121 episodes tracked since 2023 about →
Episode 99 - Much Ado About Toppers
PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago56 min listen
Highlights
- Steve Richie's High Speed (1986) with its interactive spinning light topper was a major driver of pinball's resurgence, alongside or perhaps more than the plastic molded toys of Space Shuttle.
- Stern does not include toppers at base pricing even on Limited Edition machines priced at $13,000+; toppers ship separately months or years after release.
- Boutique manufacturers struggle disproportionately with topper manufacturing: design complexity, manufacturing delays, and quality issues (e.g., Pulp Fiction action figures, Cactus Canyon toppers) despite being simpler than full pinball machines.
- Toppers have higher profit margins (~$1,900 profit on $2,000 MSRP) compared to full pinball machines (~$1,000 profit on ~$8,000 materials), incentivizing manufacturers to prioritize topper sales.
- The first 50 buyers of boutique pinball games set the official community opinion, which then persists for 3–4 years unchallenged before discourse shifts entirely to topper delays.
- Collectors prioritize topper acquisition over game playability, with secondary market toppers selling above MSRP and entire Facebook groups focused on toppers rather than game tuning or competitive play.
Notable quotes
“Topper sounds fucking stupid, whereas a pinball hat sounds cool, dude. I would buy a hat for Godzilla. I'm not buying a topper.”
“If the biggest functional purpose of a topper is making a game stand out and every game has one, nothing's standing out. They just all have shit on top of them now.”
“i genuinely genuinely think that thing was a big reason the game was successful because if you were in an arcade and that kicked on you had to be like what the hell is that what's going on over there”
“Spooky will give you like a flat plastic topper but spooky has realized they can give you a flat plastic topper and offer a $1,500 like molded topper and people will buy it in droves. It's crazy to me that people will be like, oh, my games already has a little topper that's interactive and lit up and stuff. But I need the big one.”
“they can make a pinball machine just full of thousands of moving parts with you know pinball whizzing around to a fucking 50 miles an hour break and everything. That's easy for a pinball company to pump out on time. But they promise you like a topper and they're like, the cowboy's arm moves. And they can't do that.”
“they want all their games to match they want every game to have the same color palette which is rainbow saturated every color heavy outline artwork women drawn a specific way men with angry eyebrows”
“The toppers do sell the games and the toppers also sell toppers toppers beget toppers”
“toppers can make or break a game's reputation not necessarily in the case of stern where people understand that the toppers will come later and they judge the game for its own merits but boutique companies seem to live or die based on their toppers”
Entities
- Chicago Pinball (Chicago Gaming Company)· company
- Dutch Pinball· company
- Jersey Jack Pinball· company
- Spooky Pinball· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Addams Family· game
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland· game
- Cactus Canyon· game
- F-14 Tomcat· game
- Getaway· game
- High Speed· game
- Pinbot· game
- Pulp Fiction (Bad Mother Flipper Edition)· game
- Simpsons· game
- Space Shuttle· game
- Strange Science· game
- Teed Off· game
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles· game
- Whitewater· game
- Wedgehead Pinball Podcast· organization
- Barry Oswelder· person
- Gary Stern· person
- John Yowsey· person
- Steve Richie· person
