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DPP #125 "After Stern Breakdown"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·55m 57s·analyzed·May 26, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Don covers Stern factory tour, licensing deep-dive, market cooling trends, and hints at Aerosmith Vault.

Summary

Don recounts his experience at Stern Pinball's 36-hour media event in Chicago, where he toured the factory, met industry figures, and heard George Gomez explain licensing complexity. He discusses why John Wick likely lacks gun imagery (licensing costs and approval chains), how market saturation is shifting Stern's strategy toward growth and community engagement, and shares anecdotes about restrictive licensing deals (including a failed Hunger Games machine and 007 challenges).

Key Claims

  • Venom LE machines are now selling for sub-$9,000, down from $12,999 MSRP, indicating market softening and collector hesitation

    high confidence · Don cites real secondary market pricing as evidence of cooling demand post-COVID surge

  • Stern invited content creators to the factory as a strategic pivot to grow the market amid cooling sales, not an apology for controversy

    high confidence · Don frames the event as a reaction to post-COVID market normalization and distributor caution rather than responding to online backlash

  • John Wick lacks gun imagery likely due to licensing complexity (weapons manufacturers requiring separate approval), not political censorship

    high confidence · George Gomez presentation explained that weapons manufacturers must approve all depictions; Don reasons this adds prohibitive cost/complexity

  • A Hunger Games pinball was in production but abandoned because the licensor was too restrictive for Stern's design goals

    medium confidence · Don heard this anecdote from Stern staff during licensing presentation; no specific year or replacement title mentioned

  • John Wick LE foiling is the best Stern has produced, surpassing Jaws, Venom, and Blood Red Kiss of Ira 40th Anniversary

    high confidence · Don observed machines in production at factory and compared finish quality directly

  • Aerosmith Vault decals were spotted in receiving area, suggesting the Vault game may be in production or restocking

    medium confidence · Don saw half-pallet of Aerosmith vinyl backbox decals; speculates they could be warranty stock or backstock, cannot confirm production status

  • Waffles was the internal code name for John Wick during development

    high confidence · Don confirmed by Stern staff; he notes the code name has no obvious connection to the IP

Notable Quotes

  • “The fervor has now died down. The prices have not come down, but the sales are definitely dropping.”

    Don @ ~8:30 — Frames the market cooling as Stern's rationale for the media event strategy

  • “I think what I'm trying to say here is that that's probably the impetus of why this new marketing reach out happened.”

    Don @ ~15:00 — Don's thesis: Stern is pivoting to growth/education, not apologizing for controversy

  • “The foiling on this game is the best that I've seen... Each one of those has a gold shimmer in it that just moves in the light. It's unreal.”

    Don @ ~48:00 — Direct observation of John Wick LE production quality at factory

  • “Everything 100% is approved by the license holder to the licensee from the licensor... even if they had some kind of political agenda to try to shoehorn in there it would just come with risk.”

    Don (paraphrasing George Gomez) @ ~62:00 — Summarizes Gomez's licensing framework to debunk conspiracy theories about John Wick gun removal

  • “Why would you want to do anything? It's hard enough to get the regular stuff that makes sense approved.”

    Don @ ~65:00 — Reinforces why Stern would not add political content given licensing burden

  • “A Hunger Games pinball was in production not even rumored like this was a game that they were going to make and along the way the licensor was too restrictive.”

    Don (recounting Stern staff) @ ~78:00 — Confirms abandoned title due to licensing inflexibility

  • “You have to make it look like it's fully closed before we'll approve it... you go through all this trouble... and then you get okayed from the license holder, but then the license holder for the car has to sign off.”

    Don (recounting 007 anecdote) @ ~95:00 — Illustrates multi-layer licensing approval complexity and cost

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyDonpersonGeorge GomezpersonJason KnapppersonGary SternpersonJack DangerpersonSeth Davisperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern transitioning from capacity-constrained to demand-constrained manufacturing; distributors reducing order quantities and ordering in tranches

    high · Don speculates distributors shifting from buying 25 units upfront to 12, then 6 more if they sell, indicating sales uncertainty

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern hosting 36-hour media blitz for content creators at factory as strategic outreach to grow pinball market awareness

    high · Don attended all-expenses-paid event with 24 participants; describes it as 'Shillathon 2024' but frames as market growth strategy not apology

  • ?

    leak_detection: Aerosmith Vault decals spotted in Stern receiving area warehouse, suggesting potential production or restocking of Vault title

    medium · Don saw 'half pallet stack of vinyl decals for the back box for Aerosmith'; speculates could be warranty stock or backstock but quantity unclear

  • ?

    licensing_signal: John Wick gun imagery absence explained by multi-layer weapons manufacturer licensing approval requirements, not political censorship

    high · George Gomez detailed approval chain complexity; Don reasoned weapons manufacturers' separate approval adds prohibitive cost and oversight

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Stern abandoned Hunger Games license due to licensor restrictions incompatible with pinball design goals; illustrates licensing deal-breaking scenarios

    medium · George Gomez shared anecdote that licensor was 'too restrictive for what they wanted to do'; deal fell apart rather than compromise design

