All I do is win, win, win, no matter what. Got money on my mind, I can never get enough. And every time I step up in the building, everybody hands go up. I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said. Welcome everybody to Canada Spinball Podcast. It's a Monday here in New York City. The holiday seasons are upon us. Brenda's sister's coming in from Ireland to celebrate with Killian. And thank each and every one of you for being a member of the Canada Club. Here's what I want to do on this episode. First, I'm going to go around the horn and just talk about what's going on quickly with every manufacturer. And then I want to focus on a single topic, and that is, is FOMO fun and something we enjoy, or is FOMO driving this hobby in the wrong direction? And we're going to talk about it. I don't think there's like one black and white answer to this question, but I want to play a little bit of devil's advocate on this entire hobby as I look at some of the stuff happening in the current pinball marketplace. All right, but first, let's go around the horn and talk about what's going on in the world of pinball. So James Bond LEs are now currently shipping to customers, which is awesome. I think we're going to see almost all of these games delivered. All 1,000 James Bond LEs will almost reach their customers by the end of the year. Remember, Stern Pinball can make about 400 games a week. So if they got to do a run of 1,000 James Bond LEs, they can crank them out pretty quickly. Isn't that amazing? Like this company could make all of the Scooby-Doos in just a month and a half. Stern Pinball, my hat goes off to you because when you watch these games arrive, it is kind of incredible. It's not just like one unboxing here and then another unboxing a week later. It's like in one week, hundreds of games are arriving to customers, which is absolutely incredible. Whenever Stern decides to flex its might and show what it can really do, it is always very impressive. Now, if you're in on a James Bond LE, congratulations. You're going to be waiting a while for the code. Everybody knows that. There's not much in it. Is Stern going to make this game great? Is Lonnie going to put everything into this game that you want? We shall see. The track record for Stern delivering a great game, like if you wait a year, is really, really good. So I think if you have one, you're not that nervous. I wouldn't really even unbox mine until like six months from now. You know, other people like to unbox it, learn the shots, and then it's fun seeing each new code update and seeing how much more they're adding to the game every time there's a new code update. So congratulations. The other thing we're going to see is this. Because 1,000 LEs at $13,000 hitting people during the holiday season, we're going to see the people who don't really want it try to sell their James Bond LEs. Now, here's the funny part. I saw a guy list a James Bond LE for $14,000 and he got all of these downvotes. And I think people are forgetting James Bond LE was not $10,500 like Godzilla. This game with tax from the Stern website is $14,000 people. So somebody listing a James Bond LE for $14,000 is actually passing that game on to a new buyer at cost. He's not making any money on that transaction. So it was really funny to see all the downvotes. It's like, what do people expect? Is this seller supposed to lose money? I think we're going to see these games be available. I don't think James Bond LE is going to go up in price. I think it's going to hold steady around like this $13,000. Who knows, right? We've never had a thousand Stern LEs at $13,000 before. So the market is pretty untested on this machine. I played the James Bond Pro at Jack Bar. It shoots okay. It doesn't wow me, right? I went from James Bond to Godzilla and I have to be candid. Godzilla shoots so much better than James Bond. And my one concern with James Bond is this. There is nothing mechanically in the game that's really that interesting. There was nothing that really wowed me. And I know the differences between the pro and the premium. And there's nothing on that premium that is also like a real wow thing that you can't wait to play. And that's my only like gripe with the game right now is like, I don't think Gomez put a mech in this game that lives up to some of the other stuff he's put into his games. And I just don't think there's anything mechanically in this game that would make people go wow I think the missile is kind of weird it doesn't really do that much and it takes up so much real estate and three drop targets aren't that exciting to shoot and then you've got that sort of whole left side is weird to me that whole left side by that upper left flipper that whole area just doesn't feel well thought out it almost feels like an afterthought and they ran out of time and they wanted to do something else there there's just something about the ball going into the buck that just like shoots it out it just doesn't shoot it out in an interesting way. And I'll compare it to like the magnet that Keith Elwin put on Godzilla. You know that magnet that grabs the ball and swings it