March 30, 2023 • 59 mins
As Nolan Bushnell's Chuck E. Cheese concept took America by storm, competitors entered the field. In the second part of this two-part episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore how Charles Entertainment Cheese weathered numerous ups and downs through the decades -- along with some pretty weird trivia.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up our super producer,
the Man, the Myth, the leg of mister Max Williams,
Maximus to the maximum. He's there, he's our guy. We were.
We were singing to each other again off air. I'm
(00:48):
Ben your knoll and our all fair conversations are generally
kind of fun. I think most times on this show,
what would you say else? Good? I say completely agree,
that's uh. These are the fun times, the fun podcast times.
M Yeah, and uh. This had me wondering, this is
(01:11):
totally unrelated. But before we get rolling today, we were
talking about a smooth criminal right by Michael Jackson. Well,
we were just sort of all three humming along. We
were just checking in and making sure we were all okay, yes, yeah.
And it reminded me of our good friend of the show,
Annie Reese of Savor and stuff. Mom never told you fame.
(01:34):
I'm sure she's irritated by that song. And I was wondering.
I was trying to guess, do you guys have songs
about your name? And if so, how do you feel
about them? Nole, I'd imagine the closest is the first
Noel you would you would imagine correctly, And every time
someone sings that at me, they think they're the first
one to have ever done it. Bully for them was
(01:56):
what I say. Go on thinking that, Yeah, I'm wondering
if you guys can guess which one I've always gotten.
Let's man something maximum Maxwell silver hammer, Oh yeah, Max
bang bang Yeah. The murder eyest of Beatles songs, right,
(02:17):
songs basically about a school shooter that uses a hammer,
and I am cursed, I would say. With the Michael
Jackson song Ben, which is about his friend who is
a rat. Uh and there's also Benny in the Jets,
I don't even want to give it airtime, but I
just gave it to you. It's already living rent free
(02:38):
in all of our minds. It doesn't go anywhere. The
song does a mohair suit. No. I read it in
a magazine. Oh so, so wait, let's maybe we stay
on the rat because um, that was for a movie,
do you know that? Starting Crispin Glover, I vaguely remember
hearing that I've never seen the film. The movie is
(03:00):
about Crispin Glover, who I think it's actually a remake
of like a movie from maybe with a Vincent Price
movie or so. It's about a dude who like controls
rats with his mind, like the way you control corvids
with your mind. It's definitely a connection. Oh shucks. Yeah,
when when noelan or ride or die, mister Matt Frederick
and I were on the road most recently, we had
(03:22):
a weird moment. We were at a fancy grocery store
and I thought a pack of hard boiled eggs, and Noel,
I think for a moment you thought I was just
going to eat them. I didn't know you were the eggman. Not.
I'm baffled at people buy hard boiled eggs by themselves,
the Walrus Sun if you're not the eggman. Oh gosh, uh,
(03:43):
we're going so many places. We had a segue anyway, Yeah,
I've fed those to the crows, so they were not
I wasn't just sitting eating goblin mode. And then you
got the chastised by just a regular Joe, regular fella
for eat for feeding the rows because apparently they're like,
I don't know that it emboldens them. Yeah, you call
(04:05):
them Sky rats. So if you're listening, sir, I didn't
learn a thing and will not change my ways. This
segue holds though. We're talking about a rat of today. Yeah, yeah,
we are talking about one of the most famous rats
formerly rats in all of American culture. And this is
(04:27):
part two of a two part episode. We're talking about
the legendary Charles Entertainment cheese. Now. No, we left on
a bit of a cliffhanger in part one. That's right,
things were really heating up. In June of nineteen seventy nine,
a guy named Bob Brock, not Bob Rock, the Metallica producer.
(04:51):
Bob Brock wanted to get an exclusive franchise deal with
Pizza Time, the Pizza Time theater franchises, so he signed
a two hundred million dollar code development deal with our
friend mister Bushnell of Atari fame and animatronic singing robot fame.
(05:11):
And this gave mister Brock exclusive franchising rights to Pizza
Time theaters in sixteen states across the southern and Midwestern US,
And it gave him some pretty specific superpowers that maybe
our mister Bushnell might not have fully realized at the time. Yeah,
(05:33):
and it was pretty bold, pretty aspirational. The contract aimed
for a target of two hundred and eighty five stores,
two hundred of which would be directly operated by TIM,
which is Bob Brock's company, and another eighty five will
be subfranchised out. And this was pretty big money because TIM,
(05:55):
that's short for Topeka in Management, would be ponying up
the capitol to build these locations and they were going
to spend about a million dollars a pop. This was
pretty cool for a while for a bit, because during
nineteen eighty Pizza Time theater flourished. They added dozens and
dozens of stores to their crew. This included both franchised
(06:20):
as and corporate owned locations, and there were even some
international locations. Things grew really quickly, and sometimes in the
world of corporate business, when things grow quickly, they can
grow quickly out of hand. It only took about a
(06:40):
year for Brock's deal to show its ugly side. Brock's
firm had received training on how to run all these
Pizza Time locations, and there's definitely a science to it, right,
and once they had the information, once they knew how
to conduct day to day business, they went back on
(07:02):
their contract, dude, and they opened up their own competing
chain of restaurants, which they called show Biz Pizza. Yeah.
And it's funny because essentially they were like their own copycats,
and they joined the ranks of a bunch of other
copycat kind of you know, futuristic robotic pizza restaurants, including
(07:25):
a place called Bullwinkle's Family Restaurant, which is cool. I
imagine that would have an intellectual property tie in with
the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show featuring the iconic Moose and Squirrel.
A place called Celebration Station which sounds like a delightful
place to have a slice, fair Play Pizza Theater, which
sounds a little innocuous and kind of dull. It's like,
(07:48):
that's not where the real fun happens. That's where everything
is just equitable. That's like hundred percent fair play pizza.
That doesn't sound like anyone's taking many risks there, Major
Magic's All Star Pizza review that sounds like a good time.
And then a place called Harazmatazz love it Yeah, and
(08:10):
bush Nall said that they had around twenty of these
copycats that they were competing with, and now, going back
on that contract, Showbiz was essentially the most popular of
these these knockoffs. Right. And by the way, we're getting
a good bit of this information from the actual history
of Showbiz Pizza on Showbiz Pizza dot com, slash history
(08:34):
slash index, dot aml and a really great article from
Fast Company with a fabulous name called Robots Pizza and
Sensory Overload. The Chuck E Cheese origin story by BENJ. Edwards, Yeah, correct,
and the article by Binge Edwards is I think one
of the go to reads here. It's a long read,
but it's worth it, so right at the top long read,
(08:56):
so the fit and do check it out, folks, because
it is worth it anyway. As Edwards as Edwards rights,
Brock had a reason for this betrayal. He discovered a
new kind of animatronics technology that he thought was better
than what Bushnell's team had created. This is the work
(09:19):
of a guy named Aaron Fetcher of creative engineering that
you might recognize from some documentaries of Days gone By,
which I love. Fetcher had developed these huge, full body,
life size animatronic characters. He called them the rock Afire Explosion,
and they had smoother movements than the Chucky Cheese cyberamics
(09:43):
characters they were like, and they're a different crew, right,
but if you look at what they're doing, it's one
hundred percent pulled from the Chuck E Cheese playbook, which
itself has some notes of plagiarism from the mouse. So
this is like, this is a bridge too far for
(10:04):
Pizza Time, right, And it's funny because you know, I
think we all were a little confused as to which
one of these stores we actually remembered from our youth,
because you know, I think me and you Ben were
a little older than Max. Uh. No specifics need be named,
but I do remember Showbiz Pizza, and I always assumed
(10:27):
that Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E Cheeses were the same thing.
