A little blast from the past, the old Kaneda intro song right there. Everybody, welcome to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Kaneda. Happy May the 4th be with you. Happy Cinco de Mayo tomorrow. I'm going to take the day off. Much needed day off. I'm going to put Killian in daycare and I'm going to go drink a bunch of margaritas and hopefully Brenda does not listen to this so she can pick them up and I can just have my fun tomorrow. All right, so here's what we're going to talk about on this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast. A couple things. I want to talk about spooky pinball answering the Canada Boutique Pinball Challenge. We saw the greatest walk around of Spooky Pinball. We saw Luke filming Bug walk us around Spooky Pinball. I want to talk about why more boutique pinball companies need to do this. And for those who say Canada does not do anything positive for pinball, look how amazing that video was. Look how great Spooky Pinball looked doing that video. And look how good that video makes people feel about supporting Spooky Pinball. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk a little bit about international pinball in this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast and how Stern Pinball says, hey, there can only be one international distributor per region or per country. And what's happening in those places as these people want to buy pinball machines. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about this Toy Story topper. You know, a $12,000 machine gets a topper that looks pretty damn cheap. I don't know why Jersey Jack continues to do this stuff. And what other stuff do we want to talk about on this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast? Well, let's start out by saying that Chicago Gaming Company might not be making any more remakes. Now, we heard Butch Peel did an interview, and he pretty much said this, that Chicago Gaming Company might not be doing more remakes. Now, I think the reason why this would happen is not because they couldn't sell more remakes. There are a lot of classic Bally Williams games that they could remake and still make a lot of money. I think Planetary has moved on from CGC. I think we're going to see Planetary hook up with Pendretti Gaming. And I think we're going to see Pendretti, maybe with Pinball Brothers, start to release more of these remake games. The thing about pinball is once you have a great pinball machine, it will always be great. None of the new stuff makes the old stuff really that obsolete. And when I say old stuff, I mean anything from the 90s, even though it has a DMD. We know those games were super awesome. Those games have a lot of toys and mechs. The only downside to some of those games is the code is very shallow. But you almost will never find a modern pinball machine that has more magical toys in it than the Bally Williams games. And so there are still a plethora of games from that period in time where if you remade them and put them new in box, you would sell a few thousand of each one easily, even though some of them already have like 10 or 15,000 of them that were made back in the day. It doesn't matter. Brand new, new in box like Indiana Jones. How do you think it would sell? Or brand new Twilight Zone, brand new Theater of Magic. I bet they would sell more Circus Voltaire's remade than they did of the original run of Circus Voltaire. If they ever remake Tales of the Arabian Nights and put new code in it, I will buy one right away. There are just so many great special games that people would want. So we will see what happens. I mean, I think remakes are also very interesting to see what they do in the pinball marketplace. If Toy Story is $12,000 in the new marketplace, what could you charge for Twilight Zone? What could you charge for Theater of Magic? Things that have a lot more in it. I think CGC has kind of been giving these games away. I mean, I really do. The modern pinball pricing, CGC's prices are not aligned with what collectors would spend on those fully featured games. You're like, Kaneda, shut up. Stop telling them to charge more. All right, let's talk about the Kaneda Boutique Challenge and how proud I was to see Spooky Pinball just say, Hey, look, Kaneda, they hashtagged me. They said, at Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, we are going to go live in 30 minutes from the Spooky Factory. And we saw Bug walk around that factory, up and down the stairs, all over the place, showing us how they make Scooby-Doo pinball. There were some rooms he couldn't open up because there's secret stuff going on back there. But I think anyone who saw that video will walk away thinking to themselves, oh my gosh, making pinball is really damn hard. It takes a lot of dedicated, passionate people. It takes a lot of parts. It takes a lot of room. It takes a lot of money. It takes a lot. It is not easy. And also, like, when you look at Spooky Pinball, it does feel like they build their games their way. Like, they don't have a traditional assembly line the way we see at Jersey Jack Pinball and Stern Pinball. You know, that's why Spooky is still sort of like this really big boutique build. You could look at it and say, hey, it looks a little bit sloppy. This guy over there with his hat on backwards just working on coin doors and whatnot. They get it done. They make the games. They've made thousands of pinball machines. And I bet if they modernize their process a bit, they probably could get the quality to be even higher. And I have absolute faith in Spooky Pinball that they will continue to get better with each game. But that's not what I want to talk about. Here's what I want to talk about. When you sell a pinball machine you need to manufacture that machine So why