into the next shot? Like think about how well that was thought out. And then you look at the James Bond area on the left. It just doesn't feel like it's doing anything interesting. Now look, people have said this, maybe the code's going to make some of these uninteresting shots more interesting. Time will tell. All right, so that's that. So I hope you guys enjoy your James Bond LEs. It's an expensive pin, and I hope it lives up to all of your expectations. Speaking of James Bond, we still have no word on the Keith Elwin's 60th anniversary. As I predicted, I knew Stern would get all of the money for all of the LEs before they revealed this machine. It's a smart move. It's a dicey move. I don't know how it's going to play out. I do feel bad for the James Bond fanatic who might want both, because that's $40,000 for like two Stern machines that are on the same theme, basically. I don't get it. We'll see if this experiment works out. I don't think if this machine is over $20,000, it's going to be some day one sellout. I just don't. So Stern now is all going to be about James Bond production. They're going to make more Godzilla premiums coming up. And then I think we're only going to see two cornerstone games from Stern Pinball. I don't think we're going to see their next game until sometime in March, April. So this is it for Stern. I mean, the next wave is going to be the Elwynn pin, but then it's all going to be the slow burn of the James Bond code. So that's Stern Pinball for the next six months, people. All right, let's move on to Jersey Jack Pinball. Nothing really new to report with Jersey Jack Pinball. Toy Story is still the game that they are pushing. Now, it's obvious that a lot of these distributors, I'm getting the emails from distributors. They all seem to have inventory for Toy Story LE, Guns N' Roses LE, and Toy Story Collector's Edition. So that leads me to believe that if you're a distributor and you have inventory of those three titles, you are not going to be ordering more. And Toy Story Collector's Edition, even though it's a beautiful pin, it's definitely not selling that quickly. And so now everyone is just wondering, when will we get Jersey Jack Pinball number eight? We all think it's Godfather. when are we going to see it? Are we going to see it sooner than later if Toy Story sales start to flatline? So that is what happening next at Jersey Jack Pinball So let go over to Spooky Pinball Obviously Spooky is owning the conversation in the pinball community this December A lot of enthusiasm for Scooby a lot of excitement in the hype thread. I think the spooky haters, and they're out there, the people rooting against Spooky Pinball, a little weird. I don't think there's any place in pinball for that kind of behavior. Every pinball company, when they have a new title, we should look at it with a little bit of an open mind. Unless that company's named Home Pin, I think there's no reason why we should count anybody out as they make a new pinball machine. And look, spooky pinball really hit it out of the park with this theme. There's a lot of positivity around Scooby-Doo. There's a lot of enthusiasm around this game. And now the big question mark is this. What will the game be like when we see it in January? Until then, there really is nothing else to do than wait. And for those of you who committed to buying a game, I'm happy you got a theme you really wanted. Now, we know you haven't seen enough yet to know the game is truly going to be epic and great, but we know the passion is there. We know the theme is right for Spooky, and we also know there's going to be a ton of assets that they have access to to put into this game. And so I'm optimistic that they're going to figure this game out. I'm optimistic this will be probably one of their best shooting games, and I'm optimistic if you're a Scooby-Doo fan, this game is going to put a smile on your face. And I'm going to talk about when I do Devil's Advocate, I'm going to talk about why I like the way Spooky's doing it the way they're doing it. The game is still not sold out. If you want one, you can still get one. And I think that's a good thing. I think it's somewhat of a refreshing thing in the pinball world and I'll explain why later. Alright, so Spooky Pinball having a really good December. Let's go on to the Pinball Brothers next, right? We don't really hear about the Pinball Brothers much, but they are sharing photos of Queen Pinball about to go on the line or in production. I don't know about you, when I see these photos, I'm glad this company is getting it done. But when I look at Queen Pinball and it's 2022, we're going on to 2023, I just don't feel like this game can truly compete with what's in the pinball marketplace. It's about a $10,000 pinball machine. If you're a Queen fanatic, you might have to buy this machine. But I almost feel bad for you because this game just doesn't feel like it's going to live up to a game like Rush or Guns and Roses or Metallica or ACDC or Aerosmith. Like if you go down a list of all the music pins, this machine reminds me a lot of a game called Led Zeppelin. And we don't really talk about how painful it is when your favorite musical act gets turned into a pinball machine, right? It gets immortalized in this analog device. And all of a sudden, you can't change it. This is it. And I think if you asked anybody, if you're a Queen fanatic, who would you like to have make your queen game? I don't think anybody would say pinball brothers. And also like this game has been revealed months ago. So it's going to be curious to see how they get the FOMO going. You know, I think for these boutique companies like pinball brothers and American pinball, it's really critical that they reveal the game at the right time when the game is on the line, because they've destroyed the FOMO around queen. