Transcript
Speaker: Thanks for tuning into the Loser King Pinball Podcast.
Speaker: I am Josh Rook.
Speaker: With me, my co-captain.
Speaker: Scott Larson.
Speaker: And we are on episode 155.
Speaker: We've got an awesome episode today.
Speaker: But Scott, before we get to our guest for today, new pinballs coming out.
Speaker: Where are you going to be buying your machines?
Speaker: You know, new pinballs are coming out.
Speaker: And I'm looking across my screen at my new Metallica.
Speaker: And I just ordered...
Speaker: some accessories for it.
Speaker: So I'm getting the topper and you know what, people can love it or hate it, but I hear it looks really great in person.
Speaker: So I did get the topper and I have some shaker motors and I have some other stuff on board.
Speaker: So including if you want actual, if you want pinball machines, if you want used pinball machines, if you want the new latest and greatest,
Speaker: or if you just want to bling up your machine, we know that Zach and Nicole Mini are always helpful with what you need.
Speaker: Easiest way to get a hold of them is actually to message them, but they do have a phone number.
Speaker: I usually get a hold of Zach on Facebook Messenger.
Speaker: But they do have a phone.
Speaker: They have a website.
Speaker: So flipping out pinball, definitely reach out to them and they will hook you up.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: So our guest that's joining us right now, he reached out to us a couple of days ago, said he wanted to come on and talk about some stuff.
Speaker: I know that there's been a lot of rumors floating around about American pinball itself.
Speaker: We don't know if a new reveal is on the horizon.
Speaker: There's just so many questions and there's so much information floating around.
Speaker: And David Fix wanted to come on and talk about this stuff.
Speaker: And I mean, there was even kind of a bomb dropped last night that you were telling us about.
Speaker: I kind of want to let's just get right into it.
Speaker: Let's go with Paul Reno, who was the co-designer for Galactic Tank Force, I guess is now suing American Pinball.
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: Well, I can't go into much details about the lawsuit or what's going on about it, but I'll just tell you that we are already in communications.
Speaker: We've been with him.
Speaker: It's kind of like just cleaning up some other details that needed to be cleaned up.
Speaker: Let's take a step back here for a second.
Speaker: I'll explain how this works a little bit because everybody thinks that American Pinball is Dave Fix and I'm the chief cook and bottle washer, as it were.
Speaker: As it works here with American Pinball, I am the executive vice president of American Pinball, but I'm over the R&D and the production department.
Speaker: The accounting department, HR, is still being run by Amtron, which is our parent corporate.
Speaker: So they take care of all the deals and contracts, and Amtron has its own in-house lawyer who takes care of all the contracts with all the employees and all external employees.
Speaker: So somebody like Paul Reno and Dennis, who made up Wingding to bring the game to American Pinball, they're an outside entity.
Speaker: Okay, so they dealt directly with Amtron.
Speaker: All right, so if they're having problems, of course, who's the parent company?
Speaker: It's Amtron.
Speaker: American Pinballs, me, you know, and the rest of the guys.
Speaker: But there's divisions that are run pretty much by Aintron.
Speaker: So if accounting goofs up or they don't do the paperwork correctly or something is amiss, they're going to come after us.
Speaker: And in this case, there were some discrepancies that need to be cleaned up.
Speaker: And they, I didn't even know about it until it was on the thing last night.
Speaker: I guess everybody at AIMTRON got the emails about it the day of the filing.
Speaker: reached out to Paul.
Speaker: We've been talking already.
Speaker: I brought the horses back in the corral kind of thing and just like, you know, let's start talking and let's get to an amicable situation and figure this out.
Speaker: Paul and Dennis are old friends.
Speaker: I mean, I know Dennis has had some, you know,
Speaker: times that he's not with us right now.
Speaker: He's been laid off.
Speaker: But, you know, Dennis does have a couple designs with us and not only with us, but other companies too.
Speaker: So that also, because it's contract goes through Amtron, which is the company that takes care of it.
Speaker: So Bharat, who is their legal counsel, he's the one that would be doing all the contracts with the other employees.
Speaker: So it's kind of a weird thing because I know Dennis was like, I want a contract.
Speaker: I want this.
Speaker: I'm like, okay, deal with Barat.
Speaker: You guys set it up.
Speaker: Barat set this up.
Speaker: You guys have to deal with finance.
Speaker: So it's out of my hands.
Speaker: It's more in their hands to deal with stuff.
Speaker: So that's...
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: what you're telling us is facts, essentially.
Speaker: So pinball news, and I have to go back and listen to it, but I pretty much said that under my impression that he was still supposed to be dealing with Barat,
Speaker: on the contract with that basis.
Speaker: Now, I don't know the standings of that, because it's every quarter that I sometimes get to see the man, and he's legal counsel for this entire company.
Speaker: So, you know, it's not like I can just like drop in his office and say, hey, where are we with this?
Speaker: You know, I can send him emails, but he also has tons of emails and he's answering to Amtron,
Speaker: And the CEO all the time, Mukesh, on that.
Speaker: So there's sometimes I get pushed to the side, which, you know, I'm only allowed to do what I can do besides that.
Speaker: Looking at the, and I have to listen to the podcast again, but at that time, we were under the understanding that Dennis would be under contract.
Speaker: And would come back at some later date to finish his game because right now the entire department at American Pinball is focusing on the next game, which was not Dennis' game.
Speaker: I do have the quote.
Speaker: Do you want me to hear it?
Speaker: It says verbatim from the May 2024 pinball news interview.
Speaker: Dennis is not a young guy.
Speaker: He kind of came to us and was like, you know, I could be doing better by, you know, being home a little bit more and being this and the other thing.
Speaker: And we kicked it around a couple of times and he said, Hey, this is what I want to do.
Speaker: You had said, we want to lay you off.
Speaker: We want to put you on contract basis.
Speaker: We want to build your game.
Speaker: It's not the hot priority right now.
Speaker: It's not shelved.
Speaker: It's either other little things that can be done.
Speaker: Let's talk about this and have a contract made up.
Speaker: We'll do this on a contract basis.
Speaker: And if you're open to it, we can come and do what we need to do.
Speaker: But I got to kind of lay you off from the day to day.
Speaker: And Norman had replied saying that essentially you came to him saying, hey, they offered me a contract, but it wasn't what we originally agreed upon.
Speaker: And I was told if I didn't accept it, I would be terminated.
Speaker: So he wasn't terminated.
