Episode 1248: "Would Launching Bon Jovi Without The Mystery Have Helped?"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·20m 19s·analyzed·Jul 31, 2026

Analysis

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TL;DR

Kaneda critiques Barrels' mystery launch strategy for Bon Jovi, argues transparency would have helped sales.

Summary

Kaneda argues that Barrels of Fun's secretive launch strategy for Bon Jovi has backfired, contrary to the company's belief that mystery generates sales. He criticizes the lack of market research and brand positioning, contrasts Bon Jovi's sluggish sales (~650 units claimed) with Spooky's successful Goonies pre-orders, and suggests Barrels needs transparency and better understanding of community demand to succeed.

Key Claims

650 Bon Jovi units have moved (sold through to dealers/distributors)
medium confidence · Kaneda reporting rumor from 'Jamie' about Barrels indicating 650 units sold through; notes distinction between wholesale moves and end-customer sales
Barrels of Fun Reserve members will learn Tuesday whether they can exercise $75 pre-order option for Bon Jovi if sold out
high confidence · Kaneda clarifies timing as 'seven days from the day Bon Jovi was revealed' rather than Friday
Dealer orders for Bon Jovi are very low—reportedly 'one hand' worth from certain dealers
medium confidence · Kaneda's direct outreach to dealers contradicts the 650 unit claim; notes uncertainty about whose numbers to trust
Bon Jovi gameplay is very easy; Python Anghelo had one 8-minute ball with 1 billion points
high confidence · Kaneda witnessed gameplay footage and discusses implications for marketability to casual players
Spooky's Goonies is already sold out at 1,385 SLEs with much stronger demand than Bon Jovi
medium confidence · Kaneda comparing Spooky's sales success to Barrels' struggles; states Goonies units are presold
Beetlejuice sold 999+ units plus show games in under an hour on launch day
medium confidence · Kaneda using Beetlejuice as benchmark for successful boutique launch, contrasting with Bon Jovi's slower pace
David Van Es worked at Spooky Pinball before founding Barrels of Fun
high confidence · Kaneda references Van Spooky experience and notes he left to make Labyrinth when Spooky refused
Kaneda's initial leak of Bon Jovi actually helped Barrels by giving the community a week to warm up to the theme
medium confidence · Kaneda's opinion that transparency/early knowledge reduced rejection shock vs. Barrels' belief that mystery maximizes hype
Dutch Pinball could sell 1,000 Back to the Future units on announcement alone without gameplay demo

Notable Quotes

“What Barrels does not understand is one thing, Kaneda leaking that it's Bon Jovi actually helped them. Because people had a week or so to get over it, to warm up to it, to put Bon Jovi songs back in your playlist maybe and just accept reality.”
Kaneda @ ~10:30 — Core thesis: transparency/leaks reduce rejection shock vs. Barrels' theory that mystery maximizes day-one sales
“If you think about Beetlejuice, think about the difference between the Beetlejuice launch and the Bon Jovi launch. Both of them are BJs, right? Think about the difference. When Beetlejuice launched, they had one launch video... and on the day Beetlejuice launched, they sold 999 plus the show games in less than an hour.”
Kaneda @ ~28:00 — Benchmark comparison showing successful boutique launch vs. Bon Jovi's slower velocity
“Stop making it hard on yourselves, David and team. We are rooting for you. But the lack of transparency, the lack of market research and your desire to keep things a mystery is sinking your company.”
Kaneda @ ~38:30 — Direct advice to Barrels leadership; identifies internal decision-making as the core issue
“Every single theme that David chooses and if he going to choose to make 1000 games every single theme that he chooses needs to have at least 3000 people that want to buy one of those 1000 games. Why is it so hard for him to do that?”
Kaneda @ ~24:00 — Articulates the fundamental market demand problem for Barrels' boutique model
“In the world of pinball, if you get it right, you don't have to slow burn sell the product. It should be a day one sellout if you're a boutique.”
Kaneda @ ~41:00 — Industry standard/expectation for boutique manufacturers; implies Bon Jovi's slow sales indicate poor theme selection or positioning
“David has Bon Jovi and he's having a hard time even selling 700. So think about that. That means that there's not even 700 or more people that want this game right now.”
Kaneda @ ~26:00 — Stark reframing of the 650-unit claim as evidence of insufficient demand, not success

Entities

Kanedaperson David Van Esperson Barrels of FuncompanyBon JovigameSpooky PinballcompanyGooniesgame

