the horseshoe because so far I've only counted three horseshoe shots, and they do have four flippers, counting the flipper diverter. So they may have followed the rule. It's just a bit much for me. Maybe divide it by two. Maybe. Maybe there's a rule that there's one horseshoe spot. It's like you want an inverse proportion of horseshoe shots to the number of spinners that you want to have in the game. like.
    58:52
    I don't think anybody's going to argue with the point that if I told you to close your eyes, think about a Scooby-Doo pinball machine and people who like that theme in general or people who just like pinball in general, when they open their eyes and see this art package, layout, the sculpts, the molds, everything added to this, the colors, the lighting, I don't think anybody could just in their mind think, oh God, this is barren. Oh God, this isn't Scooby-Doo. Like this thing freaking screams Scooby-Doo. I hadn't heard anyone, and I've only heard a few other shows since the gameplay and the photos came out, but I haven't heard anyone claim like they thought it was barren. Yeah, I haven't either. I've not seen the standard, but the CE is not barren. My point being, they have checked a couple boxes that are oftentimes unchecked by a lot of new pinball releases, and I was glad to see that people are genuinely, whether they're going to buy it or not, whether they like spooky games or not, whether they think the layout sucks or not. They think this is a damn full game. This is theme integration like no other. And for the price, comparable to other counterparts, this is a lot of game in this market right now for what you're getting. Sure. And I don't even think the layout is the big – obviously, everything is going to be subjective. What looks to me like, okay, yeah, I need to get time on it. I still think that the layout looks better, in my opinion, than Halloween's layout did. Sure. But that's not the – I don't think that's Spooky's biggest issue right now. Spooky's biggest issue is they have a reputation for having very bad build quality. Yeah, and I would add to that their other thing is the people worried about is the coding team, their programming team. And another thing, which I didn't realize until you did your interview with Bug and Spooky Luke, is that I did not know that they had gone to this new board set. Warden. This is the fourth board set since the company started. People are worried about that. It's not that old of a company. and it's and i didn't know that they're because immediately my first thought is so were there problems with pinatar because you immediately switched from it right because they only did halloween and ultraman on pinatar so i again i don't own those games so i'm not it doesn't affect me but it's like i don't like i don't understand why i get why they want to have their own in-house board i get why they don't want to pay a third party uh profit and you know to to use someone else's board set but it's like it's like there there are new things and i'm i'm not clear because i we haven't seen them out in the field that these new things will actually be better and uh for for a company being as established as they are you know uh playfield chipping aside which while they did have some on tna 1.0 they that of all the major manufacturers i'd say they probably have had the least complaints about it yeah so they're confident they resolved it pretty quickly but But of all the companies, I'm thinking CGC and Stern and JJP and American Pinball and Spooky, when it comes to games constantly needing fiddling around because stuff's not working right and rebinding orbits, it's Spooky I hear the most complaints about. And I think for a lot of people where maybe some of that surprise on the day one thing is there was a lot of online discussion of people that were like, you know what? But after having Rick and Morty, after having Halloween, I just cannot day one it even though I want to. They like the way the game looks, but they're so worried that they're going to be working on it all the time, that it breaks more than the average pinball. And I said that on 118 as well. And whether I'm a dealer or not, I'm still honest. Yes, they do require the most tinkering, the most fix. They do. They absolutely do. And until that changes, that's kind of my stance as well. So I can't argue that. I'm not as worried about the new board set because, number one, I'm not smart enough to know, like, board sets and all this and that. All I know is on Halloween and Ultraman, on my Halloween, it was a pain in the ass that every little LED light is on its own board and they're daisy-chained. I can't freaking stand that. And I know that they told me these new board sets are more node-like, kind of like a stern modular kind of thing where multiple LEDs on board so you can replace them much easier. You got Cat5 cables that are communicating with one another. We don't have the super glue thing. So of the surface level stuff that I care about, that's being addressed with this new system. So that's why I am looking forward to it. But, sure, it might have hiccups and stuff like that. And ultimately, I try to think positive and think, well, if they know that this is the next reiteration, this is getting them closer to – they're not going to try to make a board set worse than