Speaker: In fact, I was in the meeting and I told him that we were waiting on the contract and I told him that he was being laid off at the time.
Speaker: in fact it was funny because well not funny but it's just you know yeah he came to us and said hey i'm not my game's not the next game can i go on a contract i'd rather be working at home i'm not coming in all this time so that kind of opened the door which i then threw upstairs and of course they were like yeah that's fine let's put them on contract and and i'm like
Speaker: okay, you guys have to deal with this because that's not my mine in the sand.
Speaker: You know, it's not like I have enough on my plate than sit here and go through all the squabbles of contracts with people.
Speaker: So that's, and that's what the lawyers, that's what the lawyer in-house legal team handles for Amtron.
Speaker: They do all the contracts.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: He came to us.
Speaker: He said that.
Speaker: Yes, I said, let's make up a contract.
Speaker: Deal with them.
Speaker: Deal with Nermal.
Speaker: Deal with the rest of the team.
Speaker: And get this set up.
Speaker: That's where I left it.
Speaker: He...
Speaker: If he didn't like the contract, he could continue discussing it with them.
Speaker: But at this time, the project was on hold.
Speaker: It's sitting in the lab.
Speaker: We've gotten some new parts in that were ordered.
Speaker: We've put it up.
Speaker: We've been building and working on it here and there, but it's not flippable at this moment.
Speaker: So we're really on a holding pattern with where we're going to continue with this game.
Speaker: So I do have a question with American Pinball.
Speaker: So
Speaker: The lifeblood of a company is manufacturing and shipping product.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Now, American Pinball is not a young company.
Speaker: They're in this transition zone.
Speaker: I will argue, though, I don't see a lot of sales from the last two titles in
Speaker: And eventually to keep the doors open, to keep the lights on, you have to move product because that's really where that, how you keep a company alive.
Speaker: Now with other companies, they have parallel development.
Speaker: So you have one, one machine that's coming out, one machine that's behind, and sometimes they get swapped because we saw another company do just that recently where something wasn't ready.
Speaker: Now, they still are having all those people on staff and having them parallel development.
Speaker: So why is American Pinball a little different in that, you know, are you not able to generate the same volume?
Speaker: Are you not able to meet the same schedule?
Speaker: I'm really trying to understand where American Pinball fits into the company perspective of all other companies.
Speaker: So we're a small company.
Speaker: That's the first thing.
Speaker: We have a small budget.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I mean, that's another key word right there.
Speaker: I know you're talking about another company which had a switch games and then brought out another game.
Speaker: I would love to have five or six games sitting in the lab just waiting to be released whenever I felt like it.
Speaker: I don't have the luxury of that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I have a very small team.
Speaker: I have Sophia Ryan, who's my mechanical engineer.
Speaker: She has a couple juniors sitting over in India.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then I got Ryan McQuaid, who is the designer.
Speaker: And then Dennis was a designer.
Speaker: I have one person in art right now.
Speaker: I had another person in art.
Speaker: And I have one and a half software engineers and one rules guy.
Speaker: So at the end of the day, it's all hands on deck, right?
Speaker: This is a passion of love for everybody in this company.
Speaker: Um, so I know what you're talking about.
Speaker: If you're talking about a company that is huge, like the monster that I call it down the street, uh, we saw just recently, and I'm going to, I'm going to give kudos and,
Speaker: Good jobs.
Speaker: And I want to say to Jack Danger, I love his Uncanny X-Men.
Speaker: I played it at Expo.
Speaker: I've played it elsewhere.
Speaker: It's probably a game I want to buy.
Speaker: It's a really nice shooting game.
Speaker: And we saw at Expo what a big company like that can do.
Speaker: Sometimes the competition, to quote George Gomez, sometimes the competition is not down the street.
Speaker: It's across the hall.
Speaker: So you saw Uncanny X-Men come out, and it's a big enough company that within three weeks, they brought out Metallica.
Speaker: And, you know, that's kind of crazy, right?
Speaker: Usually there's a couple weeks, quite a few weeks that come out and the game gets, you know, developed.
Speaker: So, but I love Uncanny X-Men.
Speaker: It's a great playing game.
Speaker: You know, I'm a pinball fan, right?
Speaker: I'm fan first.
Speaker: I have a ton of games, you know, I love them.
Speaker: I just kind of made a deal with my wife.
Speaker: I'm buying a James Bond premium.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: You know, I'm a big Bond fan.
Speaker: I have Sterns.
Speaker: I have Americans, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker: So it's not just like I'm like just, you know, I'm live and breathe American.
Speaker: I mean, you go in my basement here in Chicago.
Speaker: I don't even have an American game down there yet.
Speaker: going to put one down there.
Speaker: There's a galactic going in there, but that's down the road.
Speaker: But big enough companies can make that maneuvering.
Speaker: You've got to remember they also have huge manufacturing lines, and that line has to be fed.
Speaker: Okay, so if you are making X amount of games, you got to feed that monster, which is all the personnel on the line, all the parts coming in.
Speaker: That game has to be made.
Speaker: That has to be get out.
Speaker: And the sales have to be there, right?
Speaker: So if you go from one and the sales are bad, then they're going to scramble because they got to keep that monster fed.
Speaker: They've built so many games.
Speaker: Sales hasn't turned around.
Speaker: They're going to put on another game.
Speaker: I can't do that.
Speaker: Now, what I did do this year is that we've been selling a lot of our back catalog.
Speaker: We've been making a lot of Hot Wheels, a lot of Houdini still.
Speaker: We built and sold.
Speaker: We have three limiteds from the, as of today, three limiteds of the barbecue left.
Speaker: And I only have two of the standard versions of barbecue left in the building.
Speaker: So that is already scheduled for 2025 because we went through the whole buildup on that and so forth.
Speaker: It's funny to me, Scott, too, is that you might look at people in the industry or the collectors and go, oh, you know, I all have, you know, these Metallicas, right?
Speaker: But there are other markets in this.
Speaker: And I don't want to quote somebody, but there's a three-legged stool, right?
Speaker: There's this one, that one, and this one.
Speaker: Well, the coin-op market, which is like Iapa and whatnot, we sell a lot of games there.
Speaker: So there's locations that have very old barbecue in them.
Speaker: So we have that.
Speaker: We also, earlier this year, right around end of September, October, just before Expo, we signed a deal to help a company called Polycade.
Speaker: And I'm happy to say that we've been working with Polycade for the last three months.