would any pinball company that takes your money and asks for a non deposit from you why would any pinball company who does that not open up the door to show you how they manufacture their machines? And the big challenge with the Kaneda challenge, it's not some staged video. The big challenge is just going live, opening up the door on a random day in which games should be on the line because you took consumers' money and show us what is happening. I think the two greatest ways to connect with your customers when you're a pinball company is through your product and your people. Nothing will ever be more impactful than those things. No marketing efforts, no song and dance, nothing. You sell them a product, make sure the product is great, and then sell them on the people. and if you do those two things well you will win over people in the pinball community you will start to develop a fan base and a following and watching all those people make those games i think it gives a lot more of us a lot of humility and humbleness on how we talk about these companies like are you going to rag on a company when you feel like you know who the people are that that put these things together you know you see a video like this and now if your pinball machine has a little bit of an issue, you're not going to run to Pinside and say, hey, this company and their quality sucks because now you know that it's really just human beings making these things. It's human beings earning a living inventing Wisconsin, putting together your Scooby-Doo machine. And it adds such a personal element to these games. And I think every single pinball company out there, I don't care if you're tiny like Haggis or big like Stern Pinball, you should let the community in and you should celebrate not just the pinball, but also the people making the games. And so I am going to buy Spooky Pinball a pizza lunch. The Canadas Pinball Podcast Pizza Party is coming to Spooky Pinball for doing what they did. Now, I sent an email to Luke over there asking what's the best way to do this. So Luke, get back to me and let me know how many pizzas I need to order to make sure everybody there has a great lunch, courtesy of Canada. So now the next question is this. Who's going to take me up on the challenge next? And who do you think's afraid to do this? I think there are companies out there that will refuse to do this. I think Haggis Pinball is afraid. I think Multimorphic is afraid. I think American Pinball is afraid right now. I don't think anything's happening on the line over at AP or not much. I think CGC might be a little bit afraid. I don't think they want you to see how few people are there. I don't think they want you to see how little movement is maybe going on. But look, as you saw, the ball is in their court. They can decide when they want to go live. If they want to invite everybody in on a Thursday and say, hey, let's at least pretend for Kaneda and everybody else out there that we have some sort of manufacturing going on. And let's introduce Kaneda and the pinball community to the team over here. And I think that's the part that I love the most. I just want to know who's working at Haggis Pinball. Why do we have to guess at this? Who's working over at Multimorphic? Who's working over at American Pinball? Who's working over at Chicago Gaming Company? Who's working over at Dutch Pinball? It would be great to see it. All right, so we'll see. You know, the challenge is open-ended. They can do this anytime. And I think people are realizing that stuff like this is important. Before you send any money over to a pinball company, You should have something like this so you feel good that you're going to get your game. And the other part of the challenge was this. How many games a week can you make? Why is that a secret? You should know how many games a week a pinball company can make. I mean, this is just basic, commonsensical stuff. So let's talk about what's going on in pinball. So Toy Story, it's got some new code update. It's not a real big code update. And now we've got these accessories for Toy Story 4. The ship has sailed on Toy Story 4. They're not going to sell more. Distros are now trying to unload Toy Story CEs for like $12,000. New in box, people. So if you want one, you can go get a new in box Toy Story CE for like $3,000 off sticker. And now they're bringing out the topper for Toy Story LE. And much like the Guns and Roses topper that came out for the LE, it's just flat plastic. I don't understand Jersey Jack. You want to make this premium pinball machine. You sell the most expensive pinball machine in the current marketplace. Other than like one-offs like James Bond 60th, your base level machine is now $12,000. Your CE is $15,000. If you're going to make an accessory to sit on top of a $12,000 product, and then you want to make a crappy $200 flat plastic topper. How does this even get past the initial concept? Why isn't anybody over there saying, wait a minute, our brand is going to suffer if we make cheap accessories to put on top of expensive machines. Everything we do as a company should be top of the line, like everything. And so if you're over there, why aren't they looking at what Stern is doing on top of games like Elvira and Mandalorian and saying, hey, look, look at what Stern's bringing to market. Are we parallel with Stern when it comes to quality? Are we above them? Are we inferior? Or do we want to be superior when it comes to how people perceive our brand and our products and its accessories? And that's it. This stuff comes out. It looks really cheap. I think it makes JJP look really embarrassing. And I think they should make more of an effort. And that my thing is Jersey Jack used to be the company that went above and beyond on the efforts it put