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.168

0:00
Ain't no frontin' in my stuntin'. I can never get tired of the Denise vibes. Man, what a couple of days it has been. It's like I've slid into the weekend now. How did I even get here so quick? What's going on, everybody? It's Don. I'm in the pinball world. My finger is firmly on the pulse, measuring the highs, the lows, the early ventricular beats. of the rhythm of the night, of the streets, of the streets out in front of Stern Pinball in, what is it, East Elk Hampstead, Chicago area, Elk Elk Helm Township, Elk Grove Village, Elk Grove Village. I think, actually, not a crazy misnomer, they actually have an Elk Grove there. I saw some people parked in a big pen, almost like Jurassic Park, but with, like, giant mutant-looking deers. We're back from the Stern Tour. The Shillathon 2024 is now over, and I can tell you all all about my experience there. What a freaking amazing time. I can't even encapsulate it into an adjective. It wasn't show up, walk around the factory, here's your tote bag, sign the guest book on your way out. This thing, this was a monumental 36-hour marathon of awesomeness that happened. Now, I'll cut it first. I'm not going to make you sit and wait and listen to this whole thing just to hear what the next confirmed rumored title from Stern is because we didn't get it. There wasn't any big, giant announcement like, hey, guys, come and look at the black and white Godzilla 70 that normal people don't even know about for another two weeks. We're going to let you guys play it ahead of time. That didn't happen. But it didn't just feel like what – and predominantly, you know, the feel from the community is that this was like an apology tour or something Stern was doing. and whether that was triggered by the gun-traversy as it was, which seems to exist only online and only in the heads of some very fanatical people, but it didn't feel like that at all. I think what this is is an adjustment, a reaction, a pivot to the ebb and flow of the industry. Let's cover that for a second here. The last couple of years of COVID have been completely insane. Prices going nuts. The fervor has now died down. The prices have not come down, but the sales are definitely dropping. But it's not like sales are dropping, you know, in actuality. It's just compared to where we've been the last few years. It's like things are adjusting to a little bit more normal. And so before, you know, hey, you know, take, you know, 2021, right? You know, Godzilla's got years-long waiting lists for the premium. They're selling faster than they can be built at the factory. Like, it's all they can do to just keep making machines. And some of that is due to supply chain issues, slowing things down. in the midst of transferring to a more efficient facility, the rigors of working from COVID, how can you assemble a pinball machine working remotely from home? Like, that just can't happen. So back then there wasn't a need to, like, you know, let's do everything we can to pursue every avenue of pinball marketing, right? The things were selling even faster than selling themselves, right? Now we're in a new reality, a new era. We're going to get another era's tour from Taylor Swift at some point, I think so. But now they're reaching out and trying to say, let's grow the market some more so we can keep this wave going, right? It's no joke that pinball sales have been higher than they have been five, ten years ago. The historical perspective, right, where they're selling to locations mainly and also homeowners are picking and choosing which ones they want. Now you've got folks like me coming in like, hey, let's rediscover pinball. Let's go all into this hobby. I said it before when I began this about two years ago or so. it was like I was just wandering through a convention hall and I turned a corner and just walked into this wonderland of pinball going on that like I didn't know it was this deep I didn't know it was this big I didn't know that river was this wide sir you know so I fell right in man and I've been splashing around having a great time so you know I fill up my game room right planned on having one machine plus one virtual machine and that would cover all instances that I would need and then heck that went right out the window and now we're bursting right okay so so now we're here A lot of us, myself included, are fairly saturated when it comes to the game rooms. Now we're being a little bit more choosy about what's coming out, and we've seen those market trends reflected in the recent releases. Let's go with Stern Pinball because they're the classic example. Look at what Venom has done. The LE's amazing-looking machine, super fun gameplay, and that's not me shilling. I own the machine. I dug it. I sold it, and even now when I go back and play it, I'm a little nostalgic. Like it's a fun game. But you go ahead and pick one up. Go pick up an LE. They've been selling sometimes sub $9,000 now for a limited edition machine that was $12,999 out of the gate. So that has got some people gun shy from distributors all the way down to us normal consumers, right? So when it comes to their next release, Jaws, okay, that was an L1 game. Dude's a goat. Game's amazing. But you can still see, like, this isn't the release that Godzilla was, where it was just phenomenal out of the gate and you couldn't get one. You can go and get one now. It's still a great game. It's more in demand than Venom, but the prices, while not marked up $2,000 to $3,000 above MSRP, they're still fairly reasonable, a little softer. So what's a game like John Wick to do? What's Elliot Eisman's design team-led game, Tim Sexton-coded game? Who the heck did that? I forget who did the art. But where is that really going to land here? I think people are probably going to be a little gun shy From seeing what happened with Venom This is a game that does have a lot of parallels to the Venom machine Although I do think this one Has improved upon that in just about every category By degrees Not by large leaps and bounds But I think cutting to the chase This is a better game than Venom was But I think people are going to be a little gun shy To just jump in there on an LE And other people are sitting there that want the LE Which you should because it's amazing Hashtag spoiler But people will probably be holding back a little bit that otherwise would have gone in on this just because of what we've seen with the last few releases and where the market is going. That all makes sense. So what's Stern to do, right? They're not sitting there just inundated with orders like they probably were before. Distributors are being a little choosy. Maybe instead of asking for 25 games out the gate, they'll ask for 12, and then they'll sell those and maybe ask for six more. And then if those sell, maybe they'll get four or five more and then kind of piece it together like that. Probably that's what they're seeing. So they're like, we need more eyes on pinball. The only way we can get more sales is by more growth, really. You know, if there's people that are now taking more of a sideline, you know, we're happy with our collections. We're going to sit on the bank. We're going to enjoy them. And we're just going to watch the canoes flow by. And maybe we'll go on something that looks completely amazing. But we're not out there, you know, fighting like fish, swimming salmon, streaming upstream to spawn, you know, like a bunch of grizzly bears in Alaska, right? So probably that's where we're at right now. So they're reaching out to folks that have a lot of eyeballs. And those are people on YouTube. And after this weekend where I met some YouTube people, like I totally have a brand new perspective for that piece of the content market. So I think what I'm trying to say here is that that's probably the impetus of why this new marketing reach out happened. Now, of course, there was a backlash from some over exuberance members of the pinball content creation area. You know them. You know their names. You've listened to their podcasts. I know you've listened because their numbers are insane, you know, because controversy sells, man. And, you know, people going wild, losing their crap online. Everybody wants to munch on popcorn and listen to that. But, you know, I try to put a message out there just kind of, you know, just preaching some perspective before everybody completely loses their crap. So I don't know what happened, but somehow I was invited to go to this store tour, which was made principally for the pinball kind of community of content folks, I guess. You know, it's kind of cringy to say that, but I guess it's true. I'm producing hours of content, so I guess I belong. That's good. You know, just as everybody else does. And anybody out there sitting on the fence that wants to get into this, I'll help you. It's fun. Just go ahead and do it, man. Do it. More voices. You know, competition's great. I don't even think we're competing because we're all working towards having fun at pinball, which is what we should be doing. Anyway, that's my message of peace. That's my thesis statement on it. So they throw this event. And they invite everybody.
Tim Sexton
person
Dwight Sullivanperson
John Wickgame
Jawsgame
Venomgame
Godzillagame
Aerosmith Vaultgame
Hunger Gamesgame
007 (James Bond)game
Interiumlocation
Stern Pinball factorylocation
Loser Kidsperson/group
Electric Bat Arcadeperson/group
Ian Jacobyperson
Triple Drainperson/group
Barbecue Challengegame
  • $

    market_signal: Venom LE secondary market collapse ($12,999 MSRP to sub-$9,000 retail) indicating oversaturation and collector flight to next release

    high · Don cites Venom price erosion as making collectors 'gun shy' on John Wick despite it being a better game

  • ?

    community_signal: Jack Danger actively participated in Stern factory tour and offered design mentorship to Don, supporting homebrew/community projects

    high · Don reports Jack gave 'tips, some good advice, and some encouragement' on his side project during tour

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern staff transparency during factory tour and media event signals confidence in product pipeline and openness to community scrutiny

    medium · Don notes Stern allowed photography almost everywhere except model shop and backstock; staff openly discussed licensing failures and code names

  • ?

    product_concern: John Wick LE foiling finish represents new production quality bar at Stern, surpassing recent releases

    high · Don observed machines in production and noted foiling finish 'leaves [Venom/Jaws] in the dust' with gold shimmer effects

  • ?

    product_strategy: Waffles confirmed as internal code name for John Wick; code name had no obvious connection to IP

    high · Don was told by Stern staff during factory tour; contrasts with other code names like 'Jaws' for Jurassic Park and 'Chewy' for Venom

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern pivoting from seller's market (2021-2022 COVID surge) to buyer's market, now investing in content creator relationships and factory transparency as growth strategy

    high · Don observes market cooling, distributor caution, and frames factory event as Stern's response to grow market share rather than apology for controversy

  • ?

    licensing_signal: 007/James Bond licensing required separate approvals from Aston Martin (car manufacturer) beyond primary licensor, causing design iteration cycles

    high · George Gomez anecdote: ejector seat roof design had to be re-engineered multiple times to satisfy both Aston Martin and primary licensor nitpicks