Speaker: We have
Speaker: brought in and shipped over 1,000 Polycade units out of our facility up until just recently.
Speaker: Actually, we're over 1,000 heading to, I want to say 1,200 this coming week.
Speaker: So there's a goal for the company.
Speaker: We've been moving a lot of stuff, plus the pinballs.
Speaker: We've been at different shows, so we've been moving.
Speaker: But you've got to be multifaceted, right?
Speaker: So if you're a big company like Stern,
Speaker: You're going to have many other games that you can bring out at a different time frame and bring out these games where they need to be to fit in.
Speaker: I mean, think about it.
Speaker: You saw, what did we see it from Stern this year?
Speaker: We saw John Wick.
Speaker: We saw then Godzilla Black and White.
Speaker: Then we saw the home edition of Jurassic Park at all the... Costco.
Speaker: Costco, yeah.
Speaker: And then we saw Uncanny X-Men, Metallica.
Speaker: And now we're going to probably see another game...
Speaker: Maybe in the next few weeks.
Speaker: So that production lines there is massive and they got to keep that fed.
Speaker: Meanwhile, at JJP, we saw, of course, Avatar, right?
Speaker: Beautiful game came out.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Mark Seidens, very first game, beautiful game, got to play it too.
Speaker: Doing very well.
Speaker: We also see, and I'm going to just be the first time to go on the record here, I want to say that we in the industry saw the worst sales since 2009 in the months of June and July.
Speaker: August started picking up.
Speaker: September came right back.
Speaker: Actually, I usually ship a lot of overseas containers in June and July, and a lot of that got bumped over to September, August.
Speaker: I don't want to get into deep and hard numbers, but it gives you an idea that you've got to kind of be flexible to move with the company and to keep us rolling and keeping the lights on.
Speaker: Okay, so it seems like to keep the lights on, you've been...
Speaker: Focusing, you've been pivoting.
Speaker: You have an arm of the pinball, but you also have these deals with Polycade, which I did see because, you know, Don and I stopped by and we were able to see the Polycade and play it.
Speaker: And that's a good thing.
Speaker: I will argue also, your name is American Pinball.
Speaker: And so when, what people have been anticipating is your next release.
Speaker: I mean, it's been long rumored.
Speaker: It sounds like from what, from what is in the ether, it sounds like it's a fun shooter and it sounds like it's something that will.
Speaker: So when can we see this game?
Speaker: Like, cause that would, that would seem to be the natural question is great.
Speaker: Let's see a game that we can sell and to get American pinball back into the conversation.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: I have to say that the next game is, of course, licensed.
Speaker: And we also want to make sure that it was done.
Speaker: I want to say the last few games that when we bring them out, we were always trying to get code kind of finished and code kind of polished and good.
Speaker: This one, we want to make sure it's ready.
Speaker: Now, at Expo...
Speaker: It was there in the back rooms at American Pinball.
Speaker: Select high profile distributors were in there taking orders for the game, loving the game, giving us their feedback and so forth.
Speaker: The code was not done though.
Speaker: Code was not ready.
Speaker: So as the game progresses, we want to make sure the code is great.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: we really kind of, and this is, this is nothing new in an industry, right?
Speaker: Think about it.
Speaker: Stern does this a lot.
Speaker: There are certain people who know what the next games are, have been there, played it.
Speaker: Same thing with Chicago gaming, same thing with, you know, JJP.
Speaker: There, there are certain ways that they handle it to see how the title does.
Speaker: And, and,
Speaker: I'm excited about the next game.
Speaker: I really am.
Speaker: But I want to make sure it's ready for you guys.
Speaker: I want to make sure it's ready in the right quantities.
Speaker: I want to make sure everything is there.
Speaker: I don't want to have a kind of a failed launch.
Speaker: I mean, we're getting parts in.
Speaker: We're putting parts on the game.
Speaker: We're testing the parts.
Speaker: Listen, GTF, I thought was going to be a hit, right?
Speaker: And we took it to Texas and we had bending targets, right?
Speaker: And I'm like, how is this possible?
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: A U.S. manufacturer of the targets, U.S. manufacturer, you know, had worked with us.
Speaker: The prototypes have over four or five thousand plays on.
Speaker: They never bent.
Speaker: But when you sat there in the room with them, you could go like this and bend it.
Speaker: And we're like, how is this possible, guys?
Speaker: It took some time to get that right, but we can't afford.
Speaker: I'm too small of a company to afford a failure or something that doesn't hit all the screws.
Speaker: It has to be perfect on this next shot, for sure.
Speaker: I just want to rewind for a couple seconds to some previous stuff that we were talking about.
Speaker: You were talking about your role in American Pinball is the
Speaker: the chief director over research and development of American Pinball.
Speaker: And so, so correct me if I'm wrong on this.
Speaker: So you're saying that like the Paul Reno lawsuit and the Dennis Norman stuff wasn't necessarily up to you because that kind of goes past because Amtras are financial and they're over contracting and stuff like that as well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Just want to catch all that.
Speaker: One name I noticed that you didn't say that it was all hands on deck.
Speaker: Jack Hager was also one of the people we've had on our show art director wise.
Speaker: And that's, is he still there working for you?
Speaker: He got laid off too.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He got laid off too.
Speaker: Unfortunately.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: You know, there's a bunch of people and I hate to say the word playoff.
Speaker: You know, we don't like that.
Speaker: But, you know, there's budgets, there's timeframes.
Speaker: I had a conversation with Jack.
Speaker: I invited him to Expo.
Speaker: He was there.
Speaker: I told him that we were trying to get past one corner.
Speaker: He's actually working some freelance stuff.
Speaker: You know, I told him that, you know, certainly as soon as we turn the corner on this, I don't need to bring him back.
Speaker: He's, you know, kind of excited.
Speaker: Another name that you probably haven't heard of recently.
Speaker: And, you know, we had a couple more layoffs, you know, because we have to be ready to move.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So one of the layoffs that we had was Steve Bowden.
Speaker: OK, and that just happened like a week ago.
Speaker: Steve's a great guy.
Speaker: He went off and, you know, he had the layoff.
Speaker: I've had him back in the office this week.
Speaker: We're already talking about when we're going to bring him back.
Speaker: trying to figure out finances and working with Amtron and the finance department and saying, okay, here's the budget for 2025, right?
Speaker: This is where we're shooting for it.
Speaker: And they're trying to get the fiscal year kind of wrapped up.
