I put a down payment on a decked out premium (delivery in 2022).

Gonna spend some time reviewing this thread. What’s the overall tone premium owners? Still enjoying it? Did you tire quickly?

I have a Munsters Premium and TMNT Premium and the family loves em.

I usually tweak the #of balls and save time on my pins to ensure 5-10 minutes games. We like pinball in this house but we are far from pros

That’s cool that Mando has a co-op mode. We liked that on Ninja Turtles.

That sounds great! We really like the mini playfield on Munsters and the Krang loops on TMNT. I am getting good enough to pull off three loops in a row now and then!

As far as extras, I asked for:
HD Glass
Shaker
Shooter
Art Blades
Side Armor
External volume control
Rgb Speakers
And topper if it gets announced by then.

It’s going to be sitting next to decked out Munsters and TMNT.

There should be a setting in one of the adjustment menus to enable ending a game by holding start and the left flipper for a few seconds.

I just got two sheets of voodoo glass from Tilt (they get it from Cointaker) and installed it. Did some direct comparisons on a twitch stream to stock glass, invisaglass, and stern HD glass.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1124132479

TL;DW
It helps quite a bit. In my opinion/observation Voodoo glass is on par with Stern HD glass, but not quite as good as JJP Invisaglass.

Any of the three are fantastic upgrades.

If you get two sheets of Voodoo at the same time you get a bit of a discount since they can ship 2 in one box.

Still can’t get my hands on a sheet of PDI.

I can do that this weekend and give you a preview. This glass plus dial the backbox brightness down to 35% during gameplay in the settings and you will want for nothing.

Except for glare reducing glass on every other pin you own.

I’ll make a video today or tomorrow and show.

It’s in one of the adjustments menus. There is a general setting and one for dimming during gameplay. That’s the one you want to tweak to your liking.

I uploaded a video showing how to get to it.

TL;DW

It's in Service Menu->Adjustments->Standard Adjustments->Gameplay B.Box Brightness

It's towards the end of the list of adjustments so I usually scroll through them in reverse order. (on TMNT they are adjustment #88!)

They are most likely still wrangling with reviews/approvals by Disney. Approvals from the folks providing the license is almost always the hold up.

I find plastic razor blades to be good for stuff like this. Very effective with much lower risk of damage.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076BBW1WM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_DZ97HKKW7EHKFW52HVYF

“I can bring you in hot. Or I can bring you in cold”

What an awesome quote. Is there a callout like that in the game? That would be so cool.

Got the call tonight!

I should be officially in the club next week!!!

Hahaha. Your journey begins now!

This is the way!

Stern just finished the only production run currently planned for this year and they’ve been shipping out all month.

So resurgence is probably just folks that have been waiting finally getting their orders fulfilled. . Hopefully there is enough buzz to fuel enough orders to get them put on the line again next year.

Received, unboxed and set my premium today.

Love the look. Love the theme. Love the gameplay.

An almost flawless out of box experience… until this happened in game 6…

The screw didn’t have a bolt or anything keeping it from unthreading. So I added one from my Titan Pinball “little box of calm”.

Grabbed a bolt with plastic fastener and tightened that up as much as I could.

Hope it doesn’t pop again. It has many sharp edges!

0882DFEC-167B-457F-8DBA-90DD0023589B (resized).jpeg

B3E00CF8-3E1F-4889-9F39-25A728D7243F (resized).jpeg

Thoroughly inspected the cab and playfield before playing. No sign that there was ever a nut there.

It’s possible it’s wedged somewhere.

But I have yet to find it.

I’m swapping out the clear star posts for beskar posts later, so maybe I’ll find it then.

Loving the game so far.

2 weeks. 30 plays.

My left ramp is wrecked, wobbling, and rejecting half my shots now.

I don’t see a fix for it marked as a key post in this thread, so I’ll hafta search it cause I’m sure you folks have figured something out.

My distributor already has a ticket in with stern for a replacement ramp. But I know it’s just going to break the same way.

That metal takes a lot of abuse and there is nothing to keep the plastic from flexing too much when that happens.

4F1CBB58-0441-4173-B223-1282B06B1980 (resized).jpeg

Get the part for the ramp for sure. The other stuff is personal preference I think. I find the out of box flippers and rubbers just fine for now.

All I wanna know… is “I have spoken” in there?

I’ll out myself and admit. I am going to get one at 2k.

I’ve had my topper order locked in with my distro since last Sept when I ordered my premium.

As soon as the announcement video hit I called them to let them know I’m still all in.

When I got Mando, I also got the art blades, shooter rod, side armor, voodoo glass, and external volume control, and Insider Connected through the distro, then separately I got and did the grogu mod, Cara Dune shooter ramp decal, flaming speaker grills, and coin door insider connected camera mounting plate.

Given how much my family enjoys the game and how much I have into it already, it just wouldn’t seem right to leave it unfinished. That said, my family is Dwight S. & B. Eddy fans in general and we deck those machines out all we can and bolt them to the floor.

When you add all those extras together the topper isn’t really all that crazy given it’s licensed and 1st party. Stern needed to do extra coding and animations for it, plus testing, plus hardware and that was all done in America where minimum wage is much higher most places now and inflation is at 9%.

Given this is more than the typical “plastic and lights” they usually do, inflation, and the fact that flippers were going to have this thing at 2k resell anyway I don’t have a problem with it.

Sure, I’d rather it was cheaper. But if it’s gonna be 2k I’d rather pay it to Stern and see that money go to Dwight and crew than just be paying an extra 1k to some opportunist with buddies that’s hoarding inventory.