I don't remember Pizza Time Theater, but I do remember
maybe they were like remnants or something like that, or
like little you know, some of these like fake posters
for these bands or whatever, these you know, robot musicians
that maybe had still some branding from that, but they
were originally separate entities, right. And because when this, you know,
(10:51):
Showbiz Pizza came out with the with the higher quality animatronics,
it did really really well, and that did not sit
well with Bushnell. He actually sued Brock's firm and eventually
one what's called like a profit garnishing judgment, which I
imagine it's sort of like if you sue over like
(11:12):
a song that copies you, then you end up entitled
to all or a portion of the earnings from that song,
like a blurred lines kind of situation. Yeah, and unfortunately
this judgment came too late to be super useful to
Bushnell and team because they were trying to turn Pizza
(11:36):
Time from a kid's place to more a what they
called a diversified leisure or a leisure company. In their
nineteen eighty two annual report, you can see this, Bushnel writes,
we believe the nineteen eighty three will be a time
of growth and change in which the transition from a
specialized restaurant concept to a diversified leisure company will be evident.
(11:58):
They're trying to go They're doing a daven Busters is
what they're trying to do. David Busters for Everyone was
opened in Dallas in nineteen eighty two, so he may
have been aware of something like this, but he definitely
had his finger on the pulse and it wasn't a
bad instinct. It just maybe was again too little, too late.
The timing is everything, and I'm sorry, guys. I keep
(12:20):
referencing this show Halt and catch Fire because I am
like in the thick of it, and now in the
show where I am in season four. It's now the
early nineties, and the show has been you know, following
the explosion of technology, including video games and companies like
Atari since around this time. And what you see time
and time again in the show against like a fictionalized
(12:41):
kind of like alt history version of a lot of
these things that really really happened, for example, like the
you know, the development of the World Wide Web and
all of that. Timing is everything. You can have the
best idea in the world, but if it's not ready,
if consumers aren't ready for it, or the content isn't
there yet to fill it, then it's gonna it's not
(13:01):
gonna fly right right, And that could be a huge issue.
In early nineteen eighty three, Pizza Times balance sheet was
looking bad. One slight push in the wrong direction could
fell the company entire and this push came in the
form of a US tech stock crash. Investors who are
(13:26):
a pretty sensitive bunch, were immediately frightened. And when tech
investors get frightened, as we can see in the in
the current days of the United States, there are a
lot of ramifications. Once the tech sector got scared in
the stock crash of eighty three, they started cutting ties
(13:49):
with Atari. Atari became a shadow of its former self.
People didn't want to invest in tech, so lines of
credit dried up for Bushnell's firms. Pete Time stock fell
from twenty six dollars per share all the way down
to four dollars per share, and then wait, it gets worse.
It plummeted further to two dollars and fifty cents a share,
(14:14):
and then, wait, it gets worse. Pizza Time came out
and confirmed it had been losing money for three fourths
of the previous year. Yeah, I mean, we already talked
about the hefty price tag on each one of these locations,
a million nineteen eighty three bucks, you know, per pizza restaurant,
(14:36):
with over two hundred and forty locations across the US,
even sometimes you know, in smaller cities that maybe did
not necessarily have the audience yet to support these they
were making a big play and maybe I think definitely
overplaying their hand here, because you had folks like showbiz
(14:57):
that it maybe already learned from the inside, you know,
how to ease in a little bit more, you know,
to dip the toe into the market, maybe not spend
every single dollar, you know, in the same way the
Pizza Time Theater had. Also with all these copycats, you
were getting a little bit of saturation with this whole
(15:17):
concept because again, like you can't really exactly copyright this concept.
You can copyright actual characters and the way they look
and all that stuff, and as we know, it's not
that hard to just tweak a few little details, and
you can even get away with ripping off Mickey Mouse,
but you can't really copyright the idea of a robot
(15:38):
driven you know, entertainment pizza arcade joint. So people were
almost a little bit tired of the concept at this point,
and it was a little bit of like kind of
brand confusion too. I think may have because again we're
talking about the stuff when we were kid. We had
serious brand confusion many many years later. Which one is
which we don't know and there's a reason for that
(16:00):
because of what's about to happen. That's sort of the
answer to the questions that we have. Yeah, and we're
going to get some more information here from Anna Green
writing at Mental Floss the Chuck E Cheese, Showbiz, pizza,
(16:20):
robot wars. Who doesn't love a robot war? Yeah, Rockham
Sockam Yeah. Everybody listening after twenty forty, I guess, But
so they they really like the novelties wearing off. You
describe it perfectly. And Bushnell also is aware of the problem.
It's not just that the industry has expanded with all
(16:41):
these competitors, it's that Chuck e Cheese itself has expanded
way too far, way too fast. He had this interesting
quote where he said Chuck e Cheese was so new
that when we would first open a unit in Saint Louis,
you wouldn't have enough capacity. It was just okay, bar
the door. But that lasted for about a year and
(17:01):
a half. Then people would settle down. They didn't need
to go to Chuck e Cheese every time Grandma came
to town. They didn't need to go to Chuck e
Cheese once a month. They found that we'll do the
kid's birthdays and we'll go somewhere on special events, and
the frequency visits dropped from ten a year to three
a year. He had racked up additional debt twenty two
(17:22):
million dollars in debt because Bushnell had been using Chuck
E Cheese money to fund other startups. Yeah. Can I
say real quick, I've got an expression that I use
a lot in my regular life and it comes from
a TikTok video of this kid. And he's got a
paper plate with Charles Entertainment cheese on it, and it's
(17:43):
got some some like chocolate chips on it, and he says,
chocolate chips on the Chuck E Cheese plate. Oh yeah, baby,
oh yeah. So whenever something's awesome, I say, man, that
is chocolate chips on the Chucky Cheese plate right there.
Oh yeah baby, Oh yeah. Okay, I had to. I
had to fit that, and I promise my kid I
would fit that in. Okay, yeahs Because you know, this
(18:05):
branding is still with us, and it did manage to
kind of, you know, insert itself into into the zeitgeist.
And then we're going to get to the now of
Chuck E Cheese. But at this point they are not
doing well. That is not a good play, my friend.
That is not chocolate chips. On the Chucky Cheese play
to use that money to fund other startups, because we
(18:25):
know startups. This is the era, the beginning of startup culture.
