The problem is not the monkey people. The problem is the decision to include it. The artist, the designer, and all the other API management that were involved in making the decision to include the image on a product that they were promoting as “Fun and Family Friendly”.
And I am not saying that they did this intentionally, that they sat around and went “What kind of innocent sight gag can we include in the art package that will get a laugh out of people?” And then brain storm and toss out all kinds of rude, crude, and socially unacceptable ideas until they centered on innocent pet monkey, who is clueless, runs around patting girls on the bottom and tries to push up the skirts of their dirndls. That is not how this image ended up on the backglass.
This image probably started as the thought that at Oktoberfest, it is not uncommon to see drunk men goosing the bottoms of young frauleins in drindls, but we can’t put a lecherous old drunk dude doing that on here, hmmm... what if we made him a stupid cartoonish monkey? One that is just anthropomorphic enough to make the connection, but innocent enough because, you know, its just a monkey. Here, we will put him next to these two sexy girls right in the middle of the backglass and we will make the girls smile, you know, so no one thinks the monkey is doing this without their consent. Yeah, thats not too un-PC. That should be just fine.
And then it was forgotten, or if not forgotton, it was looked at by a bunch of men, who thought, ha ha, stupid monkey... and thought nothing else about it. They all said “looks good to me Bob, ship that puppy!” And the art package went to the silk screener and the image was screened onto a few sample pieces and sent back and installed in the 3 prototypes, and they worked real hard, and built us a nice game, with lots to do, some neat toys, and a Beer drinking theme. What more could the public want?
Fast forward to now. We have women now looking at our beautiful machine, and they see this image of a monkey grabbing a poor work staff’s butt and they have to relive the thought of every man who has grabbed them on the ass while they just tried to do their job, waiting tables at a bar, or serving drunk men drinking beer in tents. Then these women see the hand of the monkey up the poor girl’s skirt, and they are reminded of all the men who have tried to take advantage of them with their unwanted touchy feely advances. Suddenly they do not really like this machine, the company who built it, and the people promoting it as “family friendly pinball fun”. And now we have a very real image problem on our hands.
What do we do? As a company who wants to be a good societal member, and doesn't want to gain a reputation as being mysoginistic and tone deaf, what can we do?
Well, first of all,we need to publicly appologize to all of our customers, that we made a mistake, and we need to get rid of the monkey. And secondly, we need to educate our design staff to be a little more thoughtful and inclusive and less male centric when developing content for the “family friendly” company image that we have been promoting. And thirdly, the next artist, designer, or employee who puts a monkey on one of our machines will be looking for new employment.
Now, I think API made all the right moves after the fact. But the vacuum of male cluelessness on their part is the mill stone around their necks that will take a lot longer time to wriggle out of. Maybe with their next version of the art package we will see some improvement to their tone, and hopefully by the time their next machine comes out, all of this can be remembered as some growing pains for API.
And let me be the first to euologize poor Mr Monkey, he had a short life, but boy wasn't he cute? I hope all of those who sided with you, Mr Monkey, I hope the secondary market will fill the void and provide all the monkey love that some on here have been craving. Good luck Mr Monkey. We are going to miss you.