More Fun with Pinball Trademarks: The Addams Family, "Brick" to the Future & The Office Pins?

It's time for everybody's favorite game...Fun with Pinball Trademarks! Now that all of those new game launches have slowed down a little, we can get back to my frequent and likely meaningless analysis of new Trademarks for pinball machines that have been filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. I have a couple for everyone today. None of them are likely, so I'll put them in order from "Unlikely" to "No way that happens."

First off, we have two recent filings (3/15/2023) by the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation non-profit corporation for somewhat blanket trademarks for "THING" and "Uncle Fester" that include "pinball machines" and "Pinball-type" games. I always find very narrow trademarks, like the one I talked about for The Twilight Zone in a previous article, to be much more likely to lead to the production of an actual physical pinball machine than blanket statements like this, but you never know. Maybe this pertains to the previous trademark that we saw filed for the Netflix show "Wednesday?" Or maybe it's nothing.

Next up we have a potential pinball machine that thousands in the hobby have been begging for for years, Back to the Future. Unfortunately, this trademark isn't exactly for "Back" to the future...it's for "Brick" to the Future, the Lego spin on the movie. Is a Lego version of Back to the Future getting made? Probably not, but...the 40th Anniversary of the 1985 movie Back to the Future isn't that far away. Stern pinball admittedly works on pinball machines years in advance, so maybe we'll see a legit movie-based Back to the Future pin from them? It certainly would sell like hotcakes.

Last but not least we have a pinball Trademark filing for something related to the famous television sitcom, The Office, which ran from 2005 through 2013. Specifically, the trademark is for a pinball machine related to "Dunder Mifflin," the fictional paper company that everyone in the television show worked for. Will we see "Limitless Paper in a Paperless World (TM)" multiball? I doubt it, but you never know.

That's all for this edition of fun with pinball trademarks. Tune in next time for more games that will probably never be made...and possibly a real gem or two.