With the recent purchases of Nanco (Nancy Sales Company) and Mist Co, Rhode Island Novelty has greatly expanded their prize selections once again. New items that have recently been well received are:

• 4” and 6” “1/2 Knobby Ball-1/2 Graphic Ball”…SB-FUNN4 and SB-FUNN6. **RIN sold out 500 cases of the 4” and 300 cases of the 6” within a week of receiving them.**
• 18” “1/2 Knobby Ball-1/2 Graphic Ball” to use as a “Trade Up” prize in Redemption, as a Prize in Redemption by itself, and an excellent prize for the Giant Cranes.
• Jumbo Candy— i.e Nerds, Giant Pop Rocks, Giant Laffy Taffy and Giant Twizzlers.
• Many game rooms have been making their Rubber Ducky Cranes more inviting to play! They are using our carnival “Duck Pond” idea. Place ticket values on the bottom of each Rubber Duck that correspond to an “Extra Ticket Bonus”……the lowest being for example 5 or 10 and the highest being “whatever” you decide. Anyone can call Rhode Island Novelty and they will explain the idea in detail, its use and its control, and its variations, which are easy to implement.
  

Rhode Island Novelty Shares:

Ticket Value Ranges:

• 80% of prizes displayed should be 3000 tickets or less (50% of these prizes should be at 100 tickets or less).
• 15% of prizes displayed should be at 3000 – 6000 tickets.
• 5% of prizes displayed should be at 6000 tickets plus (higher ticketed prizes should be picked at least 1 per 3 months).

The ticket ranges are based on a ticket value of 1 cent. Adjust ranges accordingly for different ticket values.

Avoid Displaying “Too Many” of These Prizes:

• Boxed Games (Clue, Monopoly, Uno, Checkers, etc.)
• Inflates
• Doller Store Carded Prizes
• Plush, Any Style or Size
• Electronic Type Prizes (Wii, iPod, Garmin, etc.)
• Appliances (Crock Pot, George Foreman Grill, Clocks, etc.)
• “Carnival Plush” (Simple, Plain, Cheap Looking)
• Licensed Products (Plush, Carded or Boxed)
• “Branded” Products (Spaulding, Razor, Hasbro)
• Imprinted Prizes with Your Company Logo
• Men/Women Bling Watches/Necklaces/Jewelry

*The Apple Sapphire Photo Booth was a great addition to our FEC location. Attached you will find an Audit Report for the past two months. This sample report is generated by the photo booth and sent direct to the operator on a daily or weekly basis, depending on how the operator sets it up. This photo booth also emails the operator if the machine has any errors, is low on media, or if the income was low the previous day.

CLICK HERE for a copy of our Sample Audit Report

In this issue of TRR-FEC, we decided to include a few tips relating to ticket and ticketless operation:

Reduce Ticket Eater and Ticket Center Ticket Jams
(Dave Forlano, Alpha-Omega Tech)
To prevent ticket eater jams from happening often, I do a ‘blow-spin-tighten’ pass twice per shift on a busy day. Open the ticket eater door, remove the counter board from on top the blade and blow the dust off of the sensors. Then spin the blade mechanism to free up any leftover tickets or partial tickets. Finally, put the counter board back in place and tighten the two red screws, as they tend to loosen over time. This will help your ticket eaters stay ticket hungry for happier customers.
 
Tickets Not Feeding Out or Reporting Correctly–Embed System
(Ramon Vivar, Sr. Tech & Steve Camarota, Alpha-Omega Tech)

When you hook up the Embed v5 system to a redemption game, every now and then, you will come across a machine that stops dispensing tickets after the system is installed. When that happens, first step is to go to the “Installer Mode” of the Embed controller and change the “Game Drive Thresh. Voltage” from a default value of 3.5 V to a lower value, of 3.0 volts. If that doesn’t do it, keep on lowering the voltage in 0.5 V increments until you get the dispenser to payout.

If that still doesn’t do it, last resort is to do it the old fashioned way. Disconnect the Embed ticket harness from the ticket dispenser connection, so the dispenser will now be connected directly to the game as it was originally. Crimp a T-tap to the blue wire line of the ticket dispenser. Then, cut the other blue wire in the now unplugged Embed ticket harness, crimp a male connector to the end, and tap it to the blue wire of the ticket dispenser. 

How to Speed Up the Ticket Payout for Embed Ticketless Locations
If you have made the decision to go ticketless, there is no reason to have a customer wait for a large amount of ticketless points to be awarded. Embed has already programmed in a simple solution to Speed Up the process. The controller setting that you change is Game TKT Notch Spacing (x10ms). The default value is 24. If you change the value to 12 you will double the ticket payout speed. Change it to 6 and you will triple it. Note that some older games cannot handle higher ticket speeds.

The reason behind speeding up the ticket payout is because bonuses and jackpots have become so high (Big Bass Wheel 5,000 points when 2 are linked with jackpot), that anything over a 2,000 ticket jackpot causes the Embed controller to time out…hence not actually giving the player all the tickets. By speeding up the payout on the controller, a customer 1) does not have to wait over ten minutes for the reader to stop counting tickets and 2) they won’t be cheated because of the controller timing out.

Service Update for ICE Milk Jug Toss.
Ball Dispensing Problems.  ICE reports that it has a software change that fixes the ball dispensing malfunctions.  ICE recommends that all existing Milk Jug games should obtain this new software. For more information, contact an ICE distributor or the factory service department at 716/759-0360 Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.