Fans of Henry Winkler fondly remember the actor’s iconic role as the cool, confident, leather jacket–clad Arthur Fonzarelli in the 1970s sitcom Happy Days. While the Fonz had many heroic moments over the show’s 11 seasons, his slick style and charm were always on display in front of the pinball machine at Arnold’s Drive-In, where he was known to alter scores with a firm strike of his hand or elbow. For decades, that was the extent that any one person could take control of a pinball machine, but Candy Spelling changed all of that when she approached Data East Pinball—now Stern Pinball— in the early 1990s.

Spelling wanted to give her husband, television producer Aaron Spelling, a special and memorable holiday gift, and a customized pinball machine that retold the story of his personal and professional life represented the ideal item. Most important, Spelling was willing to spend whatever it took to produce it. When it was finished, the game included recorded messages from his children and customized backboard animations from Spelling’s most popular TV shows—Charlie’s Angels, TJ Hooker, and The Love Boat. The machine also included customized artwork depicting Spelling and his family, as well as their 57,000-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion. Two machines were made, which, according to Jody Dankberg, Stern Pinball’s marketing director, cost about $250,000 apiece.

The company also produced a handful of customized Michael Jordan–themed machines, which were modified versions of the 1996 Space Jam game and were sold at auction to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation. "On the Jordan game, we molded a housing [unit] and decorated it to look like the United Center, where the Bulls play," says John Borg, one of Stern’s designers and mechanical engineers. "Under it was a shot where you started multiball play. When you made that shot to start multiball, we had an incredible flashing light show that simulated the introduction to the Bulls team at a home game."

While the company concentrates mostly on the conception and design of its new production machines, Stern will accept commissions for personalized machines like the ones mentioned above, as long as the company deems the project an appropriate fit. However, Dankberg explains that it’s no easy task, nor is it inexpensive. "To fully customize your own unique machine requires artwork and programming, and customizing the actual playfield to whatever it is that you’d want it to be," he says. "But if price is not an option, you can get your own pinball machine."

Naturally, the cost of a personalized machine was always a limiting factor, but Dankberg believes the manufacturing methods of decades past didn’t help. These days, there are more elements that support such an undertaking. "Technology has come a long way to be able to do something like this," he says. "It used to be to be a lot of work by hand and screen printing. But now, with digital printing, making a custom machine is more of a reality."

Interested parties should expect to spend upward of six figures for a customized machine, but for some, it’s a small price to pay for a life story told through two three-inch flippers and some multiball action.

Stern Pinball, www.sternpinball.com