Signals

?
product_strategy: Barrels of Fun employs mystery-launch strategy believing it maximizes day-one hype, but Kaneda argues early transparency (or leaked information) actually allows community to warm up to theme and improves conversion; contrasts with Spooky's successful day-one sellouts driven by brand/theme strength, not surprise
high · Kaneda: 'What Barrels does not understand is one thing, Kaneda leaking that it's Bon Jovi actually helped them... What they could have done is be transparent about that moment' vs. observed Bon Jovi's slower sales despite alleged 650-unit wholesale movement
$
market_signal: Bon Jovi wholesale claim of 650 units contradicted by retail dealer reports of very low end-customer demand; suggests distribution conflict or inflated wholesale numbers; indicator of market saturation or theme misalignment
medium · Kaneda: 'When I reach out to the dealers, this is where I'm hearing that the sales are not there. I'm talking orders on one hand... I don't know who's telling the truth.' Claims 650 moved to distros but dealers report minimal retail interest.
?
competitive_signal: Spooky's strong demand (Goonies 1,385 SLEs presold, Beetlejuice 999+ in under 1 hour) vs. Barrels' struggles (Bon Jovi difficult to sell 700) indicates market segmentation where established boutiques with clear brand identity can sell day-one, but newer entrants require content creator evangelism
high · Kaneda: 'Spooky doesn't have to take Goonies anywhere to sell 1300... Barrels... having a hard time even selling 700.' 'If you get it right, you don't have to slow burn sell the product. It should be a day one sellout if you're a boutique.'
?
brand_signal: Barrels of Fun lacks coherent brand identity (Labyrinth fantasy, Dune sci-fi, Winchester Mystery horror, Bon Jovi music as 'motley crew'); contrasted with Spooky's unified 'spooky' brand allowing customers to know what to expect; suggests Barrels needs thematic focus to build collector loyalty