into its machines You know their machines had more mechanically in them had more code in them But whenever it came to the toppers, this company has just always been mailing it in since day one. You know, only when Eric does his CE topper is there any effort even being made. Go back and look at how crappy the toppers were for The Hobbit and for Wizard of Oz and for Dial, then no effort whatsoever. And that's my thing. If you want to put a cherry on top of the most expensive Sunday in pinball, then put a nice cherry on top of that Sunday. All right. So I got a note from somebody, and this is a really interesting topic that we never talk about. And that is Stern's international sales Ryan Policky. So apparently what happens is this. Stern picks one distributor in each market internationally. So let's take Australia for example. If you want to buy a Stern machine, you have to buy it from one distributor in Australia. Not only that, they do not allow you to buy your game from a US distributor. Even if you're willing to pay the air freight to get the game from the US to Australia, they will not let you do that. They also are making the games region specific. So that game won't even work in Australia if you do that. And this is making people feel like this creates a monopoly. And it does. It is the very definition of monopoly. And when you have a monopoly on the supply of games, the other thing happening is the distributors are setting the prices themselves. There's no ability for the market to set the price because there is no market. It's my way or the highway. It's one guy and his price and that's what you got to pay to get the machine. And it's not just Stern Machines. That distributor can set the price for that market. Let me give you an example that's going to make you cry. If you want to buy Pulp Fiction LE in the United States of America, it is basically $9,500. Everybody's going to buy it for that price if you buy it from a distributor selling it to you at MSRP. If you want to buy the same game in Australia, that game is $19,500. And that is because the one distributor, which is the only place you can get it, is setting the price at that. And the same is happening with Stern LEs. The same is happening with James Bond 60th. And when you only have one source to get the game, think about it. The distributor can then add on an additional $3,000 to $4,000 to its margins on the game simply because they know there's nowhere else you can go to get the machine. Now, look, this is a pain point for some of you out there who listen to Canada's Pinball Podcast, and I've always watched these games and how much people spend on these games in Australia, and I've always wondered what all of you do for a living over there. This hobby to me would be so cost prohibitive. It would suck knowing that I'm buying a game for basically twice as much money as everybody else out in the world has to pay for the game. I mean, that would suck. Like, how do you feel good at these prices? I know there's import tax in Europe. There's the VAT tax that goes on. But I still think there should be a way in which there can be more than one distributor per region. And that is just giving too much power to a singular distributor. How do you feel about this? Let me know at canadapinball at gmail.com. I would love to learn more about this. I fear if I try to go out and investigate this and talk to each of those distributors that has a monopoly, I don't think they're going to want to talk to me. I don't think they're going to want to come on the show. So I would love to know why this is happening and if there's a solution to it and what you think about this problem. Now, speaking of hearing what you think about stuff, I was super happy to see I got a lot. And I mean a good number of good suggestions from each and every one of you on different show topics we could do. And I think a lot of these are great and I really want to incorporate them into the show. Let me read some of them to you right now. So Donald thinks I should find a way for paid subscribers to go on video live with me and show their game rooms. Don't do it on Facebook Live because 99% of the people watching who come on to the show aren't even paid subscribers. That was really eye-opening. We were going live one night. People were showing us their like $300,000 in games. And we're like, are you a Canada subscriber? And they would say no. I'm going to look into like some content for Patreon only. Eric said, I know it could be tricky, but I'd love more interviews. I agree, Eric. I'm going to try to get more interviews going. Good friend of the show, Derek. You know, Derek, he's the biggest JJP fanboy. He couldn't hold out. He just bought a brand new Godfather LE. Derek, congrats on your game. But I said to Derek, I'd love to have you come on the show and let's talk about what your experience is like with the Godfather. Now, look, he's the biggest JJP fanboy, but Derek will be honest with us. He will be. And I would love to get more personalities on the show. So I'm going to work on that. Kelly Daniels said more pinball rumors. Well, look, guys, when I have a rumor, I'm going to tell you the rumor. Right now, there hasn't been a lot. Like, we basically know what is coming out from Stern. We know that Venom is next. It's going to be Venom. We know they have Indiana Jones coming. They have Jaws coming. They probably have Back to the Future. It's all coming. Did you see, by the way, Jack Danger? He must be going through the catacombs of Stern Pinball. I think they're moving to their new facility. And he's been sharing some of the craziest stuff he's finding in like the catacombs of Stern. Go look at it. There's like all these roll-up playfields and design layouts of games they never made. One of which