    • 8:42
    Almost. And, you know, they say, all expenses paid. Come out for a media blitz. Come play John Wick. Come talk about it. We'll talk to you and all that business. So I'll cover how the day went and everything and then some takeaway points from it. And then we'll talk about some of the rumors that are floating out there. All right, so I show up in town. I live local to Chicago, a couple-hour drive. I was like, you know what, they offered to fly me, which there are flights from my town to Chicago. I said, you know what, that's fine. I'll drive myself in. They did buy me a hotel room, which I'm appreciative, which is right across the street, the Holiday Inn from the factory. That was awesome. There was also, I think, a Pakistani wedding going on at the same time. So there was a festival atmosphere all around. uh sukreji uh or assalamu alaikum anyway so uh i get into town uh get a text from my boy jason knapp he's in town he wants to hang out and don what are you doing before the show starts at 1 p.m i said probably going to interium because it's kind of what i do i like hanging out that mall there's a japan store there's a lego shop there's chicago popcorn like it's nuts plus interium is an awesome place used to be the namco museum i want to go play some barbecue he says bet so i go and Pick up Jason Knapp. The two of us ride like gangsters to Interium. And where do we go? First stop up the stairs, but Berrio's Barbecue Challenge. I bought Jason Knapp his very first game play of Berrio's Barbecue Challenge. I'm happy to be the barbecue ambassador. You know, let me show barbecue. That's a game you need to play any way you can. Buy it if you want. Don't buy it if you want. Go find it on location. It's at Interium. Go play it there. It's playing as good as it can play at Interium. So we played a couple of games on that, and John Wick was sitting right behind us, and I don't even think we went over there and played it at all because we knew that was coming at the factory. So we had some good times. We had some laughs. We went around and played some games. We played some Jaws. It was cool meeting Jason in person, and that's kind of the theme for me for the whole thing was just meeting people that I've heard about, read about, watched online. I got to talk to them, interact with real time. That was really the crux of what was going on. and the pinball was just that sugar-frosted cherry on top or that Vienna beef hot dog with the celery salt on it for the whole trip. So we go in there at 1 o'clock. We start meeting everybody, and, like, here's Loser Kids. I've met them before. I met Josh before. I didn't meet Scott. That was the first time. So, hey, how you doing? Kayla and Rachel were there from Electric Bat Arcade. Jason Knapp was there. We met him. Ian Jacoby from Nudge Magazine. A ton of people that run YouTube channels that I really haven't even interacted with yet got to meet those folks.
    11:06
    Triple Drain was even there. I met a third of them. You know, I met Jacob. No, gosh, what the heck? Joel Engelbert. God, the man with the beard is, like, seared into my brain. I had trouble finding the name there. Yeah, so, like, everybody's there. That's awesome. And then I get to meet George Gomez for the first time, Dimitri Martin. No, he wasn't there.
    11:29
    Dwight and Tim Sexton and Gary Stern was there. Seth Davis, got to meet him for the first time. Charming lad, quite tall fellow. you know but like like putting faces with names and and podcast voices with people that's an experience and so that's just kind of like how it started and that is absolutely how it went so let's chronologically go through this thing uh so we went in went to the the uh the showroom floor uh which in their fantastic new factory is amazing i was there back for the the tour uh during expo where everything was still a cubicle farm they hadn't completely converted everything over half of those cubicles from the front entrance are gone and they have about 12 pinball machines set up. Their goal for that area is to fill that up with their games so the public can come by as a visitor, play Stern's games, and even do factory tours. It's the dang Jelly Belly factory, which is phenomenal. I love factory tours. If there's a factory tour, a retail space, that would be awesome. We all met in there. Dwight Sullivan was our tour guide. There was about 24 of us all together. We had the best tour of that factory. Far better than if it made the expo tour seem like only 40%. We got to see all kinds of stuff. I think I've talked about this before on my live stream and things that I did back in antiquity when I was there. The Factory I'd seen before, but it was nice seeing it now with the lines fully populated before they were just coming online. They're rolling these games out of there. The John Wick premiums and LEs are being made. The LEs, everybody's saying it, and it's true. You've got to see it in person to appreciate the foiling on this game is the best that I've seen. Jaws looked amazing with the sheen. Venom was great. The Blood Red Kiss of Ira in the 40th anniversary, they were the best that I had seen. But this, man, leaves it in the dust. How are you going to do that Jurassic Park 30th anniversary and not do this treatment to the graphics? Man, they look awesome. The pictures of the side of the cabinet, when you see the flames coming off the candles, each one of those has a gold shimmer in it that just moves in the light. It's unreal. Best looking art finish I've seen I love it And there was like hundreds of them there Just all being made So I don't think they're going to make 300 And then save the rest for later And say they made all 1,000 I think they're cranking them out Because like half of them I saw ready to go All in cabinets This time they took us in the receiving area Which is the only spot on the tour that I saw a little clue Of something that may be hitherto unannounced And that is the Aerosmith Vault The game that everybody's been asking for Right? It was crazy you know uh we were I mean essentially this is a warehouse We looking at unloading and loading bays you know with big semi backed up into them But it all full of pinball stuff man just floor to ceiling like everything Like I just want to grab a box of something. I go home with it giggling like a schoolgirl. But I did see like a half pallet stack of vinyl decals for the back box for Aerosmith. Why those are there could be any reason, including no reason at all. Maybe they're just reshuffling things and restacking stuff. They're just back stock in case somebody down the road, you know, rips or tears their decal and needs a warranty replacement or just wants to purchase another one. They have, you know, 700 of them or something. I couldn't see exactly how many it was. I didn't see that it was 1,000 of them sitting there. It could have been 75. But it was a good amount of Aerosmith vinyl decals. So, you know, hey, maybe there is a market for that that I've missed, you know. It was a game that came out back when, you know, things weren't as popular as they are now. So there may still be an appetite for that machine. I don't know. but that was the only clue that I could see though we were side eye looking around I will say that as you walk through the wiring department of Stern there's these wiring diagrams for every game they make and they have in production and they all have their code names written on it you know Jaws for Godzilla and Goonies for Stranger Things I'm trying to think of some of the other ones and I remember last time at Expo I saw Waffles, the wiring diagram for Waffles was in full display and I thought Waffles, that must be Stranger Things because Waffles and Eleven right but stern doesn't use names like that that really point to you know exactly what they are um jaws was the code name for jurassic park you know and the i guess the uh you know the big mechanism that t-rex does have jaws on it so that makes sense i think venom was chewy um which okay another mouth kind of reference but they're they're esoteric enough that you can't really pin it down on anything but i did see waffles and none of us could really place it well it turns out waffles was a code name for john wick so that has no through line that i can think of i would have called it pencils, but I don't name things at Stern. So that was kind of interesting. So we were looking for code names. I didn't see anything else that really jumped out that I didn't already know what it went to. But, I mean, there's stacks and stacks of these wiring boards and everything, and all they would have had to do was take their next Cornerstone game and just flip it around while we were doing the tour, and we wouldn't have saw it. But they were allowing us to take pictures just about everywhere. There was only a couple spots they didn't allow us to in the back stock area. They didn't want us taking photos there, which was just off the receiving area. And also, once we went past all the accessories, the other accessory storage area, for those of you that did the tour, this was towards the end of the tour, where they had that area with the retail shop set up. Once we got over there, it was like no pictures. The reason was because they took us into the