Robin Hood

[ryzombie619]

Excuse me if this has been touched on before, but I can't surely be the only one to question why a pinball machine was not made for Robin Hood Prince of Thieves....right? I mean, in the heyday of movie pinball machines, Robin Hood PoT was one of the highest grossing movies. I just found that a bit odd. There was Hook, Batman, Jurassic Park, Addams Family, T2, Robocop, heck even Apollo 13 got one. Too bad, I think it would have been cool hearing Alan Rickman shouting through the machine "Locksley! I'm going to cut your heart out with a spoon!"

 

[Bowflex]

My guess is that at the time, licenses were not used for popular CURRENT movies. From what I can tell, Total Recall was the first table that released nearly simultaneous to as Robocop came out 2 years after the movie (and a year prior to the sequel) and Back to the Future wasn't released until the entire triology was complete. 1991, the year that Robin Hood came out, was really the first year that the movie tie-in pinball machines rose in popularity. You had T2, Hook and Addams Family, all of which were movies marketed more at male and/or kids/teen audiences from what I remember. Robin Hood was marketed as more of a romance. Despite the movie having plenty of action, other than the camera mounted on the arrows, the promotion puhsed the love story angle. I think it would have gotten a machine if the practice of releasing movie tie-ins was more tried and true at that point since Robin Hood also finished third at the box office for the year.

 

[Naildriver74]

I think it was the men in tights.

 

[ryzombie619]

Hmm, good points Bowflex. I just think that it's strange, considering the movies that have gotten machines in the early 90s. Demolition Man?? Last Action Hero? Twister? I mean wouldn't that be sick to have a Robin Hood PoT machine, and a Ghostbusters machine? I wonder if there is a way to request a pinball company to look into the two.

 

[Bowflex]

Hmm, good points Bowflex. I just think that it's strange, considering the movies that have gotten machines in the early 90s. Demolition Man?? Last Action Hero? Twister? I mean wouldn't that be sick to have a Robin Hood PoT machine, and a Ghostbusters machine? I wonder if there is a way to request a pinball company to look into the two.

Twister and Last Action Hero both had big box offices. Last Action Hero was supposed to be bigger than it was but by no means a failure. It just didn't meet the huge expectations. Demolition Man was the same way but it wasn' quite in the top 20 for that year. All the movies that became tables were mostly really hyped, generally shoe-in box office successes. '91 was the year it all started and then it seemed like every table was a tie-in in 93/94. Bally stopped after 94, Williams and Gottlieb after 95 and Sega still did another table or two after but they had already transitioned most of their focus on other types of licenses.
Gottlieb did Bone Busters Inc. which is basically a ripoff of Ghostbusters. It would still be a great retro theme if they could get the rights. Robin Hood would be a great theme in general but I would rather not have the Bryan Adams song!

 

[vikingerik]

Last Action Hero got stomped by Jurassic Park which opened one week before and thoroughly dominated movie mindshare for the year.

Space Jam might have been the last single-movie pinball table until Avatar.

 

[ZenTron]

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=5307 was out before Avatar and a much better pin imo..

Last Action Hero got stomped by Jurassic Park which opened one week before and thoroughly dominated movie mindshare for the year.

Space Jam might have been the last single-movie pinball table until Avatar.

 

[ryzombie619]

Robin Hood would be a great theme in general but I would rather not have the Bryan Adams song!

LOL, who said you had to have that? I don't get it, that's not even the main draw of Robin Hood PoT. I remember it as an action/romance, like Star Wars, like Indiana Jones, like Batman, I mean they all have some sort of love story mixed in with the action. I think having Michael Kamen's music, the amazing theme, with the voices from the movie, it would be amazing. I mean think of all the things that specific pinball could have. A screen for an arrow shot, the castle, Sherwood forest, a catapult, maybe a crossbow you could fire the ball from? I mean there's a lot of potential for that machine. Plus there were a lot of phrases to use that would be fun to hear. All of those main movie pinball machines were created around the same time. Hook came out in 1992, it was released a year prior. Batman came out two years after it was released. Compared to Last Action Hero, The Shadow, and Demolition Man, Robin Hood PoT was a much more successful, and marketable movie. I remember the toys, the trading cards, the video game, I mean it was very popular in the early 90s. It's a shame that it never got made in the heyday of movie pinball machines.

 

[ryzombie619]

BTW, does anyone know the back story of why there was no Ghostbusters machine? I mean it's pretty weird that one wasn't made considering it's popularity. I mean, Ghostbusters, probably along with Harry Potter, is the most popular movie franchise to not have a pinball machine. I thought Ghostbusters would have worked great, is there any story why it didn't happen?

 

[Bowflex]

Last Action Hero got stomped by Jurassic Park which opened one week before and thoroughly dominated movie mindshare for the year.

Space Jam might have been the last single-movie pinball table until Avatar.

Star Wars episode 1, and then with stern there were several (Indy jones, t3, pirates of the Caribbean, tron legacy, spider-man, dark knight, iron man, lord of the rings, and probably one or two more.

As for last action hero, it got stomped by Jurassic park but every movie did poorly compared to Jurassic park and t2 until titanic came out. Last action hero was actually rather successful in its box office.

 

[vikingerik]

Everything mentioned there is part of a multiple-movie franchise, that's why that "single-movie" qualifier. Although it's true that SWE1, Indy, Tron Legacy make little or no reference to the older installments. I remember being surprised when Stern did Avatar since Gary had a policy for quite a while about only doing franchises, not single movies.