Trident

The manufacturer's flyer highlights the mini-post between the flippers as "Stern's exclusive PLAY-MORE� post". Although this is Stern's first flyer to mention this feature, this is their fourth game to have it. The artist's last name "MCINERNEY" appears on the left leg of the green man on the lower playfield and also appears on the backglass as seaweed on each side of this man. We know the artist is male but otherwise have no information on him, and designer Mike Kubin did not recall who it was, telling us that, at that time, George Molentin from Advertising Posters used to do the presentations. They would go over the artwork, then George would make notes and have the changes made. It was sometime later that the designers began interfacing directly with the artists themselves. The manufacturer's flyer shows a game playfield where the man and the octopus tentacles are green in color and the area underneath the upper ball arch is painted white. In this listing we show two sets of pictures from Early Production games where the man and tentacles are a flesh-colored tan and the area under the upper arch is unpainted. The first set of pictures shows a side-by-side comparison of two stripped playfields, one is Early Production and the other is regular production. A few Early Production playfield plastics are also pictured to show the man is flesh-colored on them. The Early Production playfield has an inspection date shown as 2-10-79 which means the playfield was populated and tested prior to Stern's published production start date for Trident of 3-15-79. The production playfield carries an inspection date of 5-10-79. The second set of Early Production game pictures shows a full game stamped with serial number 759. Manufacturer data for Trident: Production Start Date: 3/15/79 Production End Date: 6/20/79 Quantity produced - full games: 3757 Quantity produced - knock-down games: 262 (see LAI's 1979 'Trident') Total Quantity Produced: 4019