the last one. so if this is their well no measure of progression trying to get more to what they can't i'm i'm good with it but yes four board sets in different that sucks it gets old yes i don't know when we're going to see this game i think january is going to be the stream is that happening before any are shipped to customers that i i would say they could just plan a live stream of their own and still have actually already gotten it out in the wild There no rule that says you can I know the licensing is not allowing gameplay to that extent yet or live gameplay, but it's coming in January. I think that they said they're going on the production line in January, mid to late January, and they usually make the first batch about 30, and Luke said production-wise they keep those much longer. They take longer to build them. They want to get those 30 to people probably that they know really well. Those will go, one will go to probably each distributor or something like that. They'll go to the local operator, like their close-knit people, so that they know if things come up, let's change the production. Let's fix this before the majority of them go out in the future. So they'll build 30. I think they'll start beefing that up probably in March, if I had to guess. Then they'll start rolling out. But we'll say they set their codes much further along than Halloween was at release. They described some of the basics of the code, and I think it sounds super fun to me. I'm just a sucker. It looks freaking cool, and it's a cool theme. I'm down. I'm really excited about this one. Yes, I can tell. Fucking Scooby-Doo, man. Come on. This is not my theme. Uh-oh. Chicago Gaming Company is in the news, question mark? Where in the hell are the LE Cactus Caneys? I've heard they're shipping. I got mine. I don't know how many, but I've heard they're shipping. Well, they are, but then they weren't. I think they're still probably a part thing. I did reach out to Chicago Gaming Company, my contacts over there, and said, hey, can I give an update to people? My customers are freaking out. The community is freaking out. And they returned and said they can report that Cactus Canyon alleys are shipping. I said, oh, well, that's great then. Okay. Can you tell me, like, what's y'all's goal? You're running 100 a day, 100 a week, 20 a week, soft roll, and they said no comment. So I don't know what that means.
    65:49
    Pinball Brothers, speaking of production, they're beginning on Queen via NAP Arcade. I saw his post on naparcade.org. It looks like Queens are being built and manufactured. I don't know when they're going to roll out those, but that's another game I'd like to get some more time on. Queen is coming. Aliens are still shipping as well. We just got some more of those. And what would the pinball show be without talking about pinball awards? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've had more meetings with the team.
    66:20
    In our evil lair. Yes, called Zoom. The evil lair of Zoom. It's crazy because in our last meeting, Dennis Creasel, he was in this rolling chair, and he turned around in his rolling chair and pressed a button, and David Dennis slid beneath the floor into fiery flames.
    66:41
    I'm pretty sure David keeps missing all the meetings because we pick a time where he's traveling for work and he falls asleep. He's like, I'm in Saskatchewan. He's like, I'm in Atlantic time. And I'm like, that time zone sounds made up. Yeah, nobody follows Atlantic time. That is a pretend land. So not much information as of yet, but you guys will be seeing an announcement this week from the Pinball Network about the award show this year. Super excited. We can say it is moving forward. We're finalizing some qualifications on which games to count for this year and the judges' ballots and stuff. And we've got some other much more significant changes, I'll go ahead and say.
    67:19
    Oh, no, no, you're not going to tell them, are you? No, I'm not going to tell them. Which I'm just going to say people are going to want to listen to the announcement about because they might care more. There's all kinds of exciting things. Teaser. Man, and I'm saying too much here. The committee's probably going to get mad at me, Dennis. But mark your calendars for January 28th. Yeah, well, it wouldn't hurt to mark that. Okay, yeah, mark that.
    67:47
    It's beginning to look a lot like Pimba Market Trends. Hap, hap, happy holidays, everybody. Turning up this week is none other than Scooby-Doo. Out of the gate, this game has been a sales success. 1,969 units. They're all going to sell. Congratulations, Spooky Pinball. You've done well, kids. You've done well. Everyone's itching to get their hands on Spooky Scooby-Doo Pinball Machine. We want to see it played now. What about the code? What number am I? When are they going to ship? Should I go butter or no butter cabinet? All of those questions are what we will be sitting and discussing over the next, what, 16 months. But for now, we can celebrate how damn great that game looks. How does it shoot? How does it play? Only time will tell. But me personally, as a pinball nut, I'm so stoked to get this game. Don't piss on my excitement. Also training up this week is Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon Remake LE, because they're shipping!