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. And this game feels like it's been out now for like three, four months and not a single game is shipped to a customer. And that doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work anymore unless you have something truly special people believe in. But Pinball Brothers, they don't have a fan base in the community, right? We'll see how well it does. I just think there's a finite amount of pinball dollars to be spent and I just can't see a lot of people ordering this game. All right, let's go next to Chicago Gaming Company. This company, you know what's interesting is the thread on Pinside is, what's next from Chicago Gaming Company? And I don't think anyone is asking that question. I think the question is, what the heck is going on over at Chicago Gaming Company? And all people are looking for is a little bit, not a little bit, just some transparency, some communication from Ryan White and team on what the heck is going on with the Cactus Canyon LE weight. I'm hearing from people that only like less than 50 have been made for the LEs. I'm hearing full scale production hasn't really begun. And I'm just going to say this, I challenge them and we all should just ask them, do a video tour of your manufacturing facility. Can you on a random Tuesday, Ryan White, go on your Facebook page, go live and take us on a tour of what's happening at Chicago Gaming Company on a random Tuesday. Are games being made? Who's working on the assembly line? What are they doing every day? What is the holdup? And I wish we just got some of that. I mean, people paid for this game over a year ago. And now those people who ordered the game, you know, they're seeing these James Bond LEs land. I think we're going to see more Scooby-Doos in homes by the end of January. then we're going to see Cactus Canyon remake LEs. And that's pretty sad. I think CGC has probably been one of the biggest disappointments in 2022. And I really hope they can turn it around. I don't know what the issue is because they won't tell us what the issue is. All right, let's go over to Multimorphic. P3 Multimorphic or Multimorphic P3. I always get it wrong. And look, as a marketer, it should never be confusing. And the fact that I'm confused by it maybe means it should just be called something. It's the Multimorphic P3. Is it P3 by Multimorphic? Okay. Okay. But is it going to be a P4? Like, is there going to be a P5? I'm just confused. Okay. This is another company where like production just seems to be operating at a snail's pace. Now here's what's crazy. It's like, come this February, it'll be an entire year since Weird Al was like revealed to the world. It's not that people don't want their Weird Als. It's just that making them seems to be almost impossible. And this is another company where like, I don't even know if like five are going out a week. I don't even know if like 10 are going out a month. It is absolutely shrouded in mystery how many games Multimorphic is sending out to people. I don't see many unboxings. I don't see many for sale. I don't know what's happening. I do know this, like this isn't good. If you're a boutique, you've got to figure out a system in which you can have a consistent cadence of manufacturing. I have to assume that every day, because just think about it for a minute, how do you pay people to be on the assembly line if the assembly line is not working every day? So then what do you do? Are you hiring temp workers that just show up one day a week to start to put stuff together? So then what do those people do the rest of the week? They've got to find consistent employment. You can't really do manufacturing like this. This whole starting and stopping, it's more like a glorified garage build than it is a pinball manufacturing company. And then it's like this, why would you even try to manufacture it yourself if that's how it's working? See, I think Jerry should go to like American Pinball or go somewhere else where there's manufacturing and be like, hey, why don't we combine forces and work together on making games and have one factory putting together machines. We can have one line making Weird Al, We could have one line making like the remaining Oktoberfest parts. Why not do it that way? It seems really silly to me that Multimorphic for its size is like trying to do it like on its own because they looking a lot like the other company doing it on its own