Transcript

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0:00

Oh, I want to dance with somebody. I want to feel my peace with somebody. Yeah, I want to dance with somebody. With somebody who loves me. Jitter, jitter, jitter, jitter, jitter, jitter, jitter, jitter, jitter. Happy Friday, everybody. Welcome to the world's most prolific pinball podcaster. I'm your host, Kaneda. On this episode, I want to talk about something I'm reading and something I'm sort of feeling like there's a vibe around this Bon Jovi launch. And the narrative is this. If they could have kept it more of a secret, more of a mystery, that sales of Bon Jovi would have been better. And I disagree. And I'm hearing this narrative from some of the folks over at Barrels. There is now a rumor out there. We saw this, Jamie said this, that the folks at Barrels are indicating that 650 of these games have moved. Now, does that mean they're sold through? Yes. Does it mean they're sold out to customers? No. Now, I've been wrong. I've been saying Friday is the D-date. It's actually Tuesday. Tuesday is when it will be seven days from the day Bon Jovi was revealed that the Barrels Reserve club members will be told whether or not they will have the opportunity to exercise their $75 option to order a game if it is sold out. Now, what's going to be interesting is how they handle this. Will David Van Ness act as if selling through to dealers and distros 700 units? Will he consider that a sellout? Because he's not going to have deposits for each of those games or customers that have ordered those 700 units. So we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about how they launched the game. You might have caught my rant that I feel like they've been apologetically announcing this title. And I think that is a bad move. I think it's a bad look. I think Bon Jovi deserves more respect. And I think they should have done it so differently. Let me give you, if I were David Van Ness, because here's the thing. We are in a pinball space where every manufacturer sort of has their way of launching a game. And for some odd reason, they all try to launch the same way. And each company has their own strategy. Barrels' strategy has been one of keeping everybody guessing. If they can keep you guessing and make it a mystery and then pull the curtain off the game on the day it is revealed, they will have the biggest sales day. They did it with Winchester. We knew Dune was coming and I bet they think that knowing Dune in advance was the issue. It was a little bit of the issue, but the real issue with Dune was on day one, the game was so incomplete. The code wasn't there. And so you jumped on the game and barely anything wowed you other than the mechanism in the game. And Bon Jovi on day one is much more complete. But here's the issue. What Barrels does not understand is one thing, Kaneda leaking that it's Bon Jovi actually helped them. Because people had a week or so to get over it, to warm up to it, to put Bon Jovi songs back in your playlist maybe and just accept reality. What I think they should have done is looked at what happened with Elton John because Elton John was another game. We kind of felt it was going to be Elton John. We kind of knew it and they didn't confirm it and they didn't warm people up to the theme. And then they just dropped it on us and everybody was underwhelmed that it was actually Elton John. Now, I'm not saying that I can do a miracle here and get a lot of this community into Bon Jovi. I would not have made Bon Jovi if I were David simply because it doesn't fit in line with the kind of quirky themes he's been doing. I think Barrels of Fun as a brand needs to establish what kind of brand do you want to be. Like Spooky Pinball has got like a theme. All their titles for the most part fit into that theme. The only one that didn might have been like TNA and maybe Rick and Morty but everything else has a little bit of a spooky theme to it Now Goonies is a little bit of a departure but it still in that campy sort of spooky fun campy kind of experience and journey kind of movie Barrels of Fun, you go from Labyrinth to Dune to Winchester to Bon Jovi. It really is like a motley crew. You could argue they're making something for everybody, but as a brand, I'm not sure what they're going for. I think Barrels' niche should be just that. I think they should make cult classic stuff that has enough of a following that when you make it, you could easily sell 500 to 1,000. Stuff like The A-Team, stuff like He-Man. This is not even cult classic stuff, some of this. G.I. Joe, those are more of the mainstream things. But then you get into cult classics like The Last Starfighter, stuff like Bloodsport, stuff like Big Trouble in Little China. Some of these things, right? Some of them might excite you. There's just a lot out there. I actually think Murder, She Wrote would do well. Follow up Winchester's Mystery House with Murder, She Wrote. But Bon Jovi, big departure. And here's what I think they should have done. And I think this was like, you know, an interesting decision to try to keep Bon Jovi a mystery for so long. Now, David Van Ness says that Bon Jovi came to them and wanted them to make a pinball machine. Now, that's an honor. This guy is one of the biggest iconic 80s and 90s rock and roll acts of all time. David Van Ness is a brand new pinball company. He's only made three games. He made Labyrinth, he made Dune, and he made Winchester. And so all of a sudden, imagine if one of the biggest rock and roll stars in history knocks on your door and says, I want you to make my pinball machine. OK, what they could have done is when that happened, why not? Why not be transparent about that moment? Imagine if he said to everybody out there, gang, Bon Jovi just knocked on our door and said he would love us to make his pinball machine. First and foremost, you could be like, what do you think? Like, we feel honored. What do you think? Should we make Jon Bon Jovi pinball? What would stop them from doing that? So right there, you'd get a lot of really good feedback on whether or not there's excitement or enthusiasm. I think people would have been up for it if you introduced it that way, because then you could have brought everybody in on the journey and everyone would know, OK, like this is cool. Like our new little startup company has now attracted the attention of one of the biggest musical acts ever. And then if you introduce it that way, it's different. See, when David says like three musical acts came to us right away, it almost opens the door for more disappointment because you're like, well, who are the other two? When you give people too many options or make them feel like you could have gone in a different direction, that's not what you want. It's way different if it's like one of the biggest musical acts of all time has asked us to make their pinball machine and we feel honored. I think that changes the reception to the overall idea of making Bon Jovi pinball machine. And the other part is if you bring people in early like that, you know, you could say like, look, we want to make a lot of really exciting stuff. We have other themes in development. We think this is a fun music theme. We can't wait for you to see what we do with it. You also could bring people on the journey with you at times and maybe show them the artwork, get some feedback on the artwork. And then you could have changed the artwork if you got some feedback earlier on. But trying to keep everything a mystery didn't pan out and it's not panning out. And I'm on Pinside and everyone's reactions continue to be a mixed bag. The problem is at these prices, nobody wants to feel like they are settling, settling for a theme they didn't really want, Settling for an art package that's not really great. I don't know another way to say it. They don't want to feel like there's an Achilles heel. And this game almost feels like it's got two Achilles heels that people need to get over. And I just think this mysterious way to