model shop, which is essentially a cordoned off area of chain link fence that's just adjacent to, you know, where that back stock inventory area is. The wall of microwaves and the break room cafeteria area, just on the other side of that. If you were at the tour and you remember the retail section that was set up, this is right on the other side of where all that retail was on, which was chain link fence. It was blacked out, so you couldn't see through it. So in this model shop, it's essentially a bunch of metal ergy and metal working machines, drill presses, those machines that bend metal. I forget what they're called, breakers. You know, someplace where you could go in there with a sheet metal and come out with ball guides, metal housings for Vuck assemblies, make side armor, like everything. Like the laser cutter is over there for the metal, like every kind of metal working you would need for a pinball machine. The things that make these fun little scoops and ramps and other gizmos and things, subway systems, you know, what have you. So we got to go in there and talk to their master model builder and their apprentice model builders, their other metallurgists and everything. You know, we were peeking through this dumpster of spare parts and cuts trying to piece things together. Like it was just a phenomenal that we were allowed in there. and I'm glad there's a reason they don't let us take pictures because there were actual mechanisms and ball guides in there that belonged to games that we couldn't place. Now, I didn't see anything that I could say, oh, you know, this game is going to have, you know, some double back, you know, orbit into a subway. Nothing I could piece together. And in fact, I was so oblivious that I had to be told about this later that some sharp-eyed folks picked up on this. But yeah, nothing was laying out there in open that was like, you know, we saw E.T.'s spaceship or something cut out for a topper. None of that. But it was like super interesting that we got to go back there. And I hope that, number one, they do more of these types of events. And number two, I hope they invite me. And number three, or maybe two B, I hope they invite more people so more people can get to do this. I think this would be a fantastic opportunity to have a contest and randomly select people that could come into Chicago just from the fan community and get to do this or maybe give content people like a plus one and we can do our own contest to invite someone along. I think that would be fun. So they put that out there for free. So after this phenomenal tour, everybody was following us on the tour. Gary Stern was on the tour. Seth Davis was on the tour. Jack Danger came on the tour, and he would run up ahead of the group every now and then and kind of put things we weren't supposed to see out of the way. We got to talk to him for a while. I have my own little pinball side project I'm working on, and he was very gracious in giving me some tips, some good advice, and some encouragement, which really is the whole reason I'm in this, because I keep getting spurred on by those that have come before me. So it was just like a great, great time. And it wasn't even sinking in in the moment how awesome it was until we kind of put it all together on the other side of it. All right, so the second half of the day was we went into the Cheetah conference room with George Gomez for what seemed like 90 minutes as he just went through this PowerPoint presentation on how licensing works in the real world for us so we could take this message back to everybody else. And, you know, if the take-home message was that anything that happens in a pinball machine, a licensed pinball machine, and anything that has to do with any part of it, art, layout, sounds, feel, back glass art, play field art, what characters say, what they don't say, how they're depicted in the art, everything 100% is approved by the license holder to the licensee from the licensor. I think I got that right. so if there was any political agenda that you wanted to shove in there it would have to get approval from the company and from the stories that they were telling us and the anecdotes from other licensing pitfalls they fell into the idea of even if they had some kind of political agenda to try to shoehorn in there it would just come with risk why would you want to do anything it's hard enough to get the regular stuff that makes sense approved and sometimes to explain to the licensor or exactly what you're trying to do with it is work enough, rather than try to say, you know what, we really want to try to push an environmental message in here, or we want the U.S. out of the USSR, and is there a way? That's like, you would go crazy trying to do that. So I think if you come up with some sort of conspiracy that you're trying to put on them, and if it doesn't even hold up to just minute scrutiny and falls apart, then it's probably not true. Because all things being equal and Occam's razor, meaning the most logical thing is probably the answer, it's not. They want to sell pinball machines. They want to represent the license as much as they can. And it was a situation that when it came to John Wick, they were met with the license holders for the characters or the actors that portrayed these characters have certain stipulations on their characters. One part they didn't bring up, but what makes sense to me is that a lot of the guns that are used in the film, They're real-life weapons from real-life weapons manufacturers.
    21:30
    And, you know, you can't put a Pepsi can in without getting Yum! Brand's sign-off on the thing. So if you were going to use the Combat Master, you know, the Terran Technology Combat Master pistol from John Wick, you'd have to go to them as well and pay them money and get their approval. And then you've got their eyes on all of your work that you're doing. And not only does it have to pass Lionsgate and the actors, But then you brought in this other company that can also mix the whole thing. Like why would you add that extra complexity? So I think that probably has more to do with it. And it may be that they could have used weapons in print form, but then there would be extra licensing costs for really what benefit. And honestly, I think that the simple, unsexy reasoning is probably the most likely. And that's just – it was a licensing requirement, and it was like this you have to follow or you have to don't. so we all heard about hunger games being rumored and or in production not even rumored like this was a game that they were going to make and along the way the licensor was too restrictive for what they wanted to do to the point that they would have had to create a game that they don't feel they could sell and so then what is even the point of going forward so that fell apart so that does happen um you know and that was one instance of you know where licensing is going sideways and stern is like this is just a bridge too far you know we're losing too much of what we need like we can't sell this. Now, I don't know what that game ended up turning into. They didn't tell me what year that was. I would love to go back and find games that came out of that era and see, like, maybe which one maybe could have been a Hunger Games. But then I'm going to put this out to you. Email me if you know the answer. What in the ever-loving heck would a Hunger Games pinball machine consist of, look like, and play like? I know the movie was popular. The films were popular. It was a young adult series. Everybody and their mom was trying to make a young adult series. They wanted to replicate Harry Potter. They wanted to be the next Lord of the Rings. Hunger Games is one that took off. And for every Hunger Games, there's five, what was it, Percy Jackson and the Olympians that just flopped on its face. And Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. And Golden Compass, do you remember that? Remember that? You know, the funny thing is a Golden Compass machine probably would have been amazing because bad movies make good pinball. But, you know, it caught fire, catching fire, right? so this game, this movie franchise, which I saw the first one and it seems to be about children murdering themselves which, I mean, okay, yeah I'm down, let's do it, child violence but how do you turn that into a pinball machine? Do you pick one of these children and then you're just playing modes trying to murder the other children? Or trying to save the other children and murder the magistrate or whatever it was, or the magitarium I don't know, I'm conflating my golden compasses here but it may have been a point where they were like you know what, we can't use the rights to the main actress in the film because the price is too high and it's too restrictive. Or the person overseeing the entire thing is just like wanting it represented in a way that doesn't translate well to pinball. Or maybe it was a combination of that and the fact that like how the hell do we make a mode-based game based on a children murder movie that they just said, you know what, let's just go do Batman Dark Knight instead. Just cash our checks and keep going. So there was more anecdotes like that. We got a little bit more background into the 007. We're