and that haggis pinball you know and haggis is in the same boat it like they trickling out games and i mean like you could count on one hand how many games are being made a week i don't know how you keep a manufacturing company viable like that but i bet these crews at both multimorphic and at haggis are such skeleton crews i mean these companies probably only have like 10 or less employees each. Think about that for a minute, 10 or less employees to manufacture a pinball machine. It's hard enough for me to put together a good PowerPoint presentation to a client with a team of 10 people thinking about ideas. And these companies are trying to make super complex mechanical devices with hardly anybody. I think Stern has 400 people making games. And it always begs the question, If you can't make it, why are you in it? If you can't make the games, why are you in the hobby? You can't be making money like this. There's just no way you can make money like this. All right, who's next? Okay, let's talk about American Pinball next. Now, look, we're all waiting for this Dennis Nordman game. And I've heard from people who have seen it. They say the game is really packed. There's a really long ramp going up the middle. I think it's going to be Galactic Space Force or Galactic Tank Force. I think the cabinet's going to be really unique. And the question is, where is it? Right now, American Pinball is rerunning some Oktoberfest. I don't know if Houdini's next. I don't know if they've made all of the Legends of Valhalla's. The big question mark for American Pinball is simply this. Did they wait too long? And I mean it when I say it. Like, did they wait too long? All of these games now, you know, between like $9,000 to $10,000, they're going to have to figure out a way to get some excitement going for this game. And we have no idea now what the ETA is on this game. It's not even that much fun to speculate. All we know is it's coming out sometime in 2023. I think it's obvious, ladies and gentlemen, that there are still tremendous supply chain issues happening in the pinball world. There is still a tremendously difficult time getting parts from China for these companies. This is not an easy time to be making pinball. It's actually probably the hardest time ever to put together a pinball machine and make a profit. That is why I am surprised. I'm just going to say it. I'm surprised that all of these companies are still around. Like they're still hanging on. Some of them are financed by outside annuities, but some of these are not. If you're in it under your own investments, those are the companies that have the biggest chance of going under. And those are the companies like Dutch and Haggis and Multimorphic. You need to keep making games. Pinball Brothers, you need to keep making games. You know, it's good to see Dutch Pinball is getting games out the door. And they're increasing their manufacturing capabilities. I also respect Dutch Pinball now because they actually show us like what's going on behind the scenes. And people are getting their big Lebowskis. Like it's no mystery anymore. I don't know how long it's going to take till all the EAs are made whole. at least out of all the boutiques, I think Dutch Pinball has really been the one that can show they can manufacture the best with all of the different variables everyone else is sort of struggling with. All right, let's talk about this real quick and talk about FOMO and how FOMO has been used as the predominant marketing tool to drive sales in pinball. And these companies are not foolish for doing it. It works. So many times, so many of us have like bought a game before ever seeing much of it, before seeing gameplay, before seeing the code, all we had to see was the art. We got the theme, we got the layout, and it was like, take my money now. But I want to play devil's advocate and say that I actually do like seeing the fact that Spooky Pinball is making 1969 Scooby-Doos. They are available and it's somewhat refreshing. If you want the game, you can get it. If you want the game, you don't have to buy it day one. If you want the game, you're going to be able to wait to see gameplay before you make up your mind. And it got me thinking about this entire hobby a little bit, a little bit philosophical. And if you think about it and you drill down to what is the point of a pinball machine in our lives, like think about that for a minute. Why do we want a pinball machine? It's a toy. It's a lot of fun. And I would argue that as an adult, the reason why we put these things in our homes and go out to play them is that they cure us from the worst condition of living, which is boredom. And I've noticed this more and more. And as an adult with a new child, the boredom is really a difficult thing to deal with. Boredom is something that we don't really talk about enough as adults, just in culture in general. Why we get bored, right? How things get monotonous. how as a grown adult, your life can start to get repetitive, that like every day can feel like the same day. I think for a lot of us out there, like a lot of our lives are spent like trying to cure that