You know this like kind of Silicon Valley, like fake
it till you make it attitude, And we know that
most startups fail miserably, and that money evaporates, and if
you're just pulling it from the kiddie from you're already
struggling business. That is a recipe for disaster. Yeah, many
(18:47):
startups these days are created entirely in hopes of selling
them to a bigger company later. It's a different mentality
than what you would want for for restaurants. So Bushnill
and team have to file for bankruptcy in nineteen eighty
four as a result of all these deletarious factors. Bushnell
gets pushed out. Showbiz buys up the failing franchise, and
(19:10):
it operates both Chucky Cheese and Showbiz locations independently. Because,
probably because at this point Chuck E. Cheese was so
well known that they want to kill him off, they
renamed the company Showbiz Pizza Time, which does sound like
the name of it does sound like the name of
(19:30):
several weird off brands restaurants I've been to in other countries.
Someone's like, make something sound America, call it pizza time.
No give it, hit it with that. Rasmu'tazzi pizza time.
We don't even know. It's not even to start it
on Rasmua task. I was talking to you. You met
my friend Steven when we were out in La and
(19:51):
I was talking to him about this subject and he
was like, I swear I went to Chuck E Cheese
and Showbiz Pizza at different times when I I was
a kid growing up in the eighties. And the answer
is quite possibly, definitely. It is that kind of a
Mandela effect, though, you know what I mean, where it's
like which one was it? Was it Shazam or was
(20:11):
it Kazam? Was it Chuck E Cheese or was it
show It was probably both. And then there came a
point where you'd probably have ones that were under one branding,
that worked in that area and that already were doing
good business. They just left well enough alone. And then
they you know, they probably monitored it and saw which
ones were doing better, and they left them as they
were because but they also they shared characters. At this point.
(20:32):
If I'm not mistaken right, because I remember the song.
There was a commercial it was Showbiz Pizza where a
kid can be a kid, and then later it became
Chuck E Cheeses where a kid can be a kid.
And that's why I was super confused, because they did
coexist simultaneously, and then I think they were kind of
(20:52):
squashed together. And now there are no more show businesses.
There's only the mouse the big Cheese. We'll get to this.
So right now, Bob Brock and Fetcher are victorious, but
only for a time. Remember Fetcher is the creative guy.
Brock is more the corporate money centric type. So Fetcher
(21:18):
loses out. Shopiz is still hemorrhaging money, and management says, okay,
part of the reason this is not more profitable is
because those rock of Fire explosion acts are just increasingly elaborate.
They're increasingly expensive, so they start sidelining Fetcher and they
use voice impersonators to play his characters. Fetcher is getting
(21:42):
increasingly disillusioned with the corporate world and he starts tinkering
with other projects. He builds new animatronics, high tech rock
afire toys that honestly a lot of people couldn't afford
he starts working on the anti gravity machine. He called
it it's a predators, sounds like a predecessor to email.
They could send messages over telephone lines. And then in
(22:05):
nineteen ninety his company, Fetcher's Company, Creative Engineering, was kicked
out of Showbiz completely. Fetcher lost the war. He was
able to take rock Afire Explosion with him because he
refused to sell the character rights to Showbiz and he
was convinced. He was like, I believe in my rock
Afire gang. I know that they can do something outside
(22:26):
of this pizza joint. So he said, I'm going to
keep working on the robots. And because Showbiz no longer
had the rights to those characters, this is where the
confusion occurs. They converted the remaining Rock a Fire robots
into Chucky Cheese characters, replacing their exteriors and kind of
(22:47):
a Westworld style thing. They left the original machinery intact.
This was called concept unification. And there's another example of this.
It's a little conspiratorial. But if you go to the
Hall of Press Residents, right everybody knows Disney Hall of Presidents,
you'll notice that one in particular, it looks very weird.
(23:07):
It's it's the statue or animatronic character of former President
Donald Trump. It looks a lot like somebody started building
it with the intention that it would be President Hillary
Clinton and then had to change it. Oh man, election
came through. Pull up a picture. I'm telling you, that's
(23:27):
super cool. I actually was. When I was at Disney recently.
I intended to go to the Hall of Presidents, but
it's one of those things that happens on a schedule.
You can't just wander in, and I just missed. I
missed the timing for it because the fireworks happened, and
I wasn't going to miss that obviously. But this is
super interesting, Ben. This like reskinning of these like you know,
Terminator exoskeleton kind of guys. And as we I think
(23:51):
we mentioned briefly, there is a you've alluded to a
minute ago. There's a really cool documentary called I think
it's just called the Rock a Fire Explosion Band or
maybe just Rocks. It's easy to find and you could
watch the whole thing on YouTube actually, but Fetcher is
a main character in it, and it basically is about
all of these Rock a Fire super fans that kind
of band together these aren't rich people. They band together
(24:13):
and buy the Rock of Fire Explosion animatronics from Fetcher
or I think that's right, because they buy it from
and then they say they build it and then like
a trailer, didn't make it all the way to the end.
So I'm not quite sure what the but this is
good that way. I'm not spoiling it for anyone. There's
definitely some intrigue and it shows you Ben. You we've
talked about this off air, the kind of nightmarish hellscape
(24:35):
that is fifteen of these things skinless and pantomiming there
whatever lip sync things at the same time, like a
row of lucky cats that like a Chinese novelty store.
You know, it's really really pretty scary stuff. And clearly
the impetus for games like Five Nights at Freddy's, which
(24:56):
is like the jump scares with these like creepy you know,
rock a Fire animatronic robot things. Absolutely yeah, and the
documentary is well worth a watch. Spoiler the Rock Afire
Explosion show, those characters are. They end up being sold
to other restaurants and entertainment centers, which further amplifies the
(25:18):
possible Mandela effect because you could have seen them at
someplace completely different like Pistol, Pizza Pizza, Billy Bob's Wonderland
and so odd. All right, so Showbiz has unified its concept, right,
and they're still facing outside competition. One of their biggest
(25:40):
competitors becomes something called Discovery Zone. This is an entertainment
center targeted toward kids, but it's a different vibe. They've
got an indoor jungle gym, they've got a lot of
hands on activities, interior playgrounds, education driven. I don't know
why when I hear Discovery I think maybe it's like
there's you know, optical illusions or something like that, or
(26:02):
there's something. Maybe I'm totally wrong. It's because I worked
in a place called Fort Discovery that was actually run
by the US military and it was like a science
e type museum. So Discovery Zone probably not that. But
then hands on activities, I do have to assume there
may have been some sort of educational component when I
hear hands on activities, mostly mma cool hand to hands right,
(26:26):
yea with pizza death in a steel cage. Right. So
the sales at Showbiz start to slow down and there
are more disappointing sales in the early nineties, so Showbiz
Pizza Time drops the word pizza from the restaurant name,
and this is where they start just calling it chuck
(26:47):
E Cheese. They get a new kid friendly logo of
Charles Zinte mid Cheese and he has like a thumbs up, like, hey,
we passed our health inspection. And in night five they
begin a series of massive remodelings. They called this Phase one,
and they added kid check Kiosk, which like, let's parents
(27:12):
have a little more security with their children. They also
added free attractions so that it didn't feel like it
was a continual money sink when you took your family
to visit. Chuck E himself officially goes from kind of
ratlike to definitely a mouse. They said enough time has passed,
(27:32):
and then they tried something. They tried something weird. They
got really experimental. They made something called the Awesome Adventure
Machine in nineteen ninety seven. Okay, okay, tell me more.