launch every game is like, I don't know. I don't know if it's going to work in their favor now. And it's almost like if I'm David, let's just say hypothetically, if I'm David and these Bon Jovis are not moving, And let's be honest here. Like no one knows the facts around this other than David and him telling Jamie that 650 of these have moved. Do you believe that? Like I in the thread and nobody seems to be saying they ordered one Like not many people are saying they bought it Now I also know as a fact that a lot of people that buy pinball machines are not on Pinside They're not Canada Club members. They're not following pinball content. And Bon Jovi is a massive theme and a massive IP. So I don't know if they've been broadcasting this out to the Bon Jovi fan base. I'm sure they have and they might have attracted enough people to buy 650 units. But when I reach out to the dealers, this is where I'm hearing that the sales are not there. I'm talking orders on one hand is what I'm being told from certain dealers. So I don't know who's telling the truth. I'm not rooting against this game. Heck, I just did a podcast where I said I think it's going to sell out when you've got an artist with billions of listens. If you can't sell 700, something went awry, really awry. And I hate to say it, but it might all come down to the way the game looks more than it is even the music because people have warmed up to musical acts that they didn't love because the gameplay was there. See, the gameplay is here. The other problem, and this is just a problem, I watched Carl D'Angelo play this game. On one ball, the dude had like a one ball game that lasted eight minutes and he put up a billion points on one ball. And also the way it's coded is very much like G&R where you select your song and you can decide if you want to cash out or continue rocking out to the song. And I think all the songs, I hope they're not going to be all selectable when you hit start. See, this is then a jukebox that you can play. And I don't know if people want another musical jukebox that you can play. Because if you can select every song from the moment you hit start, you don't really feel like you're achieving much. Then you're just chopping wood through the songs to get to a high score. And having Carl blow up the game on one ball makes everybody feel like it's really easy. The ball times are long. I mean, eight minutes on one ball. So, you know, maybe that's not the best way to show the game and the intensity and how the actual ownership is going to be. So it's a challenge, right? It's always a challenge. If you have someone that's too good at pinball, they might show too much. They might have too long of a ball time and it might not be relatable to the mainstream pinball buying communities. So that's something they just have to deal with when they think about what's the best way to show the game. I just want to say this. We're at a point now in pinball with so many themes and so much happening. David needs to do more market research. He needs a theme where he doesn't end up here, where he doesn't need all these content creators to try to convince us to buy. If you think about Beetlejuice, think about the difference between the Beetlejuice launch and the Bon Jovi launch. Both of them are BJs, right? Think about the difference. When Beetlejuice launched, they had one launch video. They had a teaser that had how you turn the game on by saying Beetlejuice's name three times. And then they launched the game. And on the day Beetlejuice launched, they sold 999 plus the show games in less than an hour. The reason why, because about three to 4,000 people were trying to buy the 999 games in one day, that game achieved that on theme, on artwork and on mechanisms, right? That's what we saw. Nobody had played it when all of those games sold. I am hearing that Goonies is even better, has way more wow, and the same thing is going to happen when Goonies is revealed. That game is already sold out and they're going to sell every one of those 1,300 and they're going to sell every one of those 85 SLEs. David has Bon Jovi and he's having a hard time even selling 700. So think about that. That means that there's not even 700 or more people that want this game right now. And this is a global pinball buying demographic that is called missing the mark It is called making something that the community and your target audience does not want Every single theme that David chooses and if he going to choose to make 1 games every single theme that he chooses needs to have at least 3 people that want to buy one of those 1 games Why is it so hard for him to do that? Labyrinth was not that. Dune was not that. Now, Winchester is interesting because if they made a thousand, would it have the demand that it has? Probably not. But Haunted House game, loaded with cool stuff, very, very cool game. And it checked all the boxes. The art was cool. The music by Dirty Pool is cool. By the way, like Kaneda Pool is coming. I'm going to style my hair like that and do a show. It's coming, baby. It's coming. As the man with the worst haircut in all of pinball, me, I can make fun of other people's hair. All right. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. Now you're at a point where David's done Bon Jovi and clearly the demand is not. The demand does not exceed the supply. And he keeps putting himself and the company in this position. And I really hope they survive this. I hope they get these games sold. I think they will eventually sell these games. It's going to be a very important Southern Fried Gaming Expo for David and team because he needs this game to show very, very well. He needs to get orders for this game by show attendees. And the word of mouth is going to be very important. It's like that matters more than people that they brought into the fold to make content. And we are going to trust the unbiased opinions about this game at Southern Fried Gaming Expo. But man, Spooky doesn't have to take Goonies anywhere to sell 1300. They don't have to take Gremlins anywhere to sell the amount they want to sell. Same with South Park. When you get it right, right now, if Dutch Pinball said, hey, the first thousand back to the futures, we're taking orders right now. Without even showing the game, they would sell a thousand units without showing anything. Just knowing that it's Dutch, it's got all the assets and franches on art. They could just say that and they would sell every single one. This is the moment now. This is the moment where I think everybody over at Barrels needs to not look for anybody to blame, but internal decision makers. Stop making it hard on yourselves, David and team. We are rooting for you. But the lack of transparency, the lack of market research and your desire to keep things a mystery is sinking your company. You need to bring in outside people that have a better finger on the pulse of what this community wants and you will be successful. This is the hardest thing for David to do. He needs to put his personal desires to make things that he likes aside. Spooky Pinball did the same thing. The moment they stopped with the Rob Zombies and the Ultramans, they found tremendous success. David should know better because he worked at Spooky and saw all this go down. The reason he left Spooky is because they did not want to make Labyrinth and he did. And Labyrinth was not a tremendous success. In the world of pinball, if you get it right, you don't have to slow burn sell the product. It should be a day one sellout if you're a boutique. Everybody, I love you. Thank you for the support. Thank you for putting up with me at my worst. That means you can enjoy me at my best. Have a great Friday. Kiss everybody you love. Tell them you love them every single day. Life is very short. Nothing happening in the pinball world should ever, ever, ever, ever get you down. You know, there's a lot of smack talking. It's fun. I don't care. I'm going to be me. I'm not going to change. And it's just who I am. Kaneda out.