boredom. Some of us cure it with like trying new restaurants and learning a hobby or learning a new skill or reading a book or playing some video games. But so much of our free time, in my world at least, is spent trying not to be bored. I get antsy. And the older I get, the more and more I feel like time is really limited and I want to make sure I'm not wasting time. And the irony in all of my like pursuit of happiness and ending the boredom I feel on a daily basis is I end up with like repetition. And you think about it for a minute, like how many of us like go to pin side every single day? How many of us read about pinball every single day? There's nothing really new to learn every single day, but yet we find ourselves creatures obsessed with like a routine and we get into a routine and we keep doing it and doing it and doing it. And I've noticed in the pinball space too, there's a lot of that. The thing too is like when you buy something like a pinball machine, think about the mental journey we go on. Like we're normally like really excited to like speculate about what's coming up from these manufacturers. We use our imaginations. We dream about the possibilities of what could be in a Keith Elwin Back to the Future. What could Jaws pinball be like? What could Toy Story be like? It's fun to think about what it's going to be because there's mystery there. And we spent a lot of like mental capacity imagining and dreaming what it's going to be like. Because remember, these are still just toys and we're all grown adults who are now obsessing over a toy that we're not quite sure what the final toy is going to be. And that's fun. I mean, for the most part, that's what drives a lot of Pinside is that speculation. that cures a lot of our boredom is just using our imagination about what these games are going to be and all the speculation and all the community getting together, right, on Pinside, on Facebook, sort of talking about what's next from each company. I don't know if you guys feel this way, but whenever a game is revealed, there's always like that moment of like giddiness, but then there's also that moment where you're just like, well, it's still just another Stern. It's just another pinball machine. There have been so few times, and I've been covering this hobby for eight years, There have been so few times where a game actually exceeded what I thought it would be, where a game had more magic in it than I thought it would be, where I saw creativity on a level that I never could have imagined. And maybe my expectations are just too high, but I would argue they not I would argue for these prices we should be seeing a lot more in these pinball machines And the moment you walk down a row of like Bally Williams games and John Youssi what they used to put into machines when the creative brief was this back in the day, the creative brief was how can we make this world under glass so exciting not to compete with other pinball, but we have to pull people away from Street Fighter 2, from Donkey Kong, from Daytona USA, right? Mortal Kombat. Like They were making these pinball machines to really be as magical as possible because they needed operators to make money off of them. And for operators to make money off of them, they really needed to be a world under glass because they were competing with all of the arcade machines of the day. And arcade machines were still far more popular than pinball. 22,000 Addams families were sold, the most popular pinball machine of all time. I think Donkey Kong had like 200,000 were made. And Street Fighter 2, forget it. Over 2 million, I think, Street Fighter 2s were made or iterations of Street Fighter were put out into the world. You know, and so like the market trend now, like as I see like all of these games and how expensive they are and like we're buying before seeing stuff, I think it's really refreshing that Spooky Pinball did it this way. And here's the thing. I'm wondering if we're all starting to get a bit fatigued by this whole like Ellie model, because when you really drill down and you ask yourselves, why is it as grown adults who buy these machines? Why do we need a version of it that is a little bit nicer than the version next to it? Why do we need to beat our chest and say, hey, I have one of these. You don't have one of these. These are sold out. Like, why is it like, why do we want to live in a world like that? And I mean it. I'm playing devil's advocate because I'm always like, you know me, I love the super rare. I love the high end stuff. I love stuff that is like sought after. But if you really do think about it, owning one of these like sought after super rare games is not going to make your life any better. Someone who's playing a Medieval Madness Royal Edition is having no more fun than someone who's playing another LE version of Medieval Madness from Chicago Gaming Company. And yet when someone is listing a Medieval Madness Royal Edition for sale on Pinside, they are asking $30,000 for it. Why is that? Is that person going to have $20,000 more fun than the person who bought it for $10,000? Every single person who owns a Ghostbusters