What list were you looking at? I think you missed just a few. In the 90's there were way more licensed than unlicensed pins....even from B/W.

Besides the 4 you listed, just from B/W there were also; BSD, CFTBL, The Shadow, Flintsones, Corvette, JD, DM, Congo, Popeye, T2, JM, MB, SS, DW, DH, EATPM, I500, HD, GI, BBBB, NBAFB.

Gottlieb and DE/Sega had a ton of them too. Why? Because name/image recognition helps sales! If Stern had put out a generic pirate game instead of POTC, do you really think they would have sold around 6000 of them? People gravitate towards popular things...movie themes, etc. Gary has said before that it's somewhere around $50 per pin for the license. That seems pretty cheap for good advertisement, IMHO.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see an unlicensed pin again, but that's not going to turn things around for pinball (and I have no idea what could).

Sorry, I just noticed the "a" in your list. So....you were just talking about A-listers, but still, some of the others I added are in that group too (MB, SS, CFTBL). At any rate, my whole point was that licensed pins seem to be selling, so it's unlikely that we'll see anything but them from now on. Maybe we'll luck out on JJP's number 2 pin??