    68:51
    Are they shipping? the reason I'm trending this up it's not that the shipping delays would be trending down communication probably from CGC trending down but son of a hot biscuit I was able to take the LE from Cincinnati home from the show set it up in the game room in my lanta we can pick and pick and pick on what we don't like regarding CGC's communication lack thereof setting dates and blowing past timelines deadlines at the end of the day. Once you get your Cactus Canyon remake, LE, SE+, for those of you who have an SE, I stand in front of my LE simply amazed.
    69:33
    This company's attention to detail, their ability to create a game that is just pure pinball fun, the aesthetics, the visuals, the sounds, the build, the integration, the storytelling. Josh Sharp has said it before when he talks about the Bally Williams charm, and damn it, not only does CGC replicate that in these products, but they expand upon it. This is hands down easily one of the most well-rounded, perfect example of modern pinball execution that I've experienced since I've been in pinball. It is just so, so nicely done. I cannot state that enough. it's ho ho ho time i gotta keep it positive baby so training up this week is pinball positivity tis the season and all i'm in a giving mood i'm always a giver but even more so this month things might get cold around where you're from so you nestle up with your loved ones in the warm glow of a fire flannel jammies fucking sing kumbaya why can't we have that for pinball it seems like everywhere i turn anymore it's just negativity bashing this person, shitting on anything new in pinball. That's why we can't have anything nice. Can we not just be chill? Can we not find beauty in things? Find joy, fun. It seems like anything newsworthy or anything new in this hobby, all you read, all you hear, all you see, 90% of it is the negativity surrounding that item. Where's the 10% stuff? The feel-goods, the nut-ticklers. We need more of that. I have so much fun and pinball in playing new games and installing new items. I just freaking love it. And it just kills me to see how miserable some people, some of you, are when it comes to this hobby. If you legit can't find anything that you love or are passionate about or anything that you can reframe or refocus your attention to, then find something else. Stamp collecting, stone skipping, or be disgruntled solo. No need to share. And it may be Christmas, but numbers don't lie. I'm only here to report the facts, and the fact is that trending down this week, with the announcement of Elvira Premium going back on the line, you're going to see secondary prices on Elvira's House of Horrors 40th Anniversary and LEs take a little bit of a dip. The softening of the marketplace has already shown this dip in these two particular models, but even more so now that we know there's a great chance that come February there will be many more premiums available. Some people were just biting the bullet because, hell, they wanted to play Elvira. And they kept bumping the premium production run, so, you know, I'm going to pay $10,000, I'm going to pay $15,000 or $20,000. When the consumer sees opportunities in the future, it affects the current market. Same goes for the rumor we heard a couple weeks ago with Twilight Zone, rumored to be the next remake that Chicago Gaming Company has its eyes on in the future. So, turning down is Twilight Zone. It hasn't tanked with the possible whispers and discussion of that being remade. You're seeing prices on Twilight Zone fall just a bit outside.
    72:43
    Oh, speaking of turning up this week, did you guys hear special when Lit is making their return for episode 90? It's coming, people. And it's got me amped up as much as the recent release of Avatar.
    72:55
    Wind Raider. Wayward Wind. Water Dragons. Water Moccasins. I don't know. The Wind and the Rivers. The Spirit of the River.
