Can you be a Stern hater if you don’t own a Stern? Or is it the other way around, you can’t hate Stern if you don’t own one? I get confused easily by all this marketing mumbo jumbo. And now we get a Stern-sider exclusive opportunity to give them $30 more of my hard earned cash for something I really don’t need, and I get a lame T-shirt designed by the laid off Marketing Dept. of Cocacola, because if that pinball silhouette was a Coke bottle... just saying.

At Expo last year, during the Stern factory tour, they had Stern merch for sale. All of the Stern Employees had these cool “BOOM!” Deadpool shirts on, and the #1 asked for and not available to the general public item from their store? Yep, DP Boom! T-shirts. So I don’t know who runs the marketing department at Stern, but they are not so keen on coming up with campaigns that generate buzz and sales leads if they keep missing the boat on what the public wants. We all would have been wearing Stern DP Boom! T-shirts that weekend if they had sold them on the factory tour. Instead, they kept them as a perk for Stern employees only. Great way to ID Stern employees all weekend, but a huge missed marketing opportunity imo. I would have given them $30 bucks for just the Boom! Shirt alone, no need for any other hyped up semi exclusive access required. People like cool stuff. Put out cool stuff with your company logo on it and see what happens. Don’t offer me nothing for something, I am smarter than that.

The problem is, Stern showed us something neat and cool that money couldn’t buy. That right there is a missed marketing opportunity imo. Get my email, put me on an “interested list”, but dont let me walk away disappointed. Send me a DP sales flyer or a bumper sticker and a TS card (if anyone even remembers wtf that is...) and put me on your email list. Marketing 101

Well, color me undecided Who-Dey until I flip that lower pf.

The only thing I have heard so far that made any sense is a low cost, can’t afford to buy, but want to support the brand argument. That is what the $30 dollars gets you. A little piece of Stern. Now I got a huge chunk of Stern FGy sitting in my loft right now that I paid $3500 for in 2008. I didn’t get a T-shirt. Who got the better deal?

But historically accurate on how operators used to buy games... did they care much about anything except does it spit out a ball and take in quarters/tokens/coins? Put it on route.

My rants these days are so long, by the time I have written them down and edited them they are no longer relevant.

When I want to be a fanboy, I buy a pinball machine, not a “I wish I owned one” loot box. Gary can keep his shirt, pin, and promises and the opportunity to contribute $30 to his retirement fund if he would just put out better games for the $5500 they are commanding. If you use an inflation calculator, my Stern Family Guy should only cost $4700 NIB right now, and the cheapest Stern Munsters Pro is $5500? Without the mini playfield? What am I getting for my extra $800 bucks right now? Maybe if Sterns came with a shirt, a lapel pin, and a promise for $4730 I would buy more Stern pins?

Ok, enough ragging on Stern. I am a fanboy after all. But the difference between what you got 10 years ago and what you get today is a wider gap than the $800. The entire Stewie mini playfield for FGy only cost $395 bucks fully populated but the difference in price between a Pro Munsters and a Premium is $2000?!? Something feels wrong about asking me for $30 bucks for a fan club membership with math like this floating around.

Didn't argue that fact, just that the quality at the current bottom from Stern is not up to the quality of the machines 10 years ago, and yet are more expensive when taking into account inflation. So was Stern building a better machine for less 10 years ago? I say yes, they were. Was that sustainable? Don’t know, only that they stayed in business, so it must have worked a little, but competition was the best thing to ever happen to Stern, and Gary should kiss Jack for saving them. Or at least buy him dinner.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought. I’m putting my $30 towards my next Stern NIB machine purchase where it will actually reduce the cost of my machine by about $30 bucks.

The dirty little secret I heard was Lyman was asked to do a GB code update, so he took one home, dowsed it in gasoline, lit it on fire, and invited all his friends over for a bonfire and weenie roast. He was last seen holding a flaming Mia Tia, laughing hysterically with a glint in his eye yelling “I’ll see you all burn in Hell before I fix GB code!!!” That was also just about the same time George Gomez was last seen walking into Dwights cube with with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. The burnt out carcass of the GB cabinet can still be seen from space on Google Earth.