Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Kinadus Pinball Podcast. Is this gonna be the week where Stern Pinball finally stays true to its word and gives us a game in August? I think Tuesday is the day everybody is looking at, but we didn't get a teaser on Friday. And that's normally what they do, like Stern has their Factory Friday, and that's when they drop this sort of teaser of the game that gets unveiled the following week. Are they gonna mix it up? I've heard from some people that Stern delayed everything by a month. So if you were expecting a game in August, that might not happen until September. Nobody really knows. It's coming any day now. Now, it is now a horse race. We're going to talk about this. It is a horse race on whether or not distributors can get people to pay for their Toy Story 4 Collector's Editions before Stern shows its next game. I'm really excited watching this thing happen because you know and I know that there are going to be some people holding the bag. And if Stern comes out with a game that blows people away, that gets people excited, that has like a lot of toys in it, you're gonna have a Stern Pro for just a smidgen more than a Toy Story 4 Collector's Edition. That's insane! You know they jumped too far. They jumped too far with a game that had too little in it. We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about what distros are telling Toy Story 4 CE buyers they can expect. It's interesting. You're spending the most money ever on a pinball machine and it's still pretty ambiguous when you're going to get your game. I also want to talk a little bit about Spooky on this episode. We haven't talked about Spooky much, but there are some threads starting to pop up now that are speculating on something I wanted to discuss with all of you. And that is whether or not we think these games, Halloween and Ultraman, if they're going to have a rebound on value now that Spooky is getting near the end of the run on both games. Can they turn the corner? Are they going to go up on value? They've both lost a lot of value. I want to talk about that and what my feelings are on both of these titles. So let's talk timing though about Stern's next game. So do we think it's going to be James Bond, do we think it's going to be Venom, or do we think it's going to be the wild card Back to the Arcade Future? I don't think it's going to be Back to the Arcade Future. So let's talk about James Bond first. Because the 60th anniversary James Bond activities are going on this year. And there is a huge Sotheby's auction that's based all on the old James Bond stuff. And that auction is happening right now. I don't think you're going to see like multiple James Bond films in one machine. I think it would be a licensing nightmare for them. And you know Stern, they know they don't have to spend that much. If they just get the old license, they're going to do it justice. Venom would be a great title to get out right now in September because you've got Comic Con the first week of October in New York City which is a humongous deal. The other thing is this: in all of our years following pinball, nobody ever seems to be able to time up the launch of a game with any of these milestone moments happening with the properties, right? Stern never even gets Star Wars out in time to hit the May the Fourth. I think you're going to see something crazy like a 60 numbered limited edition super LE crazy price version of the game. If it is the 60th anniversary of James Bond, I could see them doing something similar to Elvira 40th Anniversary or Batman's 50th and I think they're going to make just 60 with some Aston Martin constellation decoration, hitting it out, fitting out and using some music. It's a good way for Stern to hook up all its distributors with a game that makes them a lot of money. Jersey Jack has never done that. CGC has never done that. Nobody has ever done that for distributors. And let's say trends. Let me talk about something. If you are Zack and if you're another distributor, I would absolutely hold back at least one LE, one CE, one Pro, one Premium. Just hold back one version of every game and every topper and just wait a couple years and you can jack the price up once the game goes out of production. I mean, it's just a super smart move. Because Zack can make $1,500 on a Godzilla LE today if he sells everything at price, or he can make $9,000. You tell me what puts more food on the table in the household, okay? I would absolutely do the same thing. I think there's nothing wrong with it. So let's see what happens this week. The other crazy thing and I've just been thinking about this because I'm like, you know what? And this is just maybe a crazy pipe dream. But I know that George Gomez absolutely loves Christopher Franchi's artwork. It was never Gomez that had the problem with Franchi. It was other people at Stern. I also know that Joe Kamakow is working with Christopher Franchi throughout the years and they're friends too. Now, I'm just going to throw this out there because I think if there's anybody out there in the pinball world that would love to troll us, that would love to mislead us, it would be Franchi. I think there might be a slim chance, it is a slim chance, that we are going to see Franchi's game as a Kamakow game and not a Stern, and that is how they're going to spin it. That Joe Kamakow