    73:06
    One of my favorite call-outs ever. Looking for that special holiday gift and you want to save a buck or two? I've got just the idea for you in this week's Deal of the Week. Buy, buy, buy! Deal of the Week this week brought to you by Flippin' Out Pinball. Switch up your game room a little bit this year and provide your family and friends with something that isn't just obsessively silver ball. We've got a couple more Golden Tee 2022s in stock. They're $37.95. That's an MSRP on them plus shipping. At a fourth or a half of the price of a pinball machine, takes up a fourth or half of the room you may just have double the fun throw your game room it's not gonna hurt you any people love it online leaderboards competitions these things are a blast and at 37.95 it's a deal but but zach that's not a deal of the week what makes this special well don't tell anybody but i can shave 200 off of that for you how about it let's go with 34.99 Bye, bye, bye! People, search long, search hard, search deep. Find me a Minty Congo. I wants it. I needs it. Gotta have it. And when you fulfill that bounty, I fulfill your pockets with Zinge diamonds. Find me a Congo, people. I don't want a busted ass up one, no. I want a new one. NOS Playfield. Or clear-coated. I don't think they ever repro that Playfield. Don't give me a yellow faded Congo. I can do the cabinet decoder. I need a nice Playfield. And as always, I am merely here at your service to report the facts. Nothing more, nothing less, because numbers never lie, and neither do I, on Pinball Market Trends. All right, Dennis, do you get your eggnog ready? I still need to go buy my eggnog. I do like eggnog. An eggnog kind of fella. It's the egg. I like to feel the yolk sliding down. And who in the hell still thinks those regular plain sugar cookies that are decorated are good? Come on, people. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean you have to make a nasty old white sugar cookie. No, no. Make good cookies. We still want snickerdoodle. We still want peanut butter cookies. Snickerdoodle tastes the same as a sugar cookie. No, it doesn't. The cinnamon's only in there for color. Chocolate chip oatmeal. I like spritz cookies for Christmas. I used to do those as a kid. Spritz, where you get the spritz gun and they come out as shapes. Yeah, those nasty old things. No, you apologize to the spritz cookie. They're so plain.
    76:04
    That's why you frost them. I'm going to have my jammies on. There's a little bug going through our household. Why? Is he trying to sell you more Scooby-Doos? Nothing like Christmas cheer with squirting in the toilet.
    76:17
    No, I only got three more. Bye, bye, bye. Dennis, where can people catch you? They can always reach out to me, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. You've been messing that up lately. You know what? I've got two names. You're messing up on EGP. It's because of the Patreon now. Freaking Patreon. I've got all these things. Patreon.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. But you get your show.
    76:41
    We've got a lot of Patreon people. They're very supportive. And kind. And I had people respond. They were really, like one person in particular, I don't remember their name, but on Facebook, They said they were really pleased that I bought all this audio equipment. They're like, you actually used your Patreon to make the show better.
    76:58
    And then just blow it on date night. Dude, EGP does sound sexy now. Well, it's those Shure microphones and the fancy Zoom PodTrack technology. Nicely done over there, EGP. You can catch me at thepinballnetwork at gmail.com. Remember, you can win free stuff. All you've got to do is guess what pinball machine is coming to Dennis this holiday season. The pinball network at gmail.com. You're going to want that prize, I have a feeling. Maybe you won't. I don't know. We're givers here. I'm just trying to help people. Also, follow, like, and subscribe straight down the middle. And follow, like, and subscribe, like I said before, to Flippin' Out Pinball. We are now and continue to be year after year an IFPA sponsor. See? Zach loves the competitions. Mm-hmm. I think I'm a gold sponsor, too. Mm-hmm. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Product showcase this week, Led Zeppelin Pro and Premium. Rock out with your Santa out. No I'm just imagining Getting like this little teeny tiny Santa hat Just stretch it over Just the tip It's so festive Nicole You wanna see my Yule log?
    78:18
    Yule twig if they like it. Led Zeppelin. Nothing says Christmas like Stern Pinball's Led Zeppelin Pro Premium.
    78:28
    Stuck in the airport mode? Yeah, airport mode. Kevin! John Candy in the back of a truck playing polka. Come on! It's home alone, people. We need a home alone pinball machine. Get yourself a Led Zeppelin Pro and Premium today. James Bond 007 Pro and Premium. We're still taking orders on that. and we have a list. Go to FlippinOutPinball.com or go to our Facebook page and see the long list of stuff we have in inventory ready to ship. If you're listening to this on Monday, I want the challenge of trying to get this to you by Christmas. Let me be your little reindeer, Vixen.
    79:07
    I would totally be Vixen. Just sounds sexy. Are you fully connected yet? If not, get your ass connected with Stern Insider Connected. If you've got a game that's eligible and you're missing, hashtag fail. Don't be a Christmas loner. Give yourself a boner this year with Insider Connected.