allowed to talk about this. They just didn't want us to take pictures of this part. But like silly little things come up in licensing. This is a fun anecdote. When it came to this, it's a DB5. It's the Aston Martin that has the ejector seat on it. So apparently originally that was going to be that car from the Bond film, which had to be replicated exactly, just like all the art had to only come from assets that had already existed on posters. and even some of the poster art that they did produce was even questioned by the licensor because the licensor didn't realize that that was actually the content of the original poster. Completely bizarre and reasonable, understandable. But apparently they had this ball ejecting up through it and the licensor was fine with that, but then they had to go to Aston Martin and get approval from them too. And they said, we can't have the car there without a roof on it. So they had to figure out a way to engineer a roof that would be durable enough to open and close and let the ball come through the ejector seat. So finally they do that, resubmit it, and then it's like, well, you know, now it's got this weird opening in the roof, which we can't have. You have to make it look like it's fully closed before we'll approve it. And it's like, you know, you go through all this trouble, you make all these things, you pay for the tooling, you know, for this machine, and then, you know, you get okayed from the license holder, but then the license holder for the car that you want to use that was in the film that they've already approved, you have to go to them, and then they're having these little nitpicking details. And it's like, what the heck does it matter if it's a half millimeter or one millimeter opening seam? But apparently they wouldn't sign off until it was done. So it was like those kind of things. So when you think about the added complexity of weapons manufacturers and multitudes of different weapons manufacturers, they all have to sign off on the likeness and how it's used. And maybe Smith & Wesson wants to have their gun look bigger than anybody else's on there, or they won't sign off on it. It's like then you're at an impasse. So just understand some perspective when it comes to licensing. And if you don't like the art of the game and that's important to you to the point that you don't want to own it because of that, that's an okay position to have. You don't have to buy this machine. You don't have to buy any machine. Buy the ones that you want. If you don't like it, you don't like it.
    26:49
    But don't sit there and not buy it because of things that you may have made up yourself or somebody may have made up themselves. and then you're getting mad at something that's not real. Just have that perspective to maybe not do that. But for sure, keep discussing your opinion is valid. Put it out there, but just have a little bit of perspective. I think that was part of what this was like. All right, so 90 minutes goes by. We finish that. They break us up into two groups. Half of us get to go play the John Wick premiums. The other half get to go to the new streaming lounge at Stern, which looks phenomenal. It looks like the best dude basement ever. This is the brick-walled area that you've seen in the background of the live streams. This is their new live stream, Nexus. I hope they keep this on tours because this place is so dang cool. They had every topper on display, at least the last five toppers they've been doing. They had about 10 shooter rods on display in these cubicles. It was cool going in there and seeing just everything on display. They had play fields from tons of different games up with LED lighting behind them, like forming separation walls, forming the bar top on the bar that they have. They had like 37 Twippies up against the back wall. All their accolades and awards It was like the coolest place to hang out ever You know for someone that into pinball this was like going into I was going to say Brett Favre but find a sports figure that hasn gone completely sideways and you got invited over to their lounge with all their trophies and stuff. That's what it felt like for me. So that was cool. When I went in there, and this was totally awesome, I just kind of went over and started playing John Wick. So later on I wandered into this room where not that many people were. We got a tote bag. We got $10.25 for Logan Arcade for later that night. And then they had an Ellie for John Wick. It was number one of a thousand. And it was there with Elliot Eisman and Tim Sexton. They were just standing there and you could walk up to the game and they would just kind of walk you through and you could ask questions. They would talk about the design process, why this is like this and not like that. So like, that was amazing. Imagine seeing a brand new game, the best version of it. And here's like the people responsible for codes and rules and gameplay and design just right there to talk about. That was the coolest part of the whole thing. So I'm sitting there talking to Mr. Tim Sexton. He's got a ball in his hand, the glass is off, and he's walking through hitting switches and showing me on this game that's running prototype code that's not out yet, they're showing me things that they're working on that they want to bring into the game, particularly like the gun effect. So the LE has a shaker motor installed that has that expression lighting for the back box speaker grill. For the speaker lights, yeah. and the expression lights that are in the cabinet. And he's showing in certain modes when the action happens on screen and John Wick is bang-banging and there's gunshots on screen, there's also a rumble from the shaker motor and bright white strobe flashes from these lights as you're playing. So it's not in the game yet, but this will be coming in a future code update, probably to coincide with the release of the Alien Premium, which should start next week because the import LEDs are shipping right now. but like that was phenomenal you know to see kind of like the direction this game's going to have asking questions about like what ideas for code what ideas for modes do you have and he's like going through the rationale of you know why these characters are on the play field why they're where they're at you know why these other ones the heroes are on the ramps how they help you out and what movies what parts of the movies that they watch they come into and how they can quote all the movies now because they watched them so much like it was just getting kind of getting me excited about this game. So the rest of the night, they brought a party bus for us, a limousine bus, like one, had everything except a stripper pole in it. They loaded all of us in there, drove us over to Logan Arcade, and we had like three hours of hanging out at like the coolest bar hangout spot in Chicago. And they gave us a bunch of quarters, they gave us a drink wristband, and it was just like go nuts. And there's everybody there. You know, I got to talk to John Borg, and like, hey man, I had a Rush LE, dude. And he's like, so do I. Isn't it cool? I was like, yeah, man. and just chatting with these folks. John Borg, I'm like, hey, my name's Don. I do this pinball podcast. He's like, I know who you are. I listen to your stuff. I'm like, well, thank you, Mr. John Borg. Dude that designed Rush, which is like my heart will always have a little piece of Rush LE because it's just a phenomenal game. There he is, dude, talking to him, talking to Ray Day. I'm like, I'm sorry I give you so much crap about the code of Rush. My mind is simple. I'm smooth-brained. I'm sorry.
    31:03
    I got to meet Keith Elwood. Keith Elwood was there with an old-fashioned or something. And I was like, hey, Mr. Keith, how you doing? I'm a fan of Jaws. I don't know what to say to this guy. I tried not to bug him too much. But, you know, Gary Stern's giving me bear hugs. Like, it was nuts. I got to go play a four-player Pulp Fiction game with Scott Larson, some other folk. God, who was the fourth guy? But then the other guy was George Gomez and myself. So I got to lose a four-player game with George Gomez on Pulp Fiction at Logan Arcade in the year of our Lord, 2024. What the heck, man? And this dude is like talking to me like a normal person. He knows who I am. I definitely know who he is. I got to tell – like this was cool. Like I've gone through – I'm such a nerd. I've gone through this scenario in my brain so many times. But like I got to tell George Gomez, hey, man, my first game was Dark Knight. And he's like, yeah, that was a fun game to make. And I'm like, it was a fun game to own. Like that was the first game I had where like I owned it. It was in my house. Like that was the game the first time I had a commercial pinball machine in my home, and it hit so different. He's like, yeah, I know. I got games too, man. It's like, isn't that cool? I'm like, it's so cool. So like I got to have that moment like at Logan Arcade. I got to hang out with Jack Danger, and he's introducing me to other people. You know, I'm playing Bone Busters with people. It was just like an evening that can't be replicated or for sale at any price, man. And I'm never missing one of these opportunities again should