Weirdly, it seems like there's a connection between the Ito machine and the Playboy machine. The Playboy machine was mentioned in the original post, we know Joe Blackwell was involved in both, and now SPR-R-U in the manual?
I just had the thought: what if SUPER-R-U features a mechanic or certain technology that Stern later acquired? Then when it came to developing a Junji Ito machine, they might have chosen to implement it (same for that optional install in the Playboy manual)?
