The issue you’re about to read completes RePlay’s 50th year in the business of making a monthly news magazine for people who either build, sell or (in most cases) put coin-op amusement and music machines before the playing public. We’ll be celebrating this rare and happy event with a salute to RePlay in our next issue where we fully intend to produce something our readers will get a real bang out of.
Stories on the history of the magazine and the people who’ve helped produce it over the years will be augmented by tons of photos, mostly nostalgic, that we’ve amassed over the years…photos that often tell stories better than words. Just sorting through the pictures brought up both happy and sad emotions as faces we once knew, did stories about, socialized with and sometimes mourned when they passed away flooded by the eyes.
Long-time subscribers will probably feel the same emotions. Photos of some late-great guys like the “Jack Benny” of coin-op, Lenny Schneller or of now-patriarchs of the biz like Nolan Bushnell (when he wasn’t much more than a college kid hamming it up for the camera) will make smiles and even prompt those “I remember when Billy Cravens. . .” reminiscences.
Our 50th Anniversary issue will be a big kick for me, obviously, but also for my daughter Ingrid who helped me pick out the name RePlay when she was a kid and I was coming off my years with Cash Box magazine. I remember when she and her brother Kenny sat on our living room floor stuffing 45 rpm singles into mailing envelopes already labeled for jukebox operating companies…making ancillary income for our fledgling company.
Besides Ingrid, it will also be a kick for Key and Barry who’ve been with me so long we’re “attached to the hip” as they say. For Matt, the newest member of the team, this issue will introduce him to even more of the colorful characters we’ve met along the way.
I want to thank all subscribers who’ve stayed with us over the years, most especially those folks who know what it means to start and build a business, mostly from scratch. Some people may think coin-op is all about the machines. In a sense, yes. But when you remember “that night out with so-and-so,” you’ll say “no way.”