It doesn't, the goal is to knock them down and get the knocker working (special in the center).
You have maxed out the bonus then and maybe if you are a good player get some free games, difficult enough I should think.

As Wizard points out: definitely not supposed to reset.
The objective is to knock down as many targets on each ball as possible, and when you lose the ball, collect a bonus award value for each target down (as indicated by a lighted ball in the rack on the playfield). If an EM machine reset the drops, it would have no way of reading what targets were down when the bonus is awarded.

Shouldn't be that easy to collect all 14 drops.

Yep - Basically after you have collected at 14 drops + the 8 ball, you should just put it back up high for the 1,000 rollovers. In jail a bit. Just don't tilt is the main goal. Game is all about the bonus. 45,000 point bonus on ball 5 is so cool. Would be awesome if the special could be worth 5,000 instead of a credit!

Nope. The pop bumper is worth 100 points in 5 ball, and 1,000 in 3 ball play.