Speaker: We're also this year, we're going to do a mandatory shutdown between Christmas and New Year's.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the employees are going to take their holiday pay and whatnot and vacation time because Christmas and New Year's is a very, very slow time at the companies.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's very slow.
Speaker: So we're going to do a mandatory shutdown.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: My old company, ICE, we always did a mandatory shutdown, 4th of July week, Christmas between New Year's.
Speaker: We always did that shutdown just to kind of regroup, you know, have a small hands-on-deck people that are just doing some inventory count or something along those lines.
Speaker: But the bulk of it is just kind of like, hey, let's take some time off.
Speaker: Everybody just spend time with their families kind of thing.
Speaker: So –
Speaker: There was a lot to unpack there.
Speaker: Yeah, I know, I'm sorry.
Speaker: You're good.
Speaker: So correct me if I'm wrong then.
Speaker: So is American Pinball more of like a division of AIMTRON?
Speaker: And you're essentially just building Pinball for Amtron, but it's being tagged as American Pinball.
Speaker: Is American Pinball its own company?
Speaker: American Pinball is its own company.
Speaker: It's owned by Mukesh Vasani and Nirmal Vasani.
Speaker: They're the owners of it.
Speaker: They also own Amtron, which is the parent company, which they've brought under the same thing.
Speaker: And for them, the best way they figured this out was...
Speaker: We have Amtron with their finance department, HR department, and legal department.
Speaker: We'll just use them in this realm so you don't have to have all those people sitting there.
Speaker: So American Pinball pretty much makes the games, codes the games.
Speaker: They just don't have to worry about financing and legal and stuff like that because Amtron takes care of that.
Speaker: And HR, healthcare plans, and all that other stuff.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The other thing, too, is you spoke to...
Speaker: The worst numbers in June and July.
Speaker: I know that Kerry Hardery released a video about a month ago stating that you guys didn't sell any games in that time.
Speaker: Can you speak to that true?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Sorry, not that true.
Speaker: Can you speak to that?
Speaker: Is that how bad it was?
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: We did sell games, but they were the worst amount of games.
Speaker: Yes, we still had games leave in June and July.
Speaker: Were they, you know, were they like 20 a week kind of deal?
Speaker: No, but there were games leaving.
Speaker: It did hit our financing a little hard, but then by the time we had some containers leave in August, it kind of rolled back up for them.
Speaker: So, you know, it's a roller coaster, guys.
Speaker: You know, it's like, you know, you're doing this with sales and so forth.
Speaker: And I don't, I don't, how do I say this?
Speaker: I don't fault anybody that they're not buying games in June and July.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's vacation time.
Speaker: People are spending money on family vacations.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And this is, we're now past COVID, right?
Speaker: for a good period of time and people now are finally getting that vacation that they've been wanting to do with the family for a good period of time and they're going to take it you know and it was a good summer and listen i had distributors right i'm calling up a distributor like hey how's things going that's great i'm on the i'm on the boat in the bahamas right now i'm on a two-week vacation on the on a cruise okay i'll catch you later
Speaker: I talked to another distributor.
Speaker: Oh, I'm on an Alaskan cruise.
Speaker: Oh, I'm on this cruise.
Speaker: All the distributors were like on vacation either other week.
Speaker: You know, it's like, okay, who's actually working, selling games?
Speaker: That kind of thing for distributors, right?
Speaker: So it was just, that's the time of the year.
Speaker: And there's a reason that Williams...
Speaker: Bally, Gottlieb, they never brought out a new pinball in June, July, and August because the sales were always right in the bottom because nobody's looking at games at that time of the year.
Speaker: Stern stays away from it.
Speaker: I was amazed that they brought Godzilla out when they did because that was so right on the heels of all this.
Speaker: I'm sharing.
Speaker: I'm a little bit more open today.
Speaker: I love Godzilla.
Speaker: Godzilla's a great game, too.
Speaker: That's another game I like.
Speaker: So
Speaker: you know, there's companies out there that are going to go through a lot of, you know, turmoil, right?
Speaker: I mean, Stern has got to be going through turmoil just like I'm going through turmoil.
Speaker: And I'm sure, you know, hey, the spooky guys, Corrin and Luke, they did a beautiful job with the Evil Dead.
Speaker: I mean, I love that game.
Speaker: Chris Ranchi knocked it out of the park with artwork.
Speaker: I mean, that game looks great.
Speaker: Can't wait to shoot it, you know?
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I mean, I'm looking at this, I'm like, every company has to go through some growing pains, growing stuff, and we're going through some really tough times.
Speaker: So it seems like you are getting primed for, I'll put it this way, a soft reboot of the company where you're trying to make sure that your next rumored game that a lot of people are anticipating is
Speaker: that you're going to say, hey, okay, here it is.
Speaker: We're releasing it.
Speaker: By the way, we have X amount ready to sell today.
Speaker: Is that a fair analysis of what your plans are?
Speaker: Just like what we did with Legends of Valhalla.
Speaker: When we brought Legends of Valhalla out, we said, here's our next game.
Speaker: Here's the locations.
Speaker: Go play it.
Speaker: So we are going to pretty much do the same thing there
Speaker: We're going to make the announcement.
Speaker: It's going to be, hey, here it is.
Speaker: These distributors have it.
Speaker: These locations have it.
Speaker: Go play it and enjoy.
Speaker: And the idea on that is that they're not going to be waiting around.
Speaker: They're just going to have games in boxes.
Speaker: And they've already been playtested.
Speaker: They've been tested.
Speaker: They're running perfectly.
Speaker: The next game designer, he's already told me he has a schedule.
Speaker: He showed me the schedule that once production starts...
Speaker: Because production hasn't started yet.
Speaker: We have produced samples, but production has not started yet.
Speaker: So it's a whole different world than what you guys are envisioning.
Speaker: So I talked to Don from the Don Pinball Podcast, and he's trying to get this all under control.
Speaker: He's like, how does that work?
Speaker: I'm like...
Speaker: Listen, it's a whole string of manufacturing stuff.
Speaker: But the game designer has already given me his schedule that he is going to be testing the first, like, hundred games, and they have to pass his standard while they go in boxes.
Speaker: And that was actually a way that Williams used to do it.
Speaker: It was like, you know, if you're the game designer, you've got to go live on the lines.
Speaker: while your game comes off and make sure every game is a hundred percent the way it was and train the line.
Speaker: And that's, that's a key point, right?
Speaker: So he's already given me a schedule on that.