it happen. I hope, my hope is that if you are interested in going and you weren't invited, that you can chill enough and have enough perspective that we can have them do this again and say, you know what? It worked so well last time. We had all those Portillo hot dogs. We had all that Gio – no, no, no, Luminati's pizza. We should do this again and order more pizza and more hot dogs because we ran out of hot dogs and make sure there's more Diet Coke. And let's do this again. And let's maybe allow some plus ones so these folks can have contests and invite other people to come in so there's more people can be part of it. Let's make it an event for every Cornerstone release. How awesome would that be? The more times this is done, the more chances for people to go. Let's keep building this up, and let's make other companies jealous of how much fun we're having at Stern Pinball so they do big fan launch events too to coincide with their games. So we can go over to Spooky for barbecue and ribs and Pinball Olympics with Spooky. let's open the doors of JJC let's all go over the next time when BBQ2 comes out we can all try on David Fix's hat and we can all hang out and drink and we'd have to to really enjoy BBQ to the fullest and maybe for Masters of the Universe we can go do that with American Pinball so that was it didn't stop either if you're still listening let's talk about this afterwards we got back on the limousine bus we went back into Stern and it's like after 11 o'clock at night some people left some stuff there So we're still playing some games. They gave us like another 40 minutes. And then like we walked out and we're like, okay, we're locked out of Stern now. We're all staying across the street. I'm looking around and I'm seeing, you know, Triple Drain is here. Loser Kid, no, Triple Drain was still at the, I think Triple Drain and Colin were still over at Logan because there was a tournament that night. But like I'm talking to Cale and Rachel. Jason Knapp is there. Retro Ralph is there. Ian's there from Nudge Magazine. Who am I missing? Loser Kids. And I'm like, guys, do you want to just go like record real quick? getting them a couple drinks deep. So everybody thought that that was the best idea. So what had happened next is we all piled into my hotel room, room 205, with Erica's Pinball Journey, and I brought my recording equipment, I busted out a bunch of microphones and headphones, and we just did a roundtable podcast for one hour of all of us. I'm talking about Loser Kids, the Electric Bat Arcade, Retro Ralph, Ian Jacoby, Jason Knapp, Erica from Pinball Part, Erica's Pinball Journey, and myself, and probably even more people. And we all just kind of passed the mic, all three mics, And we just kind of encapsulated our thoughts from the day in the moment after having some beverages and just kind of recounting everything. And it went a little bit sideways in just the best way. So I haven't released that on this podcast server network yet because I think I'd have to go back and edit some stuff. But I have released it on the Patreon. It's over there for $5. So I'm going to shill my Patreon here for a little bit because this was amazing. So it was all of us all together. It's one hour long. And I put it in there. And at first I was trying to keep it friendly enough to be able to go on this network. But then I'm like, I'm just going to let them be them and we're just going to go. So like raw interpretations, raw feelings, what they think about the game, what they think about Stern, what they think about the pinball hobby, what they think about the food, what they think about me personally and my bodily habits and my mannerisms. All of it is in there. And the people that have listened to it have said it's like podcast of the year. and so it could be yours for the price less than the price actually of that magazine you bought on at the airport uh from hudson news before your flight to newark uh so five bucks just check it out for a month man just good pop over there but go check that out that was completely completely amazing not only that all the content that i produce from from new mods i'm working on prototypes and things i put those on there we do monthly giveaways i've been giving away a translate every month the way that we are growing it's probably going to be two a month i've given away banners. I gave away a set of powder-coated Jaws armor from Cab Custom that looks better than what came on the LE from Stern. Just to someone that entered the contest. And anybody can enter. And I love to spoil the heck out of my Patreon members. I'm a member of other people's Patreons. Pinball Show,
    36:31
    Jason from Pinball Party, who else am I a member of? I go off and on with a couple other ones. But these people, I listen to their stuff all the time. I don't mind kicking them between $2 and $10. for just making stuff for me, hey, thanks. So I've got one, too, for five bucks. But I try to make it stand out. I try to make it different. I'm trying to offer something that no one else is offering. So I'm doing giveaways randomly to Patreon members. We interact on there. There's a Patreon Discord. I record other episodes, some deep dives into games that I've owned before, other story time with Don. Sometimes I get on and I have some perspectives that are a little bit blue. They're a little bit PG-13, a little adult. And so I put those out as their own separate thing just for folks on the Patreon, just behind that little paywall where I can be a little bit more real than I can in kind of a general audience. So for – much like John Wick, you can't put the game out there with the guns apparently because kids might see it. But if you put a quarter in, you made a conscious decision to consume. So we're going to give you all that violence. So that's why I put it over there. You pay five bucks a month. You get a wristband. You get to come in. You know what you're buying into. and I'm just dumping content over there constantly. The feedback I'm getting is making it even better. So, and ask anybody that's been a member here. I've been dumping way more content in the last few months than I have even like the first six months that I've had it up there and more to come, more fun to come. And people at the producer level even get to have impacts on the show. Like I talk about like real decisions and things that are going on like, you know, personal in the hobby, you know, that I would never even put even on a Patreon. Producer levels, they get to kind of weigh in on that, like how we should respond to this, that, or the other. troll online happens or some crazy news, I clue them in. I keep them in. So they're abreast on things that I have that are still secret that I'm working on. So if you're interested, it's out there. This show is free. That's fine. But if you want to pick up that magazine in the airport on the way to your flight, just come on in. Come and try it out. And people are doing it, man. Thanks for popping in there. All right, let's do a little roundup. So Aerosmith, that rumor is from the stack of decals that we saw at the factory. Maybe they're just backstock that came in. Maybe they're making sure that, you know, before they retire spike two and move on to spike three, they have enough parts to replace any warranty repairs or any repairs or replacements that people may need. And maybe that's why it came in. You know, could be. That would be completely reasonable. You know, and it was just waiting to go up in the backstock area because it was right outside of that area. So that would make complete sense. but maybe, just maybe they want to build more of those Jackie treasure chest gobbling mechanisms and do another run of Aerosmiths hey, maybe do the Marga research and people would want it, I put that out there on the Discord and people are like, yeah, I think I wouldn't mind kind of going on one, so maybe there's some links to that, this black and white Godzilla, 70th anniversary edition this has been rumored for a while that they were going to do an anniversary release of Godzilla July is coming up with a big production hole in it. Is Metallica going to be in there? Is Dungeons and Dragons going to be in there? Is, who knows, Jack Danger versus the world? Is that going to come out? I think a Jack Danger license should happen. But a black and white edition of Godzilla with the kind of sparkly highlights that we saw with the Elvira Blood Red Kiss edition, maybe with blue or green. I think that would work.
    39:48
    Godzilla is a phenomenal game. More Godzilla, more fun. Just like they did a different art package with Star Wars, I think you could do a different R package with Godzilla and, you know, sell 250, sell 500, you know, make 750, sell 500 and have 250 just floating out there new in box for distributors. So six years down the road, maybe I decide I want to go back in and get one. So maybe that'll happen. Metallica, maybe it's happening. It's just it's happening. I think it's happening for sure. What I can't say is, is this just going to be a rehash with a new screen on Spike 2 or is this going to be a launch of the new Spike 3 system? I will say that they're probably, you know, kind of, you know, closing the curtain on Spike 2 here pretty soon. And we'll be opening it on Spike 3. So maybe Metallica will be that one. Or maybe Metallica will be one of the last Spike 2 systems. And then maybe they're looking through their back catalog to say, before we completely retire, how we build for Spike 2, let's see if we can dip into the well and, like, bring this Munsters back, bring this Aerosmith back, bring Godzilla back for, like, other runs, bring Munsters back for sure, and then go on and then close the door and then start doing Spike 3 from there on. We'll see.