By the way, Discoveries own not educational at all, and
to this day there now there are only two locations
(27:53):
at malls, one in Kentucky and one in Ohio. So
they clearly didn't win the war either. And just in here,
that's actually a remake. I was researching the same thing
as you know. It turns out those two are just
paying homage to the original Discovery Zone, so the original
is not even around at all. Right, they went, they
liquidated in two thousand and one. Got it? Do the
(28:13):
sound cute back right now? Great? All right? Awesome? Uh
we love it when we can fit that one in organically.
(28:35):
So yeah, this awesome adventure machine. It's a little mad
science pictures. Someone say it's too complex, it's unstable at
this stage, and then the corporate type going, I don't care,
I put it in. The restaurants said it. The children
send it to the cheating demain. So this thing, though
(28:56):
it didn't work out in nineteen ninety seven, it was
a new kind of a test stage and it gave
rise to the Chuck E Cheese stage show concept called
Studio C. Studio C only has one animated figure that's
child's in a tabit cheese. Yep. I've seen this version too,
and as an adult with going to kids' birthday parties,
and it was definitely not what I remembered and contributed
(29:19):
to my confusion. And this is this is important because
it's a huge cost saving measure. The other characters are present,
but they're on TV monitors, so you only really need
one one cyborg. They're not cyborgs. Honestly. It reminds me
of the way a lot of roller coasters now or
at certain amusement parks are doing more the like motion
(29:43):
video stuff rather than actually having to build tracks, you
know what I mean. And then obviously the really high
quality ones like Disney and Universal, they'll use both sometimes,
you know, but it's a real cost saver if you
don't have to actually move around or have the real
estate required to have a big old track. Same with
all of these seriously expensive moving part you know, animatronic
(30:06):
figures that break down and have to be maintained and
all of that kind of stuff, so um smart on them.
You know. It's sad that the kids of this era
won't remember the terrifying joy that was the Rock of
Fire explosion bando. Yeah. And to the point about roller coasters,
it's also way less expensive insurance wise. You know, I
(30:29):
can't get decapitated by a video. Uh yeah. And many
years ago at the local amusement park of note here
six Flags Over Georgia, someone did die. They get decapitated.
Yea true story. So there are business reasons behind a
lot of these entertainment choices. Now in the story, all
(30:53):
of the units have been completely turned over, remodeled, and
themed to Chuck E Cheese Luke Patians. So Shobiz Pizza
Time Incorporated changes its company name to Chuck E. Cheese
Entertainment Incorporated in nineteen ninety eight. Which, yes, I know
that's a little bit like saying VIN number or ATM
(31:14):
Machine Charles Entertainment Cheese Entertainment Incorporated. But they're they're making
it work. And then they move on to phase two remodeling. Ah.
Phase two, that's when they really start leaning into what
you aptly described as a casino for children kind of environment.
And again, you know, as an adult who has you know,
(31:35):
been to a few casinos, not my thing. It's not
something I would have clocked at all when I was
a kid, because you just get thrown into these places
and you're like, wow, this is amazing. But they all
lean much more heavily on gaming rather than like actual
console video game cabinets, you know where you're like playing
you know, a preexisting property. These are more like roulette
(31:55):
type games. To earn tickets that you can then exchange for,
you know, thing like stuff that are as we know
even in like David Buster's similar model, but they at
least have like cool video games. And I'm sure some
Chucky cheeses have video games, but I seem to recall
when I went very light on the actual branded video
games that we know and love, like the you know
(32:16):
whatever Tetrises of the World and things like that. Much more.
These either either dinky little rides, you know, like the
little airplane it just goes like back and forth, like
at the grocery store, or these kind of games of chance,
and we know that that stuff really can get under
your skin and kind of feed this like addiction of
(32:36):
I've got to win the thing, I gotta get the stuff.
You know, I've got an itch, yeah yeah, and doctrinate
them young. Right. This this is weird, but it is successful.
In July of nineteen ninety nine, Discovery Zone files for
(32:57):
chapter eleven bankruptcy Child's Entertainment. Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated buys out
their remaining assets and intellectual property. This gets rid of
their only major competitor and they become the dominant family
entertainment Center in the United States. Back to Shopiz Pizza's
(33:18):
official history, they say the early two thousands were boon
for the company, sales increase. They were constantly opening new locations.
They go to Phase three remodels where they say, we're
gonna have new enhanced games, We're gonna have a toddler zone,
we're gonna disc with all that stuff was lifted from
(33:38):
Discovery Zone. That, yeah, one hundred percent, so they're like
Discovery Zones. Main thing was these ball pits and you know,
tumbly kid environments. You know that you could run around it.
We all probably had a place in our youth that
was maybe more local or regional. For me, it was
a place called put Putt Golf and Games. And they
(33:59):
kind of follow the same model. You could see it
happening because you know, you have to keep up with
the Joneses, right, and they have these giant play places
that would be up in the up of the sky,
kind of connected to the ceiling. We have one here
in Atlanta that I think is relatively regional called Andretti's
that's like a go kart kind of joint, and they
have one of these like sky tube kind of situations too.
(34:20):
So this copycatting because the stuff isn't exactly intellectual property,
it always runs rampant when somebody kind of cracks the
code one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, another great example
would be the baseball cap. Right, no one can really
nope own that. You just own what goes on. It's right,
(34:40):
you know what, we should check into the history of
the baseball cap. By may be incorrect, but that'll be
a way. That's a good idea. Let's just make a
note of that. Yeah, that's a really good idea, history
of the baseball cap. We're cooking live, folks, Okay, So
Chuck e Cheese. They are so successful that they say
we're no longer going to sell franchises. They open the
three hundred company owned location in March of two thousand
(35:04):
and then they start buying back the franchises from the
individual operators or owners, and a lot of yeah, a
lot of them. They wanted to expand they're like, my
two Chuck E cheeses are doing really well. I want
to build a third one. And then corporate would say,
we don't do that anymore, but we will buy yours
back from you, and so they buy up all of
(35:27):
these different units, and they even try for a minute,
they had something that I never visited, a small town
chuck e Cheese that had an all Euthenet buffet, a
costume Chucky on the floor, and they charged submission to
the door. But eventually these were all given that studio
see animatronic treatment because people still went for the animated
(35:51):
characters they did. That was the kind of selling point
because at this point you haven't, like I said, you know,
whether it be regional or like a massive national chain.
Most people have a thing like this in their neighborhood,
you know, in their city. There was a place, you know,
another place where I grew up that was called Fundsville
and it was all this kind of stuff they had,
(36:12):
like bumper boats and basically like an always on kind
of carnival kind of atmosphere. So to have that extra
selling point, which was the show aspect of it, was
about the only thing that they could provide that was
any different than any of these other spots one hundred percent.
You know, that's that's the main draw. You don't go
(36:34):
to McDonald's and not expect French fries, right, So this
because what makes it different from any other places then,
So anyway, the cool Chuck era could not last. A
cool Chuck era is the way our pal doctor Zach
decided to phrase this, and I agree with him. The
company is heading, like the rest of the United States
(36:57):
into the Great Recession, and it was able to keep
itself in the black during this time, but a lot
of the tricks that used to stay afloat we're starting
to run thin. This is a novelty concept, which means
that what it is no longer a novelty to people.
