Years ago I unexpectedly received a hat in the mail and never knew why. Is this the hat?
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Yes. It's from the series episode where Scooby gets stuck in a chicken coop.

Best to order direct from Spooky to get your game soonest and learn your order position soonest. Only possible downside would be if they sold out before you tried to place your order. But that is very unlikely with 1969 total units and Spooky selling half of them (with the other half split between their distributors). And if Spooky does sell their half out they stated they would help direct you to a distributor with allocations remaining.

The only positive to buying from a distributor is you would be able to get on their interested list before sales opened up at 10 AM central time today. A distributor, knowing how many games they were allocated, could guarantee that same number of people they would get a game. However, buying from any distributor moves your delivery out substantially, since Spooky's direct customers get the first 50 games, the next 50 are split between the distributors, and so on. And it may take quite a while (it has taken weeks for previous Spooky games) for a distributor to be able to give you your order position.

You may think that you were one of the first to get on an interested list for Scooby-Doo with a distributor, since you contacted them shortly after the game was announced. But distributors quite often award their earliest allocations to their best customers. New customers slotted behind them may be in for a long wait. With seven distributors (as listed in some posts in this thread) sharing every other block of 50 games, each distributor will only get around 7 games from each 100 machines built. If you are number 30 on your distributor's interest list, your overall order position would be higher than 550. Number 44 with the distributor would be higher than 750. Guaranteed a game? Yes. Guaranteed a long wait? Probably.

(Full disclosure: I ordered my CE from Joe at PinballSTAR, so I'll be waiting a while myself.)

One Australian guy is getting one, but it looks like he's having it shipped to Austria for some reason.

Yes, most knew the fastest way to get your game was to order direct from Spooky as close to 10 AM today as possible. It was the Spooky site crashing repeatedly that had frustrated people resorting to placing their order through a distributor that resulted in the problem of inequitable delivery times. Unless this is taken into consideration, the difference could literally be several months.

I'm old enough to remember when options on new cars were ala carte: you could pick and choose what you wanted when ordering. This caused problems when the "take rate" for various options was drastically different from what the manufacturers anticipated. For example: with the debut of the retro-styled Mustang in 2005, Ford added an option called MyColor which allowed the driver to set red/green/blue levels and change the color displayed on the instrument cluster. Ford forecast and ordered parts for a 15% take rate (thinking 15% of customers would want it), but it was new and "cool" and more than 80% ordered it. Ford had to contact buyers and make them choose between dropping the MyColor option and getting their cars promptly, or keeping the option and waiting several more months for the additional parts that had to be ordered. Individual options are logistics problems for manufacturers to forecast, so now equipment packages have replaced most individual options on automobiles.

If you look back, Spooky offered several individual options (such as target decals) on previous games besides the butter cabinet. It looks like Spooky has learned the same lesson the automakers did, and is making those things only available in the Scooby-Doo CE (effectively an equipment package) and not optional on other Scooby-Doo versions. This will make individual parts ordering much easier for Spooky. Offering a non-glare glass option would just complicate parts logistics when Spooky is trying to simplify it. It seems like the only things a buyer will get to choose when their game nears production is if they want a butter cabinet and if they want to pick up their game or have it shipped.

And there is so much stuff sticking up on the playfield that the glass won't fit over it and you have to play with the glass off.
Well . . . maybe that's wrong. But there is a lot of cool stuff jammed into this widebody game.

(And now, on a more positive note.) Why did I order a Scooby-Doo CE yesterday?

Cab art and backglass look great to me and I expect the green powdercoat to look better in person.
Playfield art, lots of RGB insets, numerous sculpts and colored wireform ramps look great to me.
Widebody with standard body fan layout had shots that looked smooth on the short video shown.
Upper playfield looked good to me with bash toy, bookcase/flipper and exits to various ramps.
Didn't see audio or video clips, but they have the right voice actors (4000 callouts) and show assets to use.
Haven't heard a lot of the soundtrack, but liked the music from the game on the teaser and short video shown.
Coding needs to fully make use of the 5 characters, 7 villains, Scooby snacks, and multiballs on the playfield.

The biggest question mark is how good the code will turn out over time (like when I get my game in a year).