commissioned Franchi to make the artwork for his game and it is being manufactured by Stern Pinball. I know this is a pipe dream and it also doesn't make sense because Franchi said watch out for his next game in October and it is now September, August. So look, it's probably not going to happen. I wish it would happen because his artwork on James Bond is incredible. He's done some James Bond stuff in the past and I think it's going to be something else. But I just wanted to throw it out there that there might be a hail Mary chance in a million years that we see Franchi's art on another Stern machine. All right, let's talk about Toy Story 4 Collector's Editions. And I got an email and I got a few emails from distributors because I was in on a Collector's Edition. And so here's what's happening right now. These distributors need to find buyers for the games they bought. But here's what they're telling consumers. The Collector's Editions are now shipping and they're on the line. They're also telling consumers, I don't know what number games I have. They're also telling consumers that I don't know when you're going to get your game, but your game order might come up any day now. You're gonna watch this game go down and down and down in value and then the likelihood of you wanting to send in another check for $12,500 is going to diminish. Once the new Stern game comes out, it is going to be a tragic moment for all of these people who are in on a $15,000 machine. Because mark my words, here's what's gonna happen. There is gonna be more in a $9,000 Stern Premium than is in a $15,000 Jersey Jack Toy Story 4 game. There is no way around the fact that they're just making too many. Here's the other part that I do find comical. These distributors, they're trying to create this like hype that doesn't exist. They're saying stuff like, you know how popular this game is. It sold out in one day. Like there was such demand for this game. And then on the very next message they're saying, but if you know someone who wants one, let us know because we have units available. It is not sold out. It's sold through in one day. But there is no way there are a thousand people willing to buy this game right now. They're making too many, it's too expensive, and there's not enough in the game. The game is fun to shoot. It's maybe one of Jersey Jack's better shooting games. But the game is pretty empty compared to everything else Jersey Jack has made. So let's compare this launch to Guns N' Roses and Willy Wonka. Guns N' Roses had the most demand maybe ever on day one for a Jersey Jack machine. They sold out immediately of 500 CEs at $12,500. Here's the thing too. When Guns N' Roses came out, what I like about Guns N' Roses and I like about Eric and the difference between his LEs and his CEs, there's a significant difference in his games. Like when you look at the LE of Guns N' Roses, it's gorgeous in its own right. And the art package on that machine is absolutely incredible. A lot of people would argue that the art package on the LE is better than the CE, but the CE is also a gorgeous work of art that just goes in a different artistic direction with the purple and you know the Appetite for Destruction machine on the cabinet and all that stuff. It looks phenomenal. They both look phenomenal and they look radically different. When you look at Toy Story LE and CE, look at the cabinet artwork, look at the playfield artwork, look at the games themselves. They're not that radically different. It's really just different colored armor. And remember, with Guns N' Roses Collector's Edition, the artwork on the playfield was different than the artwork on the playfield of the LE. On Toy Story 4, they made absolutely no differences. And so when Guns N' Roses came out, you had $9,500 was the price of the LE. $9,500. And then $12,500 was the CE. Now you've got the LE of freaking Toy Story 4 is $12,000. And they're giving you a game that's virtually the same as the CE. This guy also has an LE and he's got to move one of them and he's selling an LE for $11,000. So he's trying to make up a loss on his LE by increasing the price of his CE. He's about to lose money. I'll tell you why. Because I just sold a CE for $14,000. My friend Derek sold one for $13,000 and you're going to see more and more of these games being sold at fire sale prices because people are not going to go in at $15,000. We all know the way this is going to go. They're not going to make all 1,000. They are absolutely not going to make all 1,000 of the game. This is going to have a very short production run. But let's just say the demand is there and this is Jersey Jack's first 1,000 CE game. I have a very simple question. How many games are they making a week? How long until you get your game? I think they need to get these games out fast. I think they need to tell people what game number you are and when you can expect your game. But the whole thing is kind of ambiguous. And I think they're going to learn a lesson from this. They definitely are going to learn a lesson from this. This is a marketing lesson. Someone over there made the marketing decision to price it at that and make twice as many units as they normally make. Here's the problem in pinball these days. Like, once all these companies started to make everything a thousand LEs for Stern and a thousand CEs for Jersey Jack Pinball, the problem