IMET of Bucks County Builds Electronics in New Pinball Game Played by Rock Stars
Take an iconic movie from the 1930s. Add a contract manufacturer in Southampton and allow a couple of rock stars to become attached. What you get with that odd mixture could be anybody’s guess, but in this case it’s Wizard of Oz, a groundbreaking and highly anticipated new pinball game that’s shattering every preconceived notion of what these electronic amusement devices can do.
This action-packed game features animation as well as clips and music from the film with all its original stars: Judy Garland, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger and Frank Morgan. The manufacturer, Jersey Jack Pinball, Inc., Lakewood, NJ, reports that the initial run of 1,400 machines has already been presold, which comes as good news to IMET, of 505 Keystone Road, assemblers of Wizard of Oz’s complex circuitry. The game contains 56 circuit boards each with as many as 1,880 subminiature or larger devices. This adds up to a total of over 78,000 printed circuit boards containing up to 2.6 million components.
According to Tom Krol, IMET president, those heady numbers are just for openers, since early sales reports indicate that the heavy interest in Wizard of Oz gives it every possibility of crushing every previous pinball game sales record. This has caused us to double our staff to 22 and quadrupling our production capacity by adding two additional automated lines with enhanced placement speeds to 10,500 parts per hour.”
As if that weren’t enough, the game is now owned by Slash, formerly with Guns & Roses, and has been tested by Southside Johnny from the Asbury Jukes, which is sure to get the attention of Generation X adherents who until now only considered video games, not pinball machines, as electronic entertainment devices.
BCEDC has assisted IMET Corporation with two loans over the past two years. The first one being a Tax Exempt loan in 2012 and the most current loan is with the Small Business First Fund.
IMET, 505 Keystone Road, Unit E, Southampton, PA 18966, 267-288-5330 • www.imetcorporation.com