Quoted from swampfire:These pics are neat, but they beg the question: does this kind of heat (100-120 degrees F) really damage plastics and inserts? Or is this only an issue when the bulb is in contact with the plastic, like on a pop bumper?
a lot may have to do with the size of the plastic and lack of room for the heat to dissipate
if you look a good number of the remaining williams joust machines, the apron plastics on many of them are all messed up with bubbling from the heat generated by the 44's underneath them. of course, this is an extreme scenario where you've got quite a few incandecent bulbs fairly close together underneath a huge piece of plastic with no where for the heat to vent to