Speaker: He's going to be doing that.
Speaker: So it's going to be really cool.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So speaking of Don and Don's pinball podcast, there was a little snafu as it is, I guess down at IAPA, you guys had words about the next rumored game.
Speaker: And supposedly he claimed it was on the line.
Speaker: He did a podcast that it was on the line saying that you would sit that was on there.
Speaker: And then he retracted that podcast because he came down to American Pinball after some things were said, got to play the next rumor game, said it plays great and flipping.
Speaker: I'm a little jealous myself.
Speaker: I haven't got to play it yet.
Speaker: And he said that you're on hold right now because you have to sell three barbecue LEs because you have to have them all gone before you can start production on the next rumored game.
Speaker: Can you speak to that?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it sounds like a mixture of two conversations, but I will touch on both of those.
Speaker: While we were at IAPA, there was a rumor going around that I had to sell so many barbecues in order to get the next game on the line.
Speaker: At which point I told Don, I said, I have the classic version of barbecue.
Speaker: The initial run was gone.
Speaker: We had like two left, I think.
Speaker: I think that's all that's left.
Speaker: They're show games.
Speaker: And we had the initial run of the limiteds.
Speaker: We only had four left at the time.
Speaker: Now it's three.
Speaker: So, you know, people had this thought in mind that we had all these barbecues sitting in the back of the warehouse and it was eating up our whole budget and we couldn't proceed to the next game, which is not true.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then, you know, Don was asking me, how is the game proceeding?
Speaker: You know, and did you, and I explained to him,
Speaker: that a sample had been produced now or went through the production line.
Speaker: The sample went through the production line is what I said to him.
Speaker: He kind of took it like, oh, the game's on the production line.
Speaker: And then he ran with it on the IEPA, you know, his review, which I'm like, when he... So the whole world went nuts over this.
Speaker: And I'm like...
Speaker: Okay, we didn't say that.
Speaker: And Don, can we have you come down?
Speaker: Sure, we'll come down.
Speaker: And then there was another post.
Speaker: Nap Arcade went crazy.
Speaker: Which I find interesting because like Nap Arcade, you guys, Pinball News, Don...
Speaker: Kerry Hardy, anybody who's in the industry has my number.
Speaker: They know what number to pick up to call American Pinball.
Speaker: A lot of them have my cell phone.
Speaker: I think you guys have my cell phone.
Speaker: And I also have an email.
Speaker: So I tell people, I say, if you've got a question about American Pinball, call me.
Speaker: I will set the record straight.
Speaker: And it wasn't until I caught an app arcade that I found out that Don said something offline or about it being on the line that I said, okay, Don, we got to get you in here.
Speaker: We got to get this straightened out and explain to you what we meant and get that corrected, right?
Speaker: So that we don't get people all hot and bothered about this.
Speaker: And meanwhile,
Speaker: I heard today that Napper K took that all down.
Speaker: Is that, I guess?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He took it down and Don took his part down.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So that's all been retracted now.
Speaker: Besides the newest episode where Don came and visited with you at the factory and you guys got to play games and stuff like that.
Speaker: I gotcha.
Speaker: I gotcha.
Speaker: And did, did you, either you guys talked to Jason or Don about, you know, like, okay.
Speaker: I talked to Don.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I called Don and talked this morning and really it was, he, he was under the impression that that was, you know, it seems like your view of the conversation is different than, than what he remembered.
Speaker: And I don't think it was malicious.
Speaker: You know, Don is Don is Don.
Speaker: Don always talk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don's great.
Speaker: And so I called him this morning.
Speaker: He was, so we both actually worked at night.
Speaker: So, you know, last night.
Speaker: So I called him, I'm like, you're not sleeping.
Speaker: Are you?
Speaker: Um, and so no, we just had a pleasant conversation.
Speaker: He did mention that he, he was again, I'm jealous that he was able to play the next game.
Speaker: And he said, it shoots really well.
Speaker: He is excited about that.
Speaker: Um, I know Josh did talk to Jason, right?
Speaker: Josh.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And Jason had just had said that, and this is verbatim.
Speaker: He just, with the pending lawsuit stuff coming out, he just didn't want to be involved with any of that.
Speaker: So he just retracted because he didn't want to be involved in any of that.
Speaker: And I hope, I hope Jason's not mad for me saying that if, if I don't know, if so, okay.
Speaker: I think we all like Jason.
Speaker: Jason's a, Jason's a good friend and Jason, his, his passion is to report news and, uh,
Speaker: And it goes with the territory that with the news, we are all going to speculate about what's going on and we're going to aggregate things that we hear from our friends.
Speaker: And so I agree with Jason in the abundance of caution.
Speaker: He's just like, look, I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker: So we'll put a pause on that.
Speaker: But I am a big fan of Jason and what he does at NAP Arcade because I do go there regularly.
Speaker: But I also understand him just saying, look, this is...
Speaker: I don't want to go into anything that could possibly be legal territory.
Speaker: And so we'll just take a pause on that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, it makes sense to me.
Speaker: And I didn't, I was going to reach out to him and say, Hey, listen, you want to set the straight strict, the record straight.
Speaker: Just let me know.
Speaker: I mean, you got my number.
Speaker: I've, I've given it to him numerous times with emails and everything.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I mean, if I'm in the middle of the meeting, leave a message.
Speaker: I'll get back to you.
Speaker: It's not like, oh, the news is calling me.
Speaker: It's not like that.
Speaker: All loser kids are calling.
Speaker: I better step out of my present meeting so I can get on this.
Speaker: Mr. Fix, Scott Larson's on the phone for you.
Speaker: Hold my call for the afternoon.
Speaker: Cancel my appointments.
Speaker: Yes, cancel.
Speaker: Tell all the licensors, get lost.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I was going to say, Kerry Hardy does not have your number, so I'll text it to him.
Speaker: You're going to get some interesting pictures.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: But, you know, what's funny is I worked with Kerry down at Texas during he did the unboxing of GTF.
Speaker: He did a bunch of other things.
Speaker: So, you know, it's like, listen, I don't hide.
Speaker: Hey, I just did an unboxing for my Metallica.
Speaker: So if you want to ship me a next game, I will give you exclusive unboxing videos to show exactly what we need to do.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I just live close to Salt Lake City, just down the street.
Speaker: You can just, it's even a loaner.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Just ship it out.
Speaker: I'll give it a shot and we'll ship it back.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: We can talk about it.
