A couple of days ago I poked around in the United States Patent and Trademark Office database looking for pinball-related filings. This lead to my previous posts about Planetary Pinball filing one for Big Bang Bar, pinball being part of the Avatar trademark and American Pinball letting its filing for Wrath of Olympus lapse.
Today I thought that I'd share a few other interesting active aka "Live" trademark filings for pinball machines of various IPs. None of these are singular filings specifically for a pinball machine, they're much broader than that. However, they at least show that pinball is on the radar of the company who filed the trademark. A couple of these themes are currently rumored to already be in various stages of development at manufacturers.
Years ago, Jersey Jack Pinball's founder Jack Guarnieri strongly hinted during an interview that his company had looked into making a Jaws pinball machine, but the license ended up being too restrictive without enough assets, so they passed and it was picked up by another pinball manufacturer, presumably Stern. So the Jaws rumor has been out there for a while.
The Jersey Jack is making a Godfather pinball machine rumor has been floating around for a while now as well.
Those are the two most likely themes that we'll see, but what about the rest? Wednesday is a recent, popular Netflix series. I wouldn't ordinarily put much stock in this as a potential theme, except for the fact that Bally's 1992 pinball machine The Addams Family is the best selling pin of all-time. So maybe.
Whenever people talk about themes that they would like to see for pinball over on Pinside, inevitably someone brings up the band Pink Floyd. The band has a pretty big following and 15 studio albums to draw from. I'm not a big Pink Floyd guy myself and the music seems a little slow for pinball to me, but this one seems possible as well.
The last noteworthy pinball trademark reference that I came across is a new theme. In fact, it's so new that the show isn't even out yet. Rebel Moon is a big budget Netflix movie that is being made by Zac Snyder, of Dawn of the Dead, 300 and Justice League fame. It is a space fantasy themed film that was "inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s iconic Seven Samurai." Who knows if the movie will be any good? Would a manufacturer risk making a pinball machine to coincide with the launch and risk making another of the proverbial great pin, bad movie games like The Shadow or Congo?
Interestingly, two of these themes are new shows on Netflix. Stern Pinball presumably already has a relationship with Netflix as a result of its Stranger Things pinball machine, so that adds a little more smoke to the fire.
Time will tell if any of these themes actually make it to the market as pins. If anything, at least the pinball trademark search served as interesting fodder for conversation and speculation. I'll do a follow-up search in a couple of months to see if there's anything new out there.