says King Kong on it. And all this stuff must be incredible. And I think it really fun that Jack is doing that because I sure he going to get some inspiration from pinball designs that never saw the light of day Can you imagine It be so much fun to do a sleepover at Stern Pinball and just be able to walk around the place and see all the amazing stuff. I mean, I would love to spend a day in the design room or spend a day just going through all of George Gomez files. It would be so much fun. Stern Pinball has been around for like over 30 years. Stefan said you could ask for our ideas and opinions more often I think you'd quote and name the members on air and it would also attract your subscribers to participate more often I agree with this. I'm going to start doing this more often. So stefan Thank you for the great suggestion and i'm gonna do more of that You have my word. The only thing is this I want to do stuff where when you comment it's not too long because that's the only thing I don't want to do is spend half my show reading stuff people write on my Patreon page. So keep it short and keep it sweet. Stuart said, if you know anyone in licensing, it would be interesting to interview them about getting an IP. I think that's a great idea, Stuart. I love what Victor said. You didn't get where you are by asking schlubs like us what to do. I don't want to think that hard anyway. Chad said, could DLC actually benefit pinball and how could it? Jerry said an operator's perspective is something he would find interesting. Eric Jackson said frequent Back to the Future updates. Eric, I wish I had any update for you on Back to the Future. Edwin said talk about DreamMex and pinball. What could be done? I like that topic. Brad said reliability of boutique games. Are they worth owning with all of the problems they're having? Felipe said, I always like a classical discussion around dream themes. It's kind of too easy of a topic, but still from time to time. Yes, I will get that. I'm also going to do something called Canada Classics. And I've done a lot of great podcasts in the past that some of you have not heard in which I talk about dream themes. I think I'm just going to re-air it, right? It'll just be more content on this channel. And I think I'm just going to take everything down off of the free SoundCloud page and just remove that so that this is the only place you can hear the content. So Bond said a lot more in the vein of the often promised episode number 500. Now he's making fun of JJP here. Look, I don't think episode 500, you'd want to hear it because I think if you heard it, I think people might come after Canada's Pinball Podcast. You know me, I'm going to tell you almost everything you want to know. You're going to get the spirit of it all. But I still want to do this show and keep it more positive. And that thing is just too much. Gregor says, I always enjoy your marketing insights very much. It's maybe not a topic. As long as you find a way to let us be part of that world, I'm highly interested. Absolutely, Gregor. Steve New said, do a roundup of all the manufacturers and choose a game you think they should make. I love this idea, Steve. I'm going to do this. Not on this episode, but I think that's a great show topic. What should every pinball company make next based on who they are as a brand? and the kinds of games they're capable of making. Bev said, a show interviewing Circus Maximus, find out what's going on with Pinball Circus and Kingpin. Those guys are MIA. I mean, what a joke. They took money on those trans lights years ago. I don't think anyone knows where they are at. And then lastly, Curtis said, it'd be great to talk about the new era of pinball and how a lot of people are being priced out of this hobby. More people are going to have to play on location and will high-end pinball collectors be what drive the industry forward? Curtis, I think I touch on that a lot. I think we all know the answer to that question. As prices get more and more expensive for pinball and we don't see a ton of new innovation in pinball, I think more and more of the rich collectors will drive where this industry goes. Unfortunately, the rich pinball collector does not really ask much of these companies. They don't demand a lot of magic. They don't demand amazing mechanisms. They don't demand like the code is finished. We have shown these pinball companies that a lot of people in this hobby have a lot more money than they do expectations. But I think that's what's going to change. Now that you're buying two games for $30,000 from Jersey Jack Pinball or two games for $25,000 for Stern, I think you're going to start asking for a lot more from these games. I think you're going to see people hit the brakes more. If the games keep getting this expensive and there's not much in it that's unique, why do you need another game? Like, why do you need a new game? If you've already got like a bunch of games that are super fun, why are you going to write another check for this much money? Everybody have a great May the 4th be with you. Have so much fun on Cinco de Mayo. And I'm still not sure if I will be going to Allentown this weekend. I've just got a lot of stuff I got to do with Killian and with Brenda. and it's a long day away. So like it would be an hour and a half to get there and then walk the show floor. You can kind of see the whole show in like an hour and then it's a long drive back. So we'll see. I will keep you posted if I go. I think you'll know when you tune into my Saturday Morning Spectacular. If you see me in my bedroom, I'm not going to Allentown. If you see me at Allentown at 1030, I went to the show floor and I'm doing my show there. Everybody have a great, great week. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.