If 2k is a bridge too far for many, hopefully upwards of that leaves scalpers just holding on to unmovable inventory and disincentivizes them.

I know a lot of folks are not happy about the exclusive modes tied to it. But let’s face it. The toppers price is somewhat subsidizing extra software development. We all know it and many keep saying they want more code. More code.

I’m a software engineer and I don’t work for free.

I don’t expect them to either.

If topper purchasers are subsidizing that work, I think it fair that they should get to enjoy the fruits of that for at least a little while. Even if they are just paying a premium to beta test.

Once the topper runs are done they could open the modes up to the masses (if they don’t actually require the topper to function).

I think something like this was done with Jurassic Park.

Another way to look at it is this.

There are people overpaying anywhere from $1000-$5000 right now for flipped, used pros, premiums, and LEs. JJP is making 15k retail pins a thing with Toy Story 4.

Given that’s just widely accepted now as “pinflation bruh”, if one is willing to wait patiently and get their Pin at retail price, the topper is practically free.

My Mando Prem with everything I mentioned and a 2k topper is still cheaper than Toy Story 4 with topper at retail price. At flipper prices… fugggetta-bout-it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere down the road with future pins they have different levels of toppers just like they have different levels of tables. Pro/Prem/LE.

I do think the idea of timed exclusive code Vs forever exclusive is a good one.

Especially if the topper isn’t somehow directly tied to the functionality.

I remember talking to a Stern guy pre-covid who said they took a serious bath on the Munsters toppers by selling them at $400 originally. They couldn’t make enough of them. But that didn’t make them profitable.

At that price they covered BOM (bill of materials) and assembly. But they really underestimated the amount if QA they would need and the pain of that was felt in the number of defects and returns.

I don’t know a single person that got one that worked out of the box. Including myself.

The Black Knight topper was another one they woefully underpriced for the amount of testing it needed.

The challenge is folks want more than “plastic and lights.”

The Munsters topper is amazing. Sure Raven Multiball and the callouts work fine without the topper. But if you ever get a chance to play it with a topper it’s wild. That Raven will surprise you at least once or twice when he pops out to break your balls. It can be so jarring it might even literally cause you to drain! The call outs are still there without the topper but the

But these fancier toppers need a lot more testing and code just to function at all.

If you think about it. How many owners add toppers? Maybe 10 - 20% (pulling these numbers out of my arse. Anyone here feel free to correct me.)

But those toppers need dedicated code.

So… Stern is already spending significant time adding code to machines and testing it. And we all pay for that in the price of the base pin but can’t all benefit from it without throwing down some extra cash.

Not to mention the time they are spending on updating code for machines no longer on the line just so they could *potentially* use insider connected though many never will.

I think the difference here is we are more aware it’s happening so folks feel they are missing out.

Some still have no idea their old games can be upgraded to use insider connected or feel the features that are inaccessible to them matter enough to pay to upgrade.

First off, to all the folks making toppers in their basement or mods of any kind, you all are amazing and I support you as often as I can with both with my words and my wallet.

That said, most folks in that category do not have to deal with manufacturing and shipping several hundred of the same product at a time, many aren’t dealing with licensing and legal fees (which typically have to be paid up front). The ones who are tend to have longer wait times and higher priced mods.

The element many want to ignore is these toppers, mods, etc don’t just magically pop into existence. They require tinkering, experimentation, trial and error to get to something that’s valuable, they require instructions, and support, etc.

For some a lot of their time spent on that R and D, documentation, etc. is simply lost time compensation wise. Others try to make up for some of it in the markup cost of their mods.

I’ve seen 3D printed items costing as much as $200 or more. If all I considered was the cost of the plastic many of those mods could be considered way overpriced.

But if I factor in their time and efforts required to arrive at that final output… How much is the right price? Well… what is that time worth to them? And how much are people willing to pay?

Regarding the software, I was just pointing out that Stern is doing a lot more software development work now in general. Insider connected, fancier toppers. Etc. We’ve seen prices of each tier of machines climb. The claim is increased material costs and the inclusion of Insider Connected on every new machine.

They recently (in the last last year or two) expanded their coding team, which is why we are seeing such fast and furious code updates (compared to previously) and why some long standing bugs are finally getting squashed.

I didn’t say they took a bath on every topper they make. I mentioned specific ones that were mechanically and functionally more complicated than simply “lights and plastic” and that needed more QA and by hand assembly time.

You can’t simply take BOM and apply a 5% markup and say that’s always fair or they are ripping you off. It’s not that simple.

I notice the examples you gave for toppers that didn’t impact the cost of the machines were tables that were original IPs with no licensing hurdles. They are also multiple decades old when there were multiple players in the pinball space which had to have an impact on retail target prices and bills of materials.

Stern currently has little incentive to bring prices down if JJP and others are raising prices to new highs and still moving inventory.

There is no way to compete with a father/son labor of love!

Nice job!

It must be quite the conversation piece!

This is sadly 100% true.

The only thing I see changing it would be the flooding of the market with competition and surplus inventory.

Until that happens the sky will be the limit.

I just hope that if it’s going to the manufacturers and not scalpers and opportunists then just maybe we’ll see more inventory, innovation, and better quality over time as they reinvest at least some of that.

The scalpers and opportunists literally add zero value other than driving up costs.

Just wanted to say Toppers are definitely back in stock. The distributor I got my Mando from last year emailed me to tell me it was available so I locked in my order. Can’t wait!

My family liked it.

I kept pretending I didn’t know who Bo-katan was.

Every time a new character would pop up I’d go “hey it’s Bo-katan”.

Gotta say. The show makes me wanna play the pin and the pin makes me wanna watch the show.

My topper shipped today