now is this. They're not really adding a ton of value to those games because the supply of those games is so high. What they've really done, and you're seeing it in the marketplace, what increasing the number to a thousand has done, it's just made the old LEs and the old CEs in which there were only 500, right? That was the magic number for Stern. For LEs, 500. For Jersey Jack's CEs, 500 or 250 or like even like 150. I think Dialed In's had only 200 Pirates CEs. All this is doing is jacking up the price of the real stuff that now feels rare and feels exclusive and feels limited because there's nothing limited about a thousand pinball machines that cost well over 10 or 12 or 15 thousand dollars. That's not limited. You'll get one easily if you want one. At the end of the day, distros are going to be holding the bag on Toy Story 4 CE. I don't think they're going to be telling JJP that there's strong demand and I don't think they're going to make all of them. We'll see if I'm right or wrong. All right, speaking of the Munsters, I want to just say real quickly, there's been a great discussion on my Patreon page about Mr. John Borg. Now, I've always said I think John Borg is a great designer over at Stern Pinball. I have not knocked John Borg's designs. I will just say this about John Borg games. For the most part, Borg has his formula, the same way George Gomez does. And Borg designs, you know, they're not always the most original. And so here's the thing. I think if you own a great John Borg game or two, you don't feel compelled to sort of chase after every new John Borg game. I'm not saying he's not a great designer, he is, but there's just a lot of similarity in the design. And that's a fair point. When it comes to Munsters, I just want to say this once and for all. The Munsters code is nowhere near as good as games like Batman 66, as games like Godzilla. There are just so many other games out there that have such better code than the Munsters. And when you jump on Batman 66, that's how you wanted the Munsters to be. You wanted to see this overload of integration with the show you loved and all these clips and all this campiness. It doesn't even come close to what Batman 66 has in it. And then I'm just going to end the point with this. Yes, the game is gorgeous, the game is beautiful, but the lower playfield is so unsatisfying. The little pinball they put down there, it's too light. You don't feel anything. It's so numb when you're down there. It's just the wrong weight of that mini pinball and I just don't like it. I don't think it adds anything to the game. And yes, I haven't played Munsters in a home environment for hours and hours and hours, but I've been following this hobby for years and I've seen anecdotally from people that I know who have the machine and have had the opportunity to play the game, that is a consistent complaint I hear. I'm sorry, but at these price points with all of these games, I want these games to come out from the manufacturer in the first few months and be amazing. I don't want to have to wait two years for code updates, and neither should you. When Rush came out, it's pretty much code complete. Same thing with Godzilla. Stern is not launching games anymore where you have to wait forever to get the code. All right, so let's end this show with Spooky's games and whether or not Halloween and Ultraman are going to rebound in value. I think the problems with Spooky right now is they're still a pretty young company, right? I know they've been around for eight, nine years, but they're still a young company. And this is why they're a young company. They're not a company that's been used to success year after year after year. They're not. They really only had one humongously successful game, and that was Rick and Morty. And they used the success of Rick and Morty to then create the kind of demand they got for these two games. And it put them in the driver's seat, right? Rick and Morty put Spooky Pinball in the driver's seat. And then Spooky Pinball started to do stuff that was reflective of the other manufacturer's marketing decisions. I also think Spooky Pinball, when it comes to their marketing, they need to start reevaluating stuff. Now look, they sold every game on day one before they even showed product. Now in the marketing world, if you can do that, then you don't need me. Like you don't need any help. You don't need any advice. You don't need to do anything differently. That is an incredible feat. And I think the fact that they were able to do that, I think it speaks volumes to the confidence people had with Spooky Pinball. I think they built a lot of goodwill over the years. I think they're a family run business. And I think there's always been a sort of connection between the pinball community and Spooky Pinball. They were always like the David versus Goliath. And I think people really enjoyed supporting them over the years, and they still do enjoy supporting them currently. They cashed in all the goodwill with these two games, and it hasn't really worked out for most people. It's not that I think they took advantage of that goodwill. You know how I feel. I just don't think that the games we're seeing right now, these two games, I just don't think the design is there. I don't think the code is there. I don't think these games have the same level of polish or depth as we see from other