They're just gonna stay home or they're going to go
play in the park. These franchises that they have been
(37:22):
absorbing were increasingly scarce. The company had saturated the market.
They couldn't expand much further, and they said, okay, we
got to stop opening units as quickly and as widely
as we have. We need to offer we need to
offer other paths right to ourselves. So they begin reoffering
(37:46):
franchise options in the United States to save the company money,
and they're going to use that money to invest in
their existing stores. And this is something that a lot
of companies should do more often. Instead of opening the
new stuff, you got to invest in what you already
know works. And you like how I say that with
companies as as though all industries are the same. It's
(38:09):
a little broadbrush there. But anyway, the company started to
remove their free entertainment options too in a lot of locations.
No more skytubes, no more toddlers, owe just more games
that you have to pay to play or in stores
that had the room the stuff you mentioned earlier, nol
bumper cars, other other premium attractions, like how when you
(38:32):
go to six Flags you still have to pay for
laser tag even though you already paid the price of
admission to get into the park. Max you get it.
That's unfair, so lame, so lame. So in the summer
of two thousand and twelve, Chuck E. Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated
was trying to catch up with the times. They knew
(38:53):
all of the things that we're talking about, you know,
the these are this a company that's run by you know,
relatively smart people, and they know that you can't you
can't rest on your laurels or whatever, rest on your
cheese pizzas. That's horrible. But I'm saying it because I
said it, and I said what I said. A lot
of this was about kind of modernizing the character and
(39:15):
what was popular in the two thousands, Pixar, you know, cgi,
let's let's let's make it where people can like Really,
that's what Disney was really all about two a lot
of these like three D rides. You know, I'm focusing
more on like video and than the on actual movement.
So they wanted to catch up. And they're turning at
this point Chuck E. Cheese Charles Entertainment into a rock star.
(39:38):
They were either rebranding the voice, making him a cool
skater guy kind of if I'm not mistaken, right, yeah,
yeah he is. He's getting too cool for school. Most
of the press did not like this. They said this
(40:00):
is disastrous. They said, this isn't popular. It's not going
to be popular. The general public was like, what have
you done to Charles? I love the idea of the
press having an opinion of it. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
we gotta weigh in on this. Chucky Cheese rebranding still happens.
That still happens now. You can find all kinds of well, actually,
I bet we could find some think pieces about Chucky
(40:22):
Cheese in the modern day. Maybe. Anytime nostalgia is at play,
you are going to have stakeholders, people that are gonna
wear how dare you you know, like the super fans
of Rockefire Explosion featured in that documentary, or surely has
something to say about all of it, or literally any
Marvel film or sci fi franchise shout out to star
trek Max. So look, the company knows that this is
(40:47):
not translated into profits or sales, and so they say, Okay,
we're going to release our annual report. It's plaintext. It's
the kind of thing you haven't seen since the early
nineteen eighties when Pizza Time Theater or bankruptcy. And in
twenty fourteen, Apollo Global Management acquires Charles Entertainment Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated,
(41:10):
and they buy the five hundred and seventy seven stores
across the world for about nine hundred and fifty million dollars,
making Chuck E. Cheese a privately held, wholly owned subsidiary.
Kids don't care about this, just cutting to the chase.
Kids don't care about any of this behind the scenes stuff.
(41:31):
What they care about is whether something is interesting and
entertaining to them. It looks like at least per folks
like Kitty j Over atmash Dot com that children are
increasingly less engaged with robotic musical characters. So twenty seventeen,
Chuck E Cheese announces they're gonna revamp their locations. They're
(41:53):
gonna remove some animatronic acts and stages. They want to
make a large dance floor where children can conga with
a live Chucky Cheese that comes from a back room.
And when he comes out, he makes it rain. He's
throwing tickets out everywhere, and then he's like, dance with me, Chee.
(42:16):
Dad's to the Beyesie the rats. Who is now pie
pipering the children? Yes, some reason that just conjured up
an image of like a Hunger Games like style, like
a movie like postystopian like world where we all dance
for Chuck E Cheese. Yeah. No, he's a god. He's
worshiped as a god in this version of reality that
(42:39):
you're describing back really quickly. Just just just that one
thing that always stood out to me. I don't think
I ever did it. I think you only got to
do it if you were the birthday of a person.
Do you remember the cage you'd go into where like
money and tickets and stuff would blow around and you
just had to grab your grab it with your little fists,
get as much as you can. Good. It's a weird one.
(43:02):
Max was nodding emphatically. Man, I'm not sure if you
remember that or not. Oh yeah, that's yeah. It was
like a wind tunnel kind of thing where I would
like blow all around really hard to actually actually grab.
I also have never been in one of those two,
but I know people who have been in them, and
I've always I don't know, might people signful towards them.
(43:23):
I've feared one with actual cash. Yeah, oh yeah, that's
a that's a thing too. Yeah, and that is the
earlier days, that is more difficult to catch. So if
you if you listen, if you were playing one of
those as a kid and you weren't able to get
as much as you hoped, don't feel bad. A lot
of adults have a hard time too well. And I
think to your point, Bend, it originally was mainly cash,
(43:47):
and then I think that probably got a bad rap
because a cash is filthy, uh, and it's probably just
rubbing all around on your little child body. And also
it just kind of feels a little ikey, not just
because the German bits, but just because of the like,
I don't know, capitalism kind of hipsters is like, come on, children,
just grabbed for the cash. It's sort of like that
(44:09):
scene in Batman, you know, where he's throwing the fake
Joker dollars and everyone's like rioting in the streets. That's
started the vibe that it imparts. And this is where
this is where we get closer and closer to the
modern day. Now, the live mascot thing does make sense
because kids like, that's a Disney formula again. Kids love
(44:31):
engaging with the live mascots, right, and now we have
to ask how far this can go? Unfortunately, do you?
According to a press release just a few years back,
in June twenty twenty, Charles Entertainment, Cheese In Entertainment Incorporated,
excuse me, Charles Entertainment, Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated, filed for Chapter
(44:55):
eleven bankruptcy and this was predicted. This it seemed almost
inevitable as the pandemic reared its head. They had a
pretty in depth financial reorganization and this came about entirely
due to the massive hit they took during the early
days of COVID nineteen when pretty much every restaurant in
(45:18):
Arcade was shut down. The same store sales fell by
more than twenty percent in the first quarter. Without getting
into the financial weeds, what you need to know is
that Chuck E Cheese needed a two hundred million dollar
loan just to get through bankruptcy, and this would allow
(45:40):
the chain to reopen their closed stores and continue operations
like carry out and delivery and stuff as well. And
it all looked lost, it all looked for not. However,
get this a little bit of good news for a second.
Six months later, CEC Entertainment announces they pulled themselves out
(46:01):
of bankruptcy. They were financially healthy. Their restructure did away
with seven hundred and five million dollars in debt. And
that's like, that's where you learn America, baby, am I right?