    40:55
    Highlights, though, what I can say. What else at Logan Arcade? I was talking to Jack Danger, and I'm like, buddy, I want to ask him everything. But I said, don't tell me what your next game is. Don't tell me that you're working. Don't tell me when it's coming out or whatever. Just tell me that whatever project you're working on right now, are you excited about it? And he said, heck yes, I am, or damn yes, he is, or whatever. You know how he talks. Um, so Jack Daniels excited about his next project, which makes me excited overall. That's all I need. I don't need to know what the next game is. I'm sure we'll hear rumors before it comes up. Um, you know, but I didn't need to like say, okay, what days your game coming out? What's this rumor? You can tell me, I won't tell anybody else. I don't trust myself to keep that secret. So I asked him not to tell me that, but I just wanted to know, are you excited about it? I didn't ask him what mechanisms in it that no one's seen before. None of that. I think I did tell him that I want 17 dead posts in a game. And he gave me like a yeah me too Because that would just be insanely weird But yeah The well The well wasn tapped with Foo Fighters It wasn sucked dry So there more creativity in there And as good as that game is, I can't wait to see what he has coming out next.
    42:07
    Don, how's the John Wick game? Should I buy one? That's a value decision. Somebody texted me earlier today and I had said, he's like, is it good? Is it worth it? And I'm like, well, no game.
    42:21
    No LE is worth $13,000. That's a lot of money. I don't care how great the theme is. That's a huge chunk of money. That's a travel trailer. That's half a car. Like, come on. That's like some serious money. So, you know, just like I don't think a Jersey Jack CE is worth $15,000. And those things can be true. $13,000, $15,000 is a lot of money. And I don't know that a pinball machine is worth that. That can be true. Simultaneously, John Wick being an awesome game and Elton John CE being a phenomenal looking game, playing game, those are also true. So I think those two things can be true without being called a shill. If I could talk about a shill, let's talk about a good example of like what I consider shilling to be. Shilling is when you are talking up a product that is just overpriced, low value, definitely not worth it, but you're trying to sugarcoat it, right? You're like a pitch man, right? That's what I see shilling as, you know. Here is a product that I know is awful. It's dog's balls. Nobody would want this thing. And I have to somehow make it seem cool. So I get like a financial kickback or something, which just makes you feel like dirty and gross. And I'm in pinball because I enjoy pinball. I like playing pinball. I like talking to pinball people. I want to make friends, not lose friends. And so that's like a friend losing area. That's like when you want to cash out your morality for cash. That's the kind of thing you do. And I'm not done with pinball yet. So I'm not thinking of doing that. You know, look at the, look at the, my pillow guy, Let's take him for a second. Okay. His product is essentially end cuts of foam that are used for other products that are essentially useless and would go into the garbage. You can take those. You can put them in a linen sack, and you can sell them as pillows. People have been doing it for decades. Go to any freeway off-ramp in central Los Angeles, and if the dude isn't selling bags of oranges, he's selling these what we call gut pillows. These are end little bits of foam sewn together with fabric to make technically pillows. They're full of technically pillow material, but they're generally useless, otherwise flakes of stuff that can't be used for anything else. So, you know, at the end of a production run, the factory will gobble together all the stuff from the show floor, and they'll throw it in sacks, and they'll sell it super cheap. And so that's what his product is. It's a bunch of end cuts of foam, a little memory foam that can't be used in a mattress or a regular pillow or something else. So he found a way to take these, put them in a linen sack, and then market them, really marketing himself, this is the pillow that you've been waiting for. Like this hasn't been going on for 100 years. People have been using useless end cuts of foam and making pillows out of them. But he did it in a way where he put it in a box and he said, like, I'm launching a company because I care so passionately about this. This is going to be the best thing ever. It's a product with an extremely low cost to produce, an extremely high profit margin. And the dude sold a ton and made a ton of cash on it. So no shame in the game, man. That is the hustle. But that is the shill. He's got a product that's like whatever. You can get it at any freeway off-ramp in L.A. or any flea market, any swap meet. Dude, I know, man, you buy these things out of trunks of cars. But he put it in a box and he put it at Bed Bath & Beyond and he charged like $49.95 for it or something. But if you act now, you get it for $34.97. You know, like, dude, that's the shill, bro. That's the shill.
    45:27
    So, like, I'm not, like, at that level where it's like, you know, John Wick is complete end cuts from other games that can't be used, cobbled together, thrown in a box. we blow dried it real quick and threw some fancy paint on it and now we're calling it a $13,000 machine, come buy it. You look at the price of the machine, you talk to your distributor, and that's a value judgment, and I can't give you that value, only you can decide on what that is. Maybe the value for you for this amazing looking John Wick LE is $13,000 and you're like, distributor, give me that today, can you give me free shipping at least? Thank you, sir, I'll have another, and be happy with it. Because the game, the game is good right now, the game is going to be even better with the code once it's developed to the way that what Tim Sexton himself showed me, what Elliot Eisman was telling me about the game.
    46:10
    If you don't like the John Wick theme, no amount of polish is going to make you want it. But I can tell you that seeing the LE, the reflective art that's on there, the backlash you can run your hand over and feel that letting effect that they put on there. It's just like the thing looks like stained glass in person. It's completely incredible.
    46:28
    So I think the game's fun. The game's not Godzilla, right? The game doesn't have a giant mech that lowers into the gameplay field. Okay, so I still think if you were completely naive to the two games, Godzilla is the one you get. I think if you're going to pay money for it and you can only get one game this year, I'd hang out and see if Black and White Godzilla is going to be available if you don't have it. That would be the game. But at the same time, John Wick, fun game, super fun game. And I think the code is really going to be fun. And I think the contracts and what they're doing with gameplay in that aspect is also what you're purchasing. So you may say, you know what, for me, for my position in life, with my cash flow, where we're at, you know, the divorce is over, $13,000 is what I want to pay on it. Other people may just as fairly say, I like that game. I like what it's got. I think around $9,500 is where my level of interest is. So there's not currently an LE for that. So there's no decision to be made. I'll just, you know, keep playing the games that I have, the games that are on location. And when my level of exuberance, money-wise, matches where the game is at in the market, then that will be a purchase I make, and that is equally as valid. So how's that for shilling? Either way, we were invited to Stern to hear their perspective. George Gomez said, we just wanted you to meet us. Give us a chance to talk about who we are, what we're doing, why we do what we do, and a little bit about how things come to fruition. We didn't hear exactly what went into the Foo Fighter topper being $2,000, which seems like a lot of money to anybody for a topper. He did talk about tooling, and we all know that. If you're making an injected, molded part, you've got to pay $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, $60,000, $80,000 to get the mold made that's then going to make 2,000 pieces. And if you're doing a run of 11,000 action figures, you can amortize that cost of making the die to produce them over the entire production run, which may cover decades. but if you're just making 175 Foo Fighter toppers, then yeah, that $40,000 investment to make the tool to do the injection mold for the Foo helmet, I mean, that cost has to go somewhere and for this company to exist, there's got to be a profit as well. You also have to pay for the licensing. You got to make sure there's approval for it. Then there's the raw cost of materials which are only one component. So all of that ended up being, after spit out of the machine, $2,000. