Star Wars topper? That would be nice, the money burned a hole in my pocket months and months ago it's waiting on the floor in my living room as we speak.

Not to change the subject but that BK plunger looks pretty cool. Think I'll pick one up!

Star Wars topper?

Yes, actually I was!

Funny how so many people just jump to the old "it must be greed" argument.

To me this is the more likely explanation. Things were rolling along fine all this time using the extremely poisonous clear coats from the last 25 years and the playfield manufacturers got caught unprepared by new regulations that made the old clears cost prohibitive. It takes time to field test new formulas. Remember that Diamond Plate appeared on a very limited number of test games YEARS before Williams started using it on all of their games. Coming up with the exact water based formula to replace the old hazardous formulas is obviously failing in some cases and working now in others. Given all of the test cases out there now, hopefully someone behind the scenes is keeping track of what is working and what isn't. Multiple playfield sources just serves to cloud the issue for the consumer. Maybe Mirco had problems first and the other suppliers switched to the new clear later on? Can't just pin it to one supplier because we here at Pinside simply don't know.

All that said, it still really surprises me that this issue has gotten this far. Literally JJP knew about this issue way more than 6 months ago. The fact that a single Wonka or JP2 shipped with these similar clearcoat issues leads me to think this problem is worse behind the scenes than we are being told and their hands may well be tied by regulations. If this was all caused by trying to save a few bucks per game on clear coating material, they would have switched back to the old formula months ago until they found and tested a better clear coat material.

Mirco is in Germany. Nothing to do with the EPA. Probably even more strict over there.