Speaker: We should have you back into Chicago.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: No, that'd be great.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: Like, Don, I did stop by Expo, I think.
Speaker: We were just there.
Speaker: It was two weeks before Expo.
Speaker: Oh, it was slightly before.
Speaker: Yeah, we were going around.
Speaker: I think you were there for Avatar, weren't you?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was there.
Speaker: First part of September.
Speaker: We definitely wanted to focus on Avatar.
Speaker: I paid money to change my time so I could come in early so I could see a few other things.
Speaker: But we tried to keep that.
Speaker: The focus of that trip was on Avatar.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: That's why we reported other stuff later.
Speaker: I didn't have anything ready yet.
Speaker: You didn't.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we actually, you did take us on a tour on the line.
Speaker: So that was kind of fun.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: You got to see the lines.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And right now, like I said, Polycade, you know, over a thousand units been rolling out of there.
Speaker: That place has been a madhouse.
Speaker: And that's what Don's been watching.
Speaker: I mean, think about it.
Speaker: That's like a semi every, you know, every day we have a large semi leaving with just Polycades.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then the other semis come in for we've had semis backed up down the street now a couple of times.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that gets into exactly what we were talking about before that to keep the lights on, you have to have some business revenue.
Speaker: And so right now you're saying that that is what's keeping lights on American pinball.
Speaker: You're, you're going, you're, you're,
Speaker: utilizing your time right now while you're waiting for the next game to be finished.
Speaker: And that's how you're doing that now.
Speaker: And we're also building hot wheels.
Speaker: We were at IEPA and we sold a lot of hot wheels and we sold some Houdini's, you know, it's, it's kind of a, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker: All those titles, Houdini, hot wheels, they're all, you know,
Speaker: evergreen people love those titles and they've been especially in the coin op business have been moving quite well so we've been excited about you know still doing stuff four years out we had an extension with mattel because we have a good working relationship with mattel and uh we got the extension we're still building them in fact uh kroger
Speaker: Did a Or Mattel and Kroger did a giveaway Of a Hot Wheels which that person Won the Hot Wheels and we Shipped out that Hot Wheels Just before Thanksgiving so that they had it on Thanksgiving week and So that they could have it as their new winning game That they won a brand new Hot Wheels So we
Speaker: I mean, yes, Polycade is filling some gaps.
Speaker: Pinballs are still moving.
Speaker: But it's like we still, you know, it's a tough market, man.
Speaker: It's a tough market.
Speaker: So are you sharing also the manufacturer line with Polycade and whatnot?
Speaker: So you're having to kind of balance that.
Speaker: Are you manufacturing Polycade at your locations?
Speaker: Is that your question, Josh?
Speaker: No, we're not manufacturing the Polycade.
Speaker: So the Polycades are made.
Speaker: But there's so many options that sometimes they have to be changed up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we got to put a different deck in or we got to put this in or they got to be striped.
Speaker: And, you know, we're doing we're helping out Polycane an awful lot.
Speaker: And, you know, Tyler Bushnell is is an old friend and he's a good friend of Ron.
Speaker: Ron, who's our sales manager.
Speaker: So he actually worked for PolyK for a long time.
Speaker: And then he said, hey, David, we, you know, PolyK is in a bind.
Speaker: They need a spot.
Speaker: I said, let's take it to Amtron.
Speaker: We took it over to, you know, corporate.
Speaker: I let Ron run with it with the legal.
Speaker: He spent a good part of, I don't know, a couple of weeks with them going back and forth on meetings.
Speaker: Meanwhile, I'm just focusing on the pins and the development there and trying to get some sales through.
Speaker: And again, it's a small company.
Speaker: It's very tight.
Speaker: It's kind of like we know what everybody had for lunch because we all went out to lunch together.
Speaker: It's tough.
Speaker: I want to talk about real quick.
Speaker: Let me run back to... I actually want to circle one thing before you do that.
Speaker: So I know what the polygates are.
Speaker: So why don't you give me like a 60-second summary so people know exactly what these things are?
Speaker: All right, so Polycade is a multi-video game platform.
Speaker: Okay, so you can connect it to your Steam account.
Speaker: You can connect it to your games.
Speaker: You can buy the games from Polycade on their website for like $2.99 and then run Centipede, Pac-Man.
Speaker: Polycade, what he did was, Tyler, he went out because his father is Nolan.
Speaker: Went out and talked to all the original manufacturers and got all the licensing, right?
Speaker: So now this is a full licensed multi-cade product that can hang on the wall or has its own stand.
Speaker: It comes in white or black.
Speaker: It has decks that can be interchanged.
Speaker: It can be coin-op.
Speaker: It's an all-steel cabinet.
Speaker: It's a very nice little machine.
Speaker: You can look it up at polycade.com.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So what were you going to say before, before Scott?
Speaker: What I was going to say is I know that it's funny because I listened to podcasts and understand before I got into the industry, right?
Speaker: Before I went to work for American pinball, I used to listen to everybody's podcasts.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I listened to Clay Harold, this old pinball.
Speaker: I used to listen to the Silver Ball podcast.
Speaker: I mean, from Rob Craig.
Speaker: I listened to, you know, there was a ton of guys that were, I mean, game room junkies.
Speaker: Preston down in Atlanta.
Speaker: I mean, there was a lot of people that do podcasts.
Speaker: And you guys do.
Speaker: You know, you've been doing them a long time.
Speaker: One of the things that I was going to say is it drives, it's tough.
Speaker: is there's a lot of speculations on what a license is or we don't have a license or what this is.
Speaker: I'm just going to say that as a manufacturer, I cannot disclose any license that I have.
Speaker: I cannot disclose what licenses I'm working on.
Speaker: I can't do any of that until the manufacturing date of that license comes out.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: That's what is legally binding to us.
Speaker: So I know you can tell me, hey, Dave, I heard you lost this license.
Speaker: Sorry, can't comment on that.
Speaker: Because did I lose it?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But I can't comment on it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's that's where I get kind of tripped up.
Speaker: And sometimes it's like I might read somebody's thing trying to bait me into disclosing something that I cannot legally disclose.
Speaker: So that brings up one question in my mind then.
Speaker: And now since Berrio's Barbecue has released, I don't know if you can speak to this or not.
Speaker: I was told originally there was licensed aspects to that game that were sponsorships.
Speaker: They were brands that were involved in that.
Speaker: Is that true?
Speaker: And then they were removed because they didn't get the final write-off or whatever?
