Guardians of the Galaxy

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The phone call

In march of 2017 I got a call from someone claiming to be from Universal Studios in Johannesburg. My first reation was: "This is a joke right?". Turns out they wanted me to make 4 machines as promotional items to be given away as prizes in a competition promoting the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.  Graphics were to be chosen from a very small set of approved images but the rest of the design was up to me.

So, I used the Eight Ball as a template, changed the playfield in terms of bonus lights and target indicators to suit the new theme. Targets were each given a badge so the players could collect them all for super bonus. Something like that. If you've played Eight Ball before you'll know how it goes.

Somehow word got out and some online pinball magazine in the USA published a little blurb on it. Of course the self righteous entitled pinball "community" was all up in arms about how bad it was, how it was only an Eight Ball reskinned, and blah-di-bloody-blah. Well, no, you fartsuckers, i'ts not just a skin job on a donor machine, it's four scratch built Disney sanctioned official machines and I'd like to see you turds build even one from scratch. I got very sick of everyone sending me youtube links on how this guy was building his own machine and how that guy was converting an EM to solid state, not to mention all the cardboard and lego prototypes. none of which ever cam to fruition except for the Spooky guys and of course the Aussies with the kilts. Haggis Pinball I think they were. 

I came to the conclusion that America was wasted on Americans, not to mention Europeans and Europe, but America still has the folks in Lexington South Carolina to fly the flag for the most pleasant bunch of people I'll ever have the privilege of doing business with.  Thank you  Ms. Martinez. Your help was appreciated then and always will be. 

I'm not going into detail here but for saying that the first panels were cut in March and the machines were delivered in August. Not bad for one guy, his wife and three Scotties. Here is a slide show of some of the photos taken during manufacturing. 

So if you're thinking about next years trade show and would like to draw a crowd, think about a machine with your company branding on it. I'd like to do a Vokswagen, Caterpillar of Festool machine some day. 

Branded Festool_s