premium is having as much fun as someone who has a Ghostbusters LE. And the truth is this, we place value in vanity. All of that is a vanity play. It's all just aesthetics. None of it is actually changing the experience, especially in pinball, because when you stand over an LE and a premium, you are usually staring at the same exact play field, the same exact playfield art, the same exact mechs, the same shots. When you look up at the screen, you're getting the same exact code coming at you in the same exact way. There's like no real difference. Like I could understand like paying more money for these LEs and other additions if they actually gave like unique code or some experience in it that really differentiated the game. You know, like they did with Tron LE and you have like the Daft Punk multiball. But for the most part, we absolutely are throwing thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars at stuff that isn't really giving us any more enjoyment. The only thing it's doing, and we know this, the only thing it's doing is it's prettier on the eyes. And that's it. When you walk by an LE, it does look nicer. And that's it. And for some of you out there, that's what you want. You want to go down the row and you want to have the nicest looking collection imaginable. And I don't fault you for that. I get it. Like I was just talking to my friend Derek who bought a Porsche and he had a Porsche in a darker color. He didn't really like the color. And the moment he switched his color to like a brighter red, he's having twice as much fun with the vehicle because it's the color he wanted. And I think a lot of that is true with pinball. It's like you might have the premium of Ghostbusters and you love Ghostbusters so much, but you know, deep down inside, you'd be happier if you had a Ghostbusters LE. But what I like about what Spooky is doing is this new model of theirs is blowing all of that up. It is blowing up that three-tiered model. Even though they're offering three tiers, what they really want to do is make sure that everyone can get which version of the game they want. And if you want the nicest version, we will make it for you. And we won't create this like limited FOMO approach to it. And it's refreshing. I will say this. It is refreshing. It's refreshing to see that the game is not sold out yet. It's refreshing to know you're going to be able to get it. It's refreshing to know that you can have exactly the game the way you want it. And maybe as a community, we should start demanding more and more of this behavior take place. The companies don't want it. The distros don't want it. They want the FOMO. I think pinball is going to go through a period now, you know, in which the flex on the super expensive stuff is going to start to lose some of its luster. and I think for a lot of us, there's only so many years you can put up with this like chasing the LEs, chasing the rare versions of the game, watching people put these games up for sale for three times what they paid for them just a year ago. It gets exhausting and I think we need to get back to just why these things exist. They're toys to cure our boredom and let me tell you right now and I mean this, jumping on a James Bond Pro for $6,700 is more fun and will be more fun then spending $13,000 on an LE and trying to keep the game mint and waiting for code. Like the guy who buys the pro is going to bang on it, enjoy it, and he's going to have the same exact gameplay experience you are. Trust me, I've seen that game. There's not a lot of gameplay experience that's going to come with the premium. And that's all I'm saying is I go back and forth on this. And I like nice stuff, don't get me wrong. And I still like super rare versions of pinball machines. But man, it must have been so refreshing to be a pinball fanatic in the 1990s. You walked into an arcade and you saw Addams Family. You saw Toten. You saw Twilight Zone. You saw Indiana Hilton Jones. And when you went up to the machine, you just went up to play and enjoy the magic that that company put into that game. You weren't thinking about how limited was this game. You weren't thinking about the armor on the machine. You weren't thinking about play field dimples. All you were doing was going up there and enjoying pinball the way it was meant to be enjoyed. And I really do love this hobby because nowadays, like, we could enjoy it that way. Or you could be an OCD collector. Or you could just be a guy that makes hardly any money a year, who loves Scooby-Doo, saves up enough pennies, and buys a standard edition of the game, and just puts it in his home and has a great time playing that pinball machine every day. Everybody, thank you for being a member of the Canada Club. I'm not even sure if this podcast made sense or not. I'm just contradicting myself. But email me at canadapinball at gmail.com. If you have any questions, we will talk to you soon. And they stay there. And they stay there. And they stay there. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Because all I do is scream, scream, scream. And if you're going in, put your hands in the air. Make them say yeah