Like if you were a corporation, you know, bankruptcy is
just sort of like a situation you get into and
then you're gonna be fine if you restructure. It's very
(46:24):
very strange stuff. But before we get to like tangents
trivias in our last updates, we got to say something
about Bushnell. He's a pioneer man. He still has a
thing about restaurants. He has become a restaurant tour. He
has founded or taken over several restaurants over the past
forty years, and he even tried something similar to showbiz
(46:46):
with something called you Wink Letter, You Wink. Okay, it's
a restaurant where tables get touch screens in two thousand
and six. It's sort of like what Chili's. It's sort
of like so many places, do you know, Yeah, I
mean you will look to touch Look. I guess this
is two thousand and six, so this is I don't know,
(47:08):
pre iPad, pre robot sushi restaurant, right, So so you
know this would have been again timing, right, because then
you have this whole business model kind of upended by
you know, easily available technology that any restaurant can just
install an app on and have a thing plugged up
(47:28):
to a charger on the table where you can like
spend ninety nine cents on playing a word game while
you wait so you don't have to talk to your family, right, Yeah,
I mean this is the thing. He's still if this
is the thing, if you are pioneer in a concept
right in any shape, form or fashion, then you are
(47:48):
taking on a risk that other people simply do not
have to take on. This is why leap frog, this
is why the concept of leap frogging technology exists. And
a lot of those competitive in this character entertainment restaurant space,
a lot of them were benefiting from the risk that
Bushnell took in his career, which spans, as Fast Company
(48:12):
put it, spans well into a half century. Bushnell never
stopped chasing this idea of entertainment and socializing him food
and drink. He you know, Pong was the first game
that had required two players, and Pong ended up in
a lot of restaurants. The end of that article, honestly,
(48:33):
it kind of falls into like this shout out or
this tribute to Bushnell's work, And I'd like to just
hit this one thing that really stood out from the
Fast Company article. They say, maybe that's the secret behind
chuck E Cheese and during relevance. It's not about technology
(48:56):
or singing animals. The place is a cultural trojan horse
brought families together, helped arcade games become acceptable, and made
eating into family entertainment. I think that's very nice. It's
a very nice thing to say. I don't know if
it's the first to the post in eating as family entertainment.
We'd have to figure out when, Um, oh, what's like
(49:19):
medieval times? That was probably eighties. Doesn't that seem eighties?
It feels maybe nineties. It feels fifteenth century to me. Oh,
they got you, they got Max. No, this is true.
I mean, look, it's sort of the family restaurant, you know.
I mean the idea of even something as simple as
like a free coloring book for kids, you know what
(49:41):
I mean, Like just this idea of a place where
you could all come as a family, there's something on
the menu for everybody. Even the idea of a kid's menu,
you know, like that was kind of innovative at the time,
and so I think all of this kind of springs
from that. And and honestly, you know, Bushnell was, um,
you know, we talked about how he was sort of
(50:01):
like fascinated by these family restaurants and wanted to kind
of take them into the into the next generation or
whatever in the future. So I mean, these these concepts
were just sort of escalations of things that definitely already existed.
But times nineteen sixties, no joke, no joke. So there
we go. Okay, all right, just had to put that
(50:23):
out there. Get in frestory of the family restaurants. I
just want to know, like when like history of family restaurants.
It looks to be the rise of family restaurants started
after World War Two and has grown into an important
part of that makes sense. It was this idea of
kind of like this was something that was attainable for everybody,
(50:45):
you know, Like in the seventeen hundreds, this article on
gun through two ds dot com, which I think is
a family diner of some sort, but they point out
a gun through two D's and the seventeen hundreds, it
wasn't uncommon for wealthy families to send a servant to
pick up dinner, you know, which was then eating at home.
The idea of dining out in general as a family
(51:06):
was was not really attainable. It wasn't until you know,
the early nineteen hundreds that children were even allowed into restaurants.
You know, I'm not gonna say let's all be time travelers,
but I think there are certain restaurants that probably shouldn't
have They should have age restrictions, you know what I mean,
(51:26):
not just bars, but like like you know, you're out
on a really nice candlelit romantic dinner with your you know,
one and only of the month, and then you probably
don't want a screaming child, or maybe that's your ambiance.
I don't know, only if it's on theme, you know,
if that's like the theme that you've chosen for your baby. Really, well,
(51:47):
congratulations on your promotion. Let's go have a romantic celebration.
It's screaming child, bistro, screaming child. I did have a
couple of things that I discover when I was looking into, um,
how how COVID affected the Chucky Cheese, you know, Empire.
We talked a little bit about that. You know, they
did file for bankruptcy after you know, amassing more than
(52:11):
a billion dollars in debt. They were able to raise
some funds and now I believe they're in the process
of restructuring. But there were a couple of interesting stories
that really kind of hit home. For example, apparently they've
been doing that ghost kitchen thing that a lot of
restaurants do, where like, you know, they sort of came
up during COVID where you were using a kitchen in
(52:34):
a brick and mortar restaurant in order to serve food
for another restaurant brand. So you would essentially like lease
out part of your kitchen. But that's not exactly what
what Charles did. They actually created a kind of phony
Italian restaurant called Pasquali's Pizza and Wings and just served
their chucky cheese fair, you know, to unsuspecting online diners,
(53:01):
because I mean, let's be let's be honest, y'all. I mean,
chuck E Cheese pizza ain't ain't all that it's not
that good. Well, I bet you that somewhere there is
a person putting their heart and soul into what they're cooking,
and you can tell. But as a rule, generally, yeah,
chuck E Cheese is not going to be the same
pizza as your local mom and pop store. Yeah. I
(53:22):
know most of us have that bad experiences. I'm just
defending the one person out there whom I hope, who
I hope is breaking the stereotype or exceeding expectations. And
as of you know, the restructuring, This may not be
the most up to date information right now, but more
(53:42):
than thirty four locations that were open when coronavirus hit
have closed, and that's in you know, states across the country.
And piggyback on that research, Associate Extraordinarires, Zach Doctor z
Williams found a pretty interesting and slightly disturbing detail about
what happens when a Chuck E. Cheese location is closed.
(54:06):
The Chuck E Cheese costumes and I believe the animatronics
are the very least the light heads that go on
them are decommissioned in a pretty alarming and brutal way
that really fits in with Max's dystopian kind of like
god like scenario where Chuck E. Cheese is worship only
(54:27):
in this situation, he's actually sacrificed. There's video that surfaced
of employees at a location that was being closed smashing
the cartoon character head with a sledgehammer, like ripping the
covers off magazines. Yeah, yeah, and apparently this is a
(54:50):
corporate policy because it makes sense, right because you wouldn't
want that head to fall into the wrong hands and
then have the brand like be smirched. Who knows people
could wear them and like do crimes, you know, so
you just don't. They had to just get rid of him,
They had they had to smash it up. Yeah. And
there's that great Atlas Obscure article right by Paula Meggia
(55:12):
which talks about this in detail why Chucky Cheese has
a corporate policy about destroying his mascot's head. You might say,
I don't want to I don't want to go to
the new Chucky Cheese. I want the animatronics. I know
the company might be weirdly defensive. They still have where
they do have robots, they're still powered by a floppy disc.
(55:33):
That's a true story. Check out the bite for more
on that. Shout out to nor I'll sabay. But if
you yearn for that nostalgia, folks, and nostalgia is a
heck of a drug, then never fear. You can go
see a collection of memorabilia from the old days of
showbiz Pizza in Sandy Hook, Mississippi, thanks to Damon Brenlan,
(55:55):
the owner of Smitty's Super Service. No, no, I I
haven't been to this place. I've actually barely been to
many locations in Mississippi, just regular places. Not even think
I've ever been to Mississippi ever. Well, maybe the first
time we go, we go to this Smitty's Super Service.