Speaker: There was no licenses for...
Speaker: Berrios.
Speaker: But Berrios game and that design was what we call a white label game.
Speaker: So that is pending.
Speaker: So what that means in a white label is that game was designed so that it could be insert licensor game, right?
Speaker: Audio gets changed.
Speaker: Artwork package gets changed.
Speaker: Brief rule sets.
Speaker: But it has all that aspects of that licensor for small runs, okay?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So right now we do have pending, I want to say three licenses for Berrios.
Speaker: So that game will probably come back as somebody else's game down the road, but we can't go into that detail because I'm touched, I'm bounded by contracts not to go into that, but
Speaker: you're good yeah so it's similar to like it's similar yeah supreme with stern was like the spider-man home version and it's also been prime you know uh oh it dennis's game primus was a contract game but yeah they yeah but it was a remake of the absolute ribbon was a reskin of woe nelly and woe nelly that's the game i was looking for yeah and primus was a reskin i thought of woe nelly as well yes it was so
Speaker: So it's similar to that.
Speaker: So you're calling this a white label?
Speaker: Is that what you call it?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All righty.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: That makes sense on that.
Speaker: And for us, that made sense because when you have a manufacturer, right, that's going to buy so many parts, we can buy parts at a much cheaper rate.
Speaker: And then I can re-skin it because the metal rails are the same.
Speaker: All the mechanisms are the same.
Speaker: The plastics are different.
Speaker: The play fields are different, but those can be made pretty quickly, right?
Speaker: The metal parts, the ramps, all that stuff, that takes a lot of time, a lot of R&D and research, right?
Speaker: So that takes a lot of, you know, so just give you guys a clue.
Speaker: To make a plastic ramp, okay, can take somewhere up to 10 to 12 weeks, right?
Speaker: And it'll take many revisions.
Speaker: So we'll give them a plastic ramp.
Speaker: They do what we call a wood mold.
Speaker: They'll send us the ramp off the wood mold, which we then have to verify and approve if we need to make any adjustments.
Speaker: We make adjustments to the wood mold.
Speaker: And then they make an aluminum cast mold.
Speaker: Now that takes a lot of time before we get the actual plastic ramp made, which is vacuum formed over, right?
Speaker: So that's a long lead time part.
Speaker: Also eight to 10 weeks on wire forms.
Speaker: So that nice little trail that comes down and looks really cool and it's all stainless steel, that takes a long time for them to bend all the wires, make the guides, make them just for us.
Speaker: And once they have it,
Speaker: exactly what we want, then we can tell them to start making them.
Speaker: But it still takes, there's long lead time parts.
Speaker: Having a white label cuts down those long lead time parts because it's the same ramp, it's the same wire form, I already have it in stock.
Speaker: I don't have to redo it.
Speaker: All I have to do is charge them for doing artwork on the back glass and audio.
Speaker: Think about it.
Speaker: Stern, or Data East at the time, did a game called Tommy.
Speaker: It was also Richie Rich.
Speaker: It was also Torres Spelling.
Speaker: It was also, you know, they did that also.
Speaker: They did, you know, white labels have been around a long time.
Speaker: Wait, they did a Tori Spelling game?
Speaker: Do you mean an Aaron Spelling game?
Speaker: Aaron Spelling.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I knew it was one of the spellings.
Speaker: I couldn't remember who it was.
Speaker: Oh, Aaron was the dad.
Speaker: Aaron was the dad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I think Tori was on the back glass.
Speaker: Okay, yeah, I think they made two of them, if I'm correct.
Speaker: He had a half a million dollars for the pair.
Speaker: Well, he had a lot of money.
Speaker: Well, Candy Spelling, I know the story because Joe Kamikow told me all this time that she caught a news article about pinball machines and having customized pinball machines, and she picked up the phone and talked to Joe Kamikow and said, hey, I want to do a game for my husband, and he was like,
Speaker: well, it's going to be like, you know, two games, it'll be half a million dollars.
Speaker: And she says, okay, I'll write the check.
Speaker: And it was like, okay, well, we got the money, now let's do it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You know, that kind of thing.
Speaker: So, you know, it's been around before.
Speaker: And, you know, you've seen, you know, some games that have been white-labeled before where they can be changed into other games, right?
Speaker: Something that may be popular, but not popular enough to run with it, right?
Speaker: Not like, you know, like, oh, we're going to do a small ban, right?
Speaker: You know, let's say a ban that's not very noticeable in the U.S., but maybe overseas they are.
Speaker: Like Aquabats, right, Josh?
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Here's a question for your business model.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We know that most businesses are in a startup phase and then they're in like a sustained phase.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And typically the startup phase can last anywhere from like four to 10 years where they're actually spending more money than they're bringing in.
Speaker: And then eventually they flip over.
Speaker: I mean, Amazon lost money for so long because they were in this development phase before they became profitable.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Where is American pinball on that curve?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Amazon was a book thing before bookstore before became Sears and Roebuck online.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sears totally missed the boat on that because they are like, like Sears were idiots.
Speaker: Sears is like completely irrelevant today.
Speaker: Because like Amazon just looked at the internet and said, we can do that.
Speaker: Sears used to do that mail order.
Speaker: Why don't we do it?
Speaker: So they just did that, but it takes investment.
Speaker: Any, any business takes investment before it gets traction.
Speaker: And then finally you get a return on your investment.
Speaker: So again, you know, you're in a good position and that you do have a parent company that does help you out.
Speaker: Where on the curve are you?
Speaker: Well, it ebbs and flows.
Speaker: I hate to say that.
Speaker: Okay, let's go back.
Speaker: I'll just do this.
Speaker: 2021, I remember going into the end of 2021, which was my officially first full year at American Pinball.
Speaker: And I sat down with the finance team at Amtron, and they gave me the numbers, and I was horrified.
Speaker: But Mukesh was very excited about that because it was half...
Speaker: Of what they were losing.
Speaker: Every year.
Speaker: Before I started.
Speaker: It was literally half.
Speaker: The next year.
Speaker: 2022.
Speaker: Was.
Speaker: The first year it was ever in the black.
Speaker: Okay, so that was great.
Speaker: We're in the black, right?
Speaker: There were some changes, you know, some things have ebbed and flowed.
Speaker: At that time in 2023, I was looking to, you know, kind of keep the company we had.
Speaker: We lost some key people, right?
Speaker: We lost, I want to say, my purchasing guy.
