That would be me.

I played periodically when I was younger mainly waiting for a movie to start as our local Theature had several pins. My wife stumbled across a Corvette pin that was for sale at a distributor and being that my wife and I loved going to car shows and we have a Corvette we thought it would be cool to have for shows. Ironically enough, it sold before I could get it but that distributor had a couple other games that I played when I was a kid. Figured, what the heck, and bought a BOP and Batman DE. I was hooked at that point and ironically enough have never found the right Corvette Pin so still haven't owned one.

That was the start of the addiction for me.

Tron Legacy. Finding out they were doing a pin based on the movie is what got me to go to a local tournament, which then fueled looking into wanting to own games of my own. I had not played, or even SEEN pinball anything since the late 90's.

I guess it doesn't TECHNICALLY meet your criteria, as I was way into pinball as a kid, but theme alone certainly brought it back into my field of view, and fully into owning games.

I would not own my first pin if it wasn't for theme. I'm a huge Dinosaur fan so when our buddy told me he had a lost world Jurassic park pinball he would sell. We ended up buying it because I loved the theme so much even though I had never really played pinball before that.

Kinda sorta. The first game I really recall playing was Whirlwind. It was at a lake campground game room "shed" and I spent a ton of time playing it because I was always a hugely interested in tornados and hurricanes and such. Whirlwind seemed like such a cool game back then to me and it continues to be. It was more or less my gateway into pinball.

TRON legacy

evel Knievel!

And now you're a top 15 player! Look at that!

Oh wait...

Just happen to walk into a home rec showroom looking at pool tables or something and came across a WMS IJ.
Purchased first pin based on theme alone. I think that was year 1998. Still have it.

A friend bought a sttng as his first machine at an auction and became a serious pinhead..
Sttng was purely bought for the theme, he wasn't into pinball before..

Same. I bought one in 2005 when pins were cheap. It’s a great game but eventually everything gets played to death around here and I moved it along many years ago. Don’t really miss it either.
It was not the first pin I bought. I think it was the fourth. Still, it’s the reason I started to buy and sell games back then.

I grew up watching my brother play EK.
I eventually bought one and still own one but it wasn’t my first machine. It was probably the 110th machine I ever owned.

Not a theme in particular as I remember enjoying pinball from a young age. The one that hooked me though was the first time I played Funhouse. I found it kind of magical as a kid. I never imagined owning one until years later. I was a cable guy and went into this guys place that had a gameroom in his garage with 4 pinball machines. After that I knew I wanted one and went looking for one. While I specifically knew I wanted a Funhouse, I didn't think I'd actually get one back then. It ended up being the 2nd machine I bought. Since I was buying them at arcade auctions, I chose based on a limited time of playing them if they were fun or not...and price.

I don't think I'd have gotten as far into the hobby if they all cost 5k+ though. When I got in $2k was expensive.

I’ve been in the hobby/playing pinball for nearly 40 years - so not new to the scene.

That being said, and not to pump your ego, R&M was a theme that I had been waiting on and purchased on theme alone. Haven’t done that before....

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/something-i-ve-been-working-on#post-5230889

Nope - my first game was an em. I’m still not sure what it’s theme is.