(56:16):
This sounds fantastic. He's got fully functioning animatronics. It's set
up to look just like the restaurant and that's funny
because I wonder how he got around this, because I
mean with the rocket fire explosion stuff, they bought it
directly from the dude who created them, who would not
sell the IP. But this goes against the whole idea
of them destroying the stuff because a big part of
(56:38):
the Apples Obscure article, or the point that the writer
makes is that they're they're basically exerting control over their
trademark because they wouldn't want these things to be like
available on eBay and for someone to literally do what
this person, Damon Breland is doing at Smitty's Super Service.
So I'm confused as to how he's operating under the
(56:59):
radar like this without the power of Charles Entertainment Cheese
Corporate coming down on him like a sledgehammer of the gods. Yeah,
it's an interesting question, and if it's not love for
the world, then we'll have to get back on the
road and check it out. We hope that you enjoyed
(57:19):
this week's two part episode, folks. Obviously the nostalgia is
strong with us. We hope it's strong with you. This
story goes in so many directions. We want to thank
as always superproducer mister Max Williams for hurting the production
cats here. Who else should we think? Oh Giles's entertainment
(57:39):
cheese duh. I don't know, man, he gives me the creeps.
I kind of liked his youthful rock star rebranding to
be honest. Thanks to Mac Williams, of course, Zach doctor
Z what a guy and big big thanks to Eve's
Jeff Christopher Hasiodes, Casey, Pegram Casey and uh and reluctantly
(58:04):
Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister. You can actually see a
video of of of us in our other podcast iteration
Stuff They Don't want you to know, hanging out with
Jonathan Strickland in real life at a miniature golf course
historical miniature golf course in Austin, Texas called peter Pan Golf,
talking conspiracies and just joshing around on the links, the
(58:26):
mini the miniature links. Yeah. I don't think it's out yet,
but it will be soon. You can take a look
for that at our other shows social media stuff they
Don't want you to Conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. Keep
a lookout for that video. It's a fun one, yeah,
especially if you like nostalgia. Uh, I don't know. Man,
this has actually weirdly enough, it's made me kind of hungry.
(58:48):
Oh yeah, is this about lunchtime? It's close. I think
we can swing it. Yeah, let's mail the littles's orders
some middling pizza. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(59:09):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up our super producer,
the Man, the Myth, the leg of mister Max Williams,
Maximus to the maximum. He's there, he's our guy. We were.
We were singing to each other again off air. I'm
(00:48):
Ben your knoll and our all fair conversations are generally
kind of fun. I think most times on this show,
what would you say else? Good? I say completely agree,
that's uh. These are the fun times, the fun podcast times.
M Yeah, and uh. This had me wondering, this is
(01:11):
totally unrelated. But before we get rolling today, we were
talking about a smooth criminal right by Michael Jackson. Well,
we were just sort of all three humming along. We
were just checking in and making sure we were all okay, yes, yeah.
And it reminded me of our good friend of the show,
Annie Reese of Savor and stuff. Mom never told you fame.
(01:34):
I'm sure she's irritated by that song. And I was wondering.
I was trying to guess, do you guys have songs
about your name? And if so, how do you feel
about them? Nole, I'd imagine the closest is the first
Noel you would you would imagine correctly, And every time
someone sings that at me, they think they're the first
one to have ever done it. Bully for them was
(01:56):
what I say. Go on thinking that, Yeah, I'm wondering
if you guys can guess which one I've always gotten.
Let's man something maximum Maxwell silver hammer, Oh yeah, Max
bang bang Yeah. The murder eyest of Beatles songs, right,
(02:17):
songs basically about a school shooter that uses a hammer,
and I am cursed, I would say. With the Michael
Jackson song Ben, which is about his friend who is
a rat. Uh and there's also Benny in the Jets,
I don't even want to give it airtime, but I
just gave it to you. It's already living rent free
(02:38):
in all of our minds. It doesn't go anywhere. The
song does a mohair suit. No. I read it in
a magazine. Oh so, so wait, let's maybe we stay
on the rat because um, that was for a movie,
do you know that? Starting Crispin Glover, I vaguely remember
hearing that I've never seen the film. The movie is
(03:00):
about Crispin Glover, who I think it's actually a remake
of like a movie from maybe with a Vincent Price
movie or so. It's about a dude who like controls
rats with his mind, like the way you control corvids
with your mind. It's definitely a connection. Oh shucks. Yeah,
when when noelan or ride or die, mister Matt Frederick
and I were on the road most recently, we had
(03:22):
a weird moment. We were at a fancy grocery store
and I thought a pack of hard boiled eggs, and Noel,
I think for a moment you thought I was just
going to eat them. I didn't know you were the eggman. Not.
I'm baffled at people buy hard boiled eggs by themselves,
the Walrus Sun if you're not the eggman. Oh gosh, uh,
(03:43):
we're going so many places. We had a segue anyway, Yeah,
I've fed those to the crows, so they were not
I wasn't just sitting eating goblin mode. And then you
got the chastised by just a regular Joe, regular fella
for eat for feeding the rows because apparently they're like,
I don't know that it emboldens them. Yeah, you call
(04:05):
them Sky rats. So if you're listening, sir, I didn't
learn a thing and will not change my ways. This
segue holds though. We're talking about a rat of today. Yeah, yeah,
we are talking about one of the most famous rats
formerly rats in all of American culture. And this is
(04:27):
part two of a two part episode. We're talking about
the legendary Charles Entertainment cheese. Now. No, we left on
a bit of a cliffhanger in part one. That's right,
things were really heating up. In June of nineteen seventy nine,
a guy named Bob Brock, not Bob Rock, the Metallica producer.
(04:51):
Bob Brock wanted to get an exclusive franchise deal with
Pizza Time, the Pizza Time theater franchises, so he signed
a two hundred million dollar code development deal with our
friend mister Bushnell of Atari fame and animatronic singing robot fame.
(05:11):
And this gave mister Brock exclusive franchising rights to Pizza
Time theaters in sixteen states across the southern and Midwestern US,
And it gave him some pretty specific superpowers that maybe
our mister Bushnell might not have fully realized at the time. Yeah,
(05:33):
and it was pretty bold, pretty aspirational. The contract aimed
for a target of two hundred and eighty five stores,
two hundred of which would be directly operated by TIM,
which is Bob Brock's company, and another eighty five will
be subfranchised out. And this was pretty big money because TIM,
(05:55):
that's short for Topeka in Management, would be ponying up
the capitol to build these locations and they were going
to spend about a million dollars a pop. This was
pretty cool for a while for a bit, because during
nineteen eighty Pizza Time theater flourished. They added dozens and
dozens of stores to their crew. This included both franchised
(06:20):
as and corporate owned locations, and there were even some
international locations. Things grew really quickly, and sometimes in the
world of corporate business, when things grow quickly, they can
grow quickly out of hand. It only took about a
(06:40):
year for Brock's deal to show its ugly side. Brock's
firm had received training on how to run all these
Pizza Time locations, and there's definitely a science to it, right,
and once they had the information, once they knew how
to conduct day to day business, they went back on
(07:02):
their contract, dude, and they opened up their own competing
chain of restaurants, which they called show Biz Pizza. Yeah.