Speaker: He went, got this, you know, purchasing company, gave him a blank check.
Speaker: Let's just say I lost him, right?
Speaker: So I had a changed purchasing department and Amtron actually has a purchasing department.
Speaker: So they took it over.
Speaker: So they were kind of running the purchasing.
Speaker: They still are.
Speaker: They run finance.
Speaker: They run legal.
Speaker: They run HR.
Speaker: And they run actually the purchasing.
Speaker: I forgot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we do have one of my guys, Mitesh, he sits there and he interfaces with the purchasing department saying, hey, we need these parts, we need that, with this.
Speaker: And they make the phone calls, right?
Speaker: They make the phone calls, they order the stuff, and then it goes from purchasing right to the finance, which is in the same wing of Amtron, and it just goes that way.
Speaker: So where I was going with this is in 23, we lost some people, we lost some other stuff, some stuff got goofed up.
Speaker: We were back in the red.
Speaker: Not a lot, but, you know, we were still in the red in 2034.
Speaker: We're still in the red.
Speaker: You know, I was hoping to get out of it by the end of this year.
Speaker: We're close, but, you know, it's still we got to work on it.
Speaker: You know, there's still numbers that have.
Speaker: I haven't sat down with finance and that's their department.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They kind of keep me.
Speaker: you know, at arm's length and just say, hey, how are sales coming?
Speaker: Do we have any forecasts and projections?
Speaker: And what do you got selling?
Speaker: We're moving all these polycades.
Speaker: This is coming in.
Speaker: Okay, thank you.
Speaker: We'll get back to you.
Speaker: And then I'm waiting to sit down with them in about two weeks or three weeks after the shutdown to have, you know, what did we do for 2024, right?
Speaker: So it's a little disjointed in my world, but there is definitely those divisions that I have to play with in a company.
Speaker: Sorry, I'm going to do one follow-up and I'll toss it over to you, Josh.
Speaker: Is it fair to say that you're on that bubble between like,
Speaker: like sustained profitability?
Speaker: Because the concern I would say from the pinball community is that American pinball may not be around next year or the year after that.
Speaker: It's a good question, Scott.
Speaker: And I will say that since I've been here every year, the podcasters and all the people have always said, oh, American pinball is dead.
Speaker: They're going to be out of business.
Speaker: You know, the day fixes got one foot on the banana peel, the other one in the grave kind of thing.
Speaker: I don't know where we are with this, really.
Speaker: I want to say that I think we're okay.
Speaker: But that's up to the finance department.
Speaker: It's up to Mikesh.
Speaker: That's up to the team that owns the company, right?
Speaker: They're the ones that are going to be sitting there at the end of the year, sitting there going, hey, these are the numbers.
Speaker: This is where we're at.
Speaker: This is what we're going to do.
Speaker: Scares the hell out of me.
Speaker: because who knows what could happen at any point in time.
Speaker: It's just like getting hit by a bus.
Speaker: It could happen at any point in time.
Speaker: I hate to say it, but I don't want to get hit by a bus.
Speaker: I think I put a big dent in it.
Speaker: I put on too much weight with this company.
Speaker: But, you know...
Speaker: You're optimistic, though.
Speaker: I'm always, you know, I'm optimistic, keeping my options open, looking at everything and trying.
Speaker: You know, I haven't checked out.
Speaker: I am here.
Speaker: I'm here every day.
Speaker: I'm with the team every day and fighting like hell to get what we need to get done.
Speaker: Josh, you wanted to ask a question?
Speaker: Actually, Scott kind of asked the question I was going to ask.
Speaker: I'm sorry, Josh.
Speaker: Didn't mean to steal your thunder.
Speaker: No, you're good.
Speaker: Honestly, I've run out of time, so I do apologize.
Speaker: I'm going to have to shut this down, but I really want to thank you, David, for coming on.
Speaker: If someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of you?
Speaker: Call American Pinball, 6800.
Speaker: You can also send me an email.
Speaker: It's there.
Speaker: I try to get...
Speaker: to a lot of emails.
Speaker: You've got to remember, small company, get bombarded.
Speaker: I try to help as much as we can.
Speaker: We try to answer all the questions.
Speaker: I try not to go on pin side.
Speaker: I really think that that's kind of been a little bit more, how do I say this, can be very discouraging.
Speaker: And if anybody had
Speaker: Depression or problems could cause some real bad things to happen to people.
Speaker: And I try not to stay over there and see that stuff.
Speaker: But reach out to me at American Pinball.
Speaker: My email's there, you know, or you can call the direct number.
Speaker: And I know you're going to give Kerry Hardy my number, so he'll probably be calling me tomorrow.
Speaker: So I'll be hearing from him.
Speaker: And Kerry Hardy also, I talked to Paul Reno this morning, and he reached out to Kerry to make sure that there was a correction on Kerry Hardy's post from last night that the design of Galactic Tank Force was Dennis Norman and Paul Reno.
Speaker: It was a co-design thing.
Speaker: It wasn't all Paul.
Speaker: So I know that was probably corrected today, too.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: We try to correct the things, but we're a small company.
Speaker: We're trying like hell.
Speaker: We're fighting.
Speaker: I'm not sitting on a cruise in the Bahamas or sitting somewhere nice.
Speaker: We're always trying to get the next game out.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: If you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: We're on Facebook, Instagram, all the socials, even threads.
Speaker: Someone's like, you're on threads.
Speaker: I came here to even see if it's true.
Speaker: It is true.
Speaker: I want to thank those that have been buying products.
Speaker: If you want to see our pretty face, we're on YouTube.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: If you go to YouTube, even if you're not on YouTube, just go subscribe.
Speaker: It helps us out.
Speaker: Leave some comments, leave a like.
Speaker: It actually does help out with the algorithm and finding us as a podcast for pinball machines when people are looking for pinball.
Speaker: I want to thank those that have been buying product, loser key product this past month.
Speaker: It must be Christmas time.
Speaker: Holy crap.
Speaker: We've got stuff going all over the world down to Australia, into Europe.
Speaker: I was, I was kind of shocked.
Speaker: I was kind of like, what's, what's going on?
Speaker: Oh, it must be Christmas time.
Speaker: The high tops, baby.
Speaker: High tops.
Speaker: High tops.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That, I think that does it for us.
Speaker: Scott, you got the last word for us?
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Have a Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
Speaker: And we're looking for a nice recap.
Speaker: episode of the year and it's been a successful year but challenging so stay safe have fun and play pinball