Just wait until people who tried to buy direct from Spooky when orders opened at 10 AM but jumped over and ordered from a distributor instead when Spooky's system kept crashing find out that delivery of their machines will take several months (or more) longer than the people who stuck out the crashes and did order direct.

(Full disclosure: I'm in the group that wound up ordering a CE from a distributor just after 10 AM that day.)

Per Spooky, all CEs will be run first, then BSEs and last the few SEs ordered by people. Since we now know number 1854 is a BSE, either Spooky has sold at least 1854 of the 1969 games and the game is close to being sold out. Or they are planning to run the sold CEs first, then all un-sold games as CEs, then the sold BSEs, and last the sold SEs. If this second scenario is correct, then we don't know how many Scooby-Doo games are still unsold.

That sounds great! Are you planning on staying home from work those two days waiting for it?

When we were kids that's what Mom would answer when we asked her when we were going to go to Disneyland.

I've only purchased two pins in the last 15 years. In 2014 I received an unexpected bonus check from my employer for working 20 years with them and used it to buy Mustang premium NIB. In 2019 I felt selfish buying EHoH LE NIB since my wife never played any of my games (but that looks like a good decision now).

I'm 73 and retired now (I worked until almost 71). My wife of 42 years died in September at age 65. We chose not to have any kids, so now it's just me and our two German shepherd dogs. The last two months have been pretty tough. Only God knows how much more time any of us have, so I preordered Scooby-Doo CE to hopefully lift up my spirits.

Programming for the game is still incomplete. PinBalt just wants them to flesh it out more.

There is a whole series of Scooby-Doo ornaments. I picked up the ones from 2018 and 2012.
I might wind up only using the 2018 ornament like The-Hum.
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Not many people know that Shawn Corey Carter took his stage name Jay-Z from the letters on the front of Wonder Twins Jayna and Zan's superhero costumes. It is unknown if he is also from their home planet of Exxor.

The height is an optical illusion. From that angle it only looks like it extends down to the green pcb base of the banks of drop targets. It's just a normal VUK mounted to the wood above that green base, that kicks the ball up to a ramp that returns it to the flippers.

Pinside eagle eye spotters do it again! Looks like Spooky's next pin will be Barbie.

My guess? jeffspinballpalace is selling spot 1038 at a small loss probably to buy a much lower Scooby-Doo spot. Number 388 is for sale at the required CE deposit of $2K right now. I'll bet jeffspinballpalace scored an even lower spot for that price. Wouldn't any of you pay a couple hundred or so to move up hundreds of places if your number was over a thousand?

Have a Scooby snack to tide you over.

<< WARNING: Cargument ahead ! >>

Yet you've been on Pinside for 1 year and own 18 machines, including the high priced Toy Story 4 CE, Elvira 40th LE, plus many other A-list games. Most of us are looking to buy games at a fair price, and Scooby-Doo is fairly priced compared to recent offerings from the other manufacturers. You, on the other hand, are like the car buyer who wants to make sure that nobody else gets a cheaper price than they do for the same model. This is the reason GM initially created the Saturn division with the same flat pricing for everyone. So people could buy a Saturn knowing that no one else got a better deal on it than they did.

So you want a Scooby-Doo, but you want to wait until you can buy the game at a discount, hoping that people will sell their spot at a loss if video of gameplay looks underwhelming or if some new release (such as BTTF) makes people want to drop Scooby and buy the new game instead. Spooky should have limited it to 750 like R&M. Scooby would have sold out day one and if it is a hit you'd be left looking for one on the used market at a markup.

Saw the latest pic. Nice that they had the rolling cart powder coated the same green as the Scooby-Doo armor. Spooky is really going all out for Scooby-Doo !

I have #614 and I'm trying hard not to resent all of you guys with such low numbers. I received my emailed receipt from PayPal 29 seconds after orders opened at 10 AM and the only thing I did wrong was buy through a distributor instead of direct from Spooky.

You two guys didn't make me feel any better. I'm just sad for both of you too now.

He's hard to spot because he's standing right next to Waldo . . .
. . . and you know how hard it is to spot Waldo.

If Spooky offered radcals as a middle option, would they call it margarine?

( Posting this only as a setup for CoolCatPinball to provide the punchline. )

From a previous pic taken at the Spooky factory, it looks like all tabs should be mounted under.
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