pinball manufacturers, but it's also little Spooky and Benj in Wisconsin, right? You can't expect to get the same amount of stuff in a Spooky game as you will in a Stern game or a Jersey Jack game. So everybody knows that, right? No one's like disillusioned. And even though these games cost around the same amount of money now as a Stern machine, there's nobody out there who thinks they're gonna get apples to apples like Spooky versus Stern. Now that being said, I think the reason why these games tanked so hard value-wise, it's not just because like these were all scalpers and flippers. That's not the reason why. The games launched in horrible condition. And you really do only get one chance to make a first impression. And when the first impression on these games was so bad and it was bad for months, it wasn't like they had a quick code update that fixed stuff. It's been a long journey to get to where we are today. If Spooky Pinball launched Halloween in its current form on day one, yes, the perception and the feeling towards the game would have been much better. The whole process is just fatiguing. You know, waiting and waiting and waiting. And yes, look, I think the code is better on both games. I think people are enjoying the games more, but I also think the layout and the design of these games is not a design that people are going to want to bolt to their floor. If you play a Halloween and then you walk over to a Godzilla or you walk over to a Rush, you walk over to a Mandalorian or a Stranger Things, it's just this simple, people. Almost every single Stern pinball machine ever made still shoots better than Halloween. That's just the way it is. They don't have the design there yet. They're getting there. They're getting better. But from a design standpoint, if you're someone who loves shooting pinball machines, you are not going to walk up to these Halloween and Ultraman machines and really enjoy the way they shoot. You could just place heavy pinball inside the pinball and then hit the pinball and then if you did that, you'd actually have more LEs being made than Premiums. And that's what's happening with Spooky Pinball. The cheapest version of Stern's machine, the Pro version, always has stuff taken out. There's not as much in the machine. When you buy the standard version of Spooky Pinball's game, there's nothing from the Spooky Pinball standard that is worth $8,000, $9,000, $10,000. The truth is when it comes to just what's physically in the game, Spooky Pinball is pricing their machine at $6,995. That is what this machine is worth before you add all the unnecessary bells and whistles, before you add like the knocker kit, the shaker kit, interactive RGB speaker kit, and standard grill, you know, powder coating. They're not adding more toys into the game when you buy the Bloodsucker edition or the Collector's Edition. And then you get obviously this topper that probably cost them nothing to make. So I just think Spooky Pinball moving forward, you know, they need to figure this part out because the fact is between a standard edition for seven grand and one with a butter cabinet which is closer to 11 grand, it's all just the same game, right? The other thing is this. Does Spooky Pinball change the artwork between the standard, between the Bloodsucker and the Collector's Editions? They do not. And if they want to charge these prices, they need to start making these games more unique from each other. Because then every single game looks the same. The tier system starts to mean nothing, and then when your most expensive tier is also the one that has the greatest volume out there, that's why the value goes down. You're not making the most expensive the scarcest, which is silly. You're not making it any different art-wise, which is silly. It's really strange. It's like I get what they're going for. Like they're the opposite of what Stern tries to do and what Jersey Jack tries to do. Spooky wants to make every fan of that theme happy who wants all the bells and whistles. Like I get that approach. It's a very earnest and heartfelt approach. Problem is it's just gonna burn everybody this time. It's not about the hedge multibas. It's about the fact that the design is just not there. It's going to get there. And the other reason why these games are not going to go up in value is because their next game is going to be better. And Stern's next games are going to be amazing. And Jersey Jack's next games are going to be great. And everyone's going to keep making good pinball. Like there's so much great pinball coming. And I just think chasing after like mediocre games from like a couple years ago, that's not going to be worth it. The following is the latest edition. Both trading for around the price of a Stern Pro. Just wait once the volumes out there. These aren't gonna be bolt to the floor games. People are gonna wanna move them out and guess what? They're gonna wanna move them out to get the next Spooky game because it's gonna be so much better. That's my feeling on the whole thing everybody. Have a great week. Hopefully we'll get the new Stern. I came in on a Sunday because I wanted to do a show this morning and I also just wanna get ready for when Stern breaks the damn wide open, destroys the sales of Toy Story 4 CEs, and now we're all just talking about the next Stern machine. I can't wait. It's coming people. Have a good day.