    79:26
    Get fully connected. Speaking of, man, I want to go see Avatar. I want to get my little hair braid gangly thing intertwined with that movie. No spoilers, people. Golden Tees. We got the PGA Golden Tees now. Did you see my ad, Dennis? For the Golden Tees? No. I saw the cool one you did, though, with the facehugger on Santa, though. I like that one. Yeah, the alien. We have aliens in stock, too. We've got so much cool stuff in stock right now. You name a game, we probably have it. Just don't name Godzilla.
    79:56
    Can't they name pro? Do you have any pros? No. Never mind. Don't name Godzilla at all. As I said before, I really mean it again. I was trying to impress Nicole, my wife. It's hard to do. I can't impress my wife, but I still chase after we've been married for 16 years together for over 20, And I still chased after her acceptance and her being proud of me and her thinking kind of I'm a badass. And she has lost all of that loving feeling. I told her, I said, oh, you think we should get our Facebook likes up on flipping out pinball? Oh, that's like a big deal to you? She was like, no, it'd be nice. Like, you know, and I said, babe, hold my beer. So I need you all's help. Please like, follow Facebook's flipping out page, please. And the Instagram, please, please, please. I want to, you know, flex for a little bit. Show her my social acumen. I'm sure you're an influencer. Yeah, I'm a penfluencer, baby. Don't get too horny. The penfluencer's coming to bed tonight with his Yule twig.
    80:56
    Don't break it. It's like my back. Oh, your poor back. TPN last week, we had a lot of stuff like talking pinball with Joel. He was doing a video podcast in the gang on Scooby-Doo First Impressions. Go back, watch that video on demand. And Pinball Party Episode 14, they had Ken Cromwell on. That was a fantastic episode. You need to go listen to that. I love Crommy.
    81:18
    We had Aussie Pinball Podcast Episode 11 with Marco Ruzagnale. And the Final Round Pinball Podcast Episode 63, The Bad Touch. That Jeff Teelis is such a stinker. TPN this week, we got all kinds of fun festivities, including some awards stuff. But I did want to remind you all that on December 25th, Pride Pinball is presenting the third annual Very Merry Christmas stream at 8 p.m. Central, Elvire's House of Horrors, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and a stuffed stocking giveaway. Pride Pinball, behave. For Dennis Creasel, I'm Zach Minney. And remember, folks, I want you all to have a happy holidays, enjoy your Christmas, enjoy your New Year, and if you happen to need a Scooby-Doo pinball, you can always contact Flippin' Out, a.k.a. Chili Dooby-Doo. Oh, thank you, Dennis. And always practice safe pinball, and I'm not hard to shop for for Christmas. It doesn't take a lot to make your favorite pinball podcaster happy. All I want is free. I want your support through clicking, liking, and subscribing, and following, flipping out Facebook and Instagram. Just do it now, people, please. It's the holidays. Don't be a Christmas dick.
    82:34
    I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know It's Saturday. We're not supposed to record right now. Did I tell you I went to the ER last weekend? No. Yeah. I did. Oh, no. You're back. I'm back. god fucking cincinnati that fucking neurosurgeon all he cared about was brains no my life has changed and then i went to the show oh and then it was a little stiff come sunday now granted i had help i didn't lift lift anything you kind of you lifted some stuff though well maybe like not crazy though because i was like i'm not messing up my back the same feeling as pre-surgery. Down my leg, down my ass, down my ankle. A jolt of lightning, dull, harsh pain. We may have to start the Patreon just to pay for the surgery.
    83:44
    This is the Pinball Show, episode 119 with yours truly, Zach, Minnie, and my co... What is the proper thing? Because I hate saying co-hosts. Co-hosts sounds like... Because it makes me sound like the Bruce Nightingale to your Ron Hallett Jr.? Yeah, it sounds like I'm the host, here's my co-host. But it's equal, so how do you do it? I mean, well, it depends, because remember under the original structure of the planned pinball show, you were going to be hosting every single week. I was going to only host every other week. And in fact, I think the listeners at this point are still somewhat confused. Like, is it a weekly show, or is it every other week?
    84:22
    It's... Such a weird part of that song. And may all your Christmas heads be white. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.
    85:04
    Eat your heart out and bang.