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that that's reasonable and you should pay it and shut up and be happy about it because that's a lot of money. I love toppers, and even if I still owned Foo Fighters, I would have a hard time at $2,000 getting it. However, at the same time, the Foo Fighters topper looks really cool. I wish there was more tanks and things and moving stuff on it, but it is a cool product. I think it looks amazing. I like playing games that have it. I think it looks great, and I think the price is really high, and I think those two things are not mutually exclusive. I think they both exist at the same time. So if I'm going to be a shill, I've got some more learning to do because I'm terrible at doing that. I'm not going to sell anybody a gut pillow at 20 times the cost to produce it. But I'm not going to fault anybody if they're selling. If they made 200 Foo Fighter toppers at $2,000 and they sold every one of them and there's still orders for more, that's a win for them. And I don't think anybody can fault it. So I hope that perspective helps out. I had a couple other things I was going to talk about. Looney Tunes got an update. I got to go once I get back home. I'm out of town for a birthday party. Once I get back, I'll load that in. We'll talk all about it. Hopefully do a live stream. So I've got that coming up. I'm still trying to play catch up here, man. I got my cab custom armor installed on black night sort of rage. It looks amazing. If you want to get yourself a set, I'm not even sponsored by them. I'm not even shilling them. Don't buy it if you don't want to buy it. But if you want some great aftermarket armor right now, um, cab custom is like the only person I see making high quality interesting artistic armor at cheap prices imported from Spain go check them out, Cab Custom on Facebook more and more people are ordering from them and they're telling me Don, this stuff's awesome, I love it and I'm like right? It's like 140 euros or something to get a set of custom laser cut armor sent and then you go and take it, get it powder coated or get the black wrinkle coat from him and then throw it on there and it looks better than anything you can buy. Stern is really cagey about selling their accessories They come out very slowly. When they do, they tend to be painted. I have some Stranger Things armor that I got from them that has that whole alphabet chain with the lights and everything cut all the way on the side of the armor with the Demogorgon and the kids on bikes upside down on the side. No one's got that, man. That Evil Armor guy from Evansville that did the laser-cut armor for Toy Story, that looks cool. And I reached out to him, and I'm like, hey, can you do some armor for some other games? And I just kind of never heard anything, and now I don't even know if the guy's still making stuff. So definitely a cool way to easily add some flair to your machine, add some protection to it. I'm not going to get any kickbacks. The only thing I got from Frank from Cab Custom, he made me a couple of custom cut Don's Pinball podcast things. They look amazing. He sent those to me just for thanks for mentioning them. I'm like, no problem, dude. That just was something fun that showed up. He sent me an extra set of Jaws armor when I ordered mine, and that was the one that I took and paid to get powder coated, and then I gave it away. So, you know, that's my level of involvement. I'm totally happy to do more giveaways, Frank, if you want to send me more stuff. But every time I put something on, if I like it, I'm going to share it so other people can know about it. So that's the extent of that. That's my transparency. Okay. I am sponsored by Mad Pinball. It's my distributor homie. And so I do mention him, but I also use Mad Pinball too. And I was also using him for about a year before the podcast got going and he decided to sponsor. So, you know, so there we go. So lost my ball. I'm so bad. Jeff and Matt Pinball. We're collaborating on some cool new things we have coming up, particularly something cool at Expo that I can't wait to tell more about. The other thing I wanted to get to really quick, Bellingham, Washington. I'll be on tour. I'll be in Bellingham, Washington at 1UP Lounge sometime around the second week of July, like 9th, 10th, 11th. I'm taking my awesome looking Jaws Premium that I've pimped out. The whole thing's powder coated, two-tone, looks phenomenal. It's got all the mods and everything in it. It's got a topper I made. I'm selling it to 1UP Lounge. And so we're going to do an unboxing. We're going to do a tournament. We're going to do promotions. We're going to do something. A meet and greet. I'll sign your baby. Come out to Bellingham, Washington. I'll get the date finalized here soon. We're working out those details. But I'm coming to the Pacific Northwest in July. That's going to be phenomenal. And then I'll be at the Southern Fry Gaming Expo later in July. So we got both coasts covered, man. Two time zones. Don's Pinball Podcast nationwide. Coast to coast. Ocean to ocean. City to city. I won't say the rest of that rap lyric. All right. I think that's all I have for now, man. It was so much fun. Thank you, Zach Sharp, for inviting me on to the factory tour. Use your discretion on who you want to invite in the future, but I would like to see this done not only more, but I would like to see it grow into more of a fan event. And I had a ton of people coming after me like, Don, can you take a plus one? And it's like, I totally want to take everybody. I want to be like the magic school bus and go and pick up all the kids and we'll all go to the freaking factory and we'll all play and become Oompa Loompas and live there forever happily. But these guys made me feel like they brought me into their home. And like I felt at home, like I figured out where the bathrooms were. I knew where the snacks were kept. You know, I was just kind of like helping myself traping around all the public areas of the factory. It was so much fun. It was so much fun, and I can't wait to go back. And I hope we get to keep building these relationships. One thing that you could do, listener, is become a subscriber. Come on to the Facebook page. Make sure you like and follow. As that number grows, my credibility within the space will grow, particularly with these folks that make products, that make pinball machines, that make custom armor, that make light-up frames, like Brad from Lit Frames. You know, all these other people that make these stuff, you know, if they see you getting some heat, see you getting some traffic, you know, they'll reach out and say, hey, you know, of course I want to increase, you know, my knowledge base awareness of my product. Can I send you some to give away? And my answer is always yes. Send me stuff. I'm going to give it away to people and I'm going to heavily favor the folks in my Patreon because that's a quick way that I can just make a list of people, do a random number generator, do a live stream and do some giveaways. And I want to keep doing that. So if you're on the fence before, pop on over, throw your five bucks in, join the club, join the private discord. Anything that I record for the Patreon gets its own private RSS link, and you can listen to that through a podcast server. That's just for you if you're a member. So like we're growing it. When I started it, it was just going to be a tip jar, and like if you threw me a couple of shekels, thank you, buddy. I appreciate it. Now enough people are in there that I want to shower them with praise and gifts and fun and extras and everything else I can think of. So I'm starting to dump tons of content in there. It's all super fun, and we're still growing. We're still building, and there's still more fun stuff that's going to come out in the future. And now that I met the YouTube folks and they showed me their algorithm tricks and things, I have even more ideas for stuff we're going to do. It's going to be nuts. We're going to be at Bellingham, Washington at 1UP. We're going to be at Southern Fright Gaming Expo. We're going to be at Chicago's Expo, and I have a great idea, and if I can bring it to fruition, we're going to have a fun time at Expo, man, let me tell you. So thanks, everybody, for listening and joining me for Episode 125. A little longer than normal. Hopefully you can listen to me over a couple of commutes. But if you're on the fence, jump on over to the paywall, man. Come play with us, dude. We're having a good time. We're having fun on the Discord. Email me, of course, at donfinballpodcastgmail.com. Facebook page is the same. Instagram is the same. TikTok is the same. YouTube is the same. And Patreon is the same, man. You can't go bad. If you want to buy mods and stuff that I make, if you see something I make and you want it, just reach out, dude. We'll work something out. If you can't afford a mod and you really want one, just ask me, man. I'll find a way to make you have it, dude. Later.
    55:56
    Thank you.