And it's funny because essentially they were like their own copycats,
and they joined the ranks of a bunch of other
copycat kind of you know, futuristic robotic pizza restaurants, including
(07:25):
a place called Bullwinkle's Family Restaurant, which is cool. I
imagine that would have an intellectual property tie in with
the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show featuring the iconic Moose and Squirrel.
A place called Celebration Station which sounds like a delightful
place to have a slice, fair Play Pizza Theater, which
sounds a little innocuous and kind of dull. It's like,
(07:48):
that's not where the real fun happens. That's where everything
is just equitable. That's like hundred percent fair play pizza.
That doesn't sound like anyone's taking many risks there, Major
Magic's All Star Pizza review that sounds like a good time.
And then a place called Harazmatazz love it Yeah, and
(08:10):
bush Nall said that they had around twenty of these
copycats that they were competing with, and now, going back
on that contract, Showbiz was essentially the most popular of
these these knockoffs. Right. And by the way, we're getting
a good bit of this information from the actual history
of Showbiz Pizza on Showbiz Pizza dot com, slash history
(08:34):
slash index, dot aml and a really great article from
Fast Company with a fabulous name called Robots Pizza and
Sensory Overload. The Chuck E Cheese origin story by BENJ. Edwards, Yeah, correct,
and the article by Binge Edwards is I think one
of the go to reads here. It's a long read,
but it's worth it, so right at the top long read,
(08:56):
so the fit and do check it out, folks, because
it is worth it anyway. As Edwards as Edwards rights,
Brock had a reason for this betrayal. He discovered a
new kind of animatronics technology that he thought was better
than what Bushnell's team had created. This is the work
(09:19):
of a guy named Aaron Fetcher of creative engineering that
you might recognize from some documentaries of Days gone By,
which I love. Fetcher had developed these huge, full body,
life size animatronic characters. He called them the rock Afire Explosion,
and they had smoother movements than the Chucky Cheese cyberamics
(09:43):
characters they were like, and they're a different crew, right,
but if you look at what they're doing, it's one
hundred percent pulled from the Chuck E Cheese playbook, which
itself has some notes of plagiarism from the mouse. So
this is like, this is a bridge too far for
(10:04):
Pizza Time, right, And it's funny because you know, I
think we all were a little confused as to which
one of these stores we actually remembered from our youth,
because you know, I think me and you Ben were
a little older than Max. Uh. No specifics need be named,
but I do remember Showbiz Pizza, and I always assumed
(10:27):
that Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E Cheeses were the same thing.
I don't remember Pizza Time Theater, but I do remember
maybe they were like remnants or something like that, or
like little you know, some of these like fake posters
for these bands or whatever, these you know, robot musicians
that maybe had still some branding from that, but they
were originally separate entities, right. And because when this, you know,
(10:51):
Showbiz Pizza came out with the with the higher quality animatronics,
it did really really well, and that did not sit
well with Bushnell. He actually sued Brock's firm and eventually
one what's called like a profit garnishing judgment, which I
imagine it's sort of like if you sue over like
(11:12):
a song that copies you, then you end up entitled
to all or a portion of the earnings from that song,
like a blurred lines kind of situation. Yeah, and unfortunately
this judgment came too late to be super useful to
Bushnell and team because they were trying to turn Pizza
(11:36):
Time from a kid's place to more a what they
called a diversified leisure or a leisure company. In their
nineteen eighty two annual report, you can see this, Bushnel writes,
we believe the nineteen eighty three will be a time
of growth and change in which the transition from a
specialized restaurant concept to a diversified leisure company will be evident.
(11:58):
They're trying to go They're doing a daven Busters is
what they're trying to do. David Busters for Everyone was
opened in Dallas in nineteen eighty two, so he may
have been aware of something like this, but he definitely
had his finger on the pulse and it wasn't a
bad instinct. It just maybe was again too little, too late.
The timing is everything, and I'm sorry, guys. I keep
(12:20):
referencing this show Halt and catch Fire because I am
like in the thick of it, and now in the
show where I am in season four. It's now the
early nineties, and the show has been you know, following
the explosion of technology, including video games and companies like
Atari since around this time. And what you see time
and time again in the show against like a fictionalized
(12:41):
kind of like alt history version of a lot of
these things that really really happened, for example, like the
you know, the development of the World Wide Web and
all of that. Timing is everything. You can have the
best idea in the world, but if it's not ready,
if consumers aren't ready for it, or the content isn't
there yet to fill it, then it's gonna it's not
(13:01):
gonna fly right right, And that could be a huge issue.
In early nineteen eighty three, Pizza Times balance sheet was
looking bad. One slight push in the wrong direction could
fell the company entire and this push came in the
form of a US tech stock crash. Investors who are
(13:26):
a pretty sensitive bunch, were immediately frightened. And when tech
investors get frightened, as we can see in the in
the current days of the United States, there are a
lot of ramifications. Once the tech sector got scared in
the stock crash of eighty three, they started cutting ties
(13:49):
with Atari. Atari became a shadow of its former self.
People didn't want to invest in tech, so lines of
credit dried up for Bushnell's firms. Pete Time stock fell
from twenty six dollars per share all the way down
to four dollars per share, and then wait, it gets worse.
It plummeted further to two dollars and fifty cents a share,
(14:14):
and then, wait, it gets worse. Pizza Time came out
and confirmed it had been losing money for three fourths
of the previous year. Yeah, I mean, we already talked
about the hefty price tag on each one of these locations,
a million nineteen eighty three bucks, you know, per pizza restaurant,
(14:36):
with over two hundred and forty locations across the US,
even sometimes you know, in smaller cities that maybe did
not necessarily have the audience yet to support these they
were making a big play and maybe I think definitely
overplaying their hand here, because you had folks like showbiz
(14:57):
that it maybe already learned from the inside, you know,
how to ease in a little bit more, you know,
to dip the toe into the market, maybe not spend
every single dollar, you know, in the same way the
Pizza Time Theater had. Also with all these copycats, you
were getting a little bit of saturation with this whole
(15:17):
concept because again, like you can't really exactly copyright this concept.
You can copyright actual characters and the way they look
and all that stuff, and as we know, it's not
that hard to just tweak a few little details, and
you can even get away with ripping off Mickey Mouse,
but you can't really copyright the idea of a robot
(15:38):
driven you know, entertainment pizza arcade joint. So people were
almost a little bit tired of the concept at this point,
and it was a little bit of like kind of
brand confusion too. I think may have because again we're
talking about the stuff when we were kid. We had
serious brand confusion many many years later. Which one is
which we don't know and there's a reason for that
(16:00):
because of what's about to happen. That's sort of the
answer to the questions that we have. Yeah, and we're
going to get some more information here from Anna Green
writing at Mental Floss the Chuck E Cheese, Showbiz, pizza,
(16:20):
robot wars. Who doesn't love a robot war? Yeah, Rockham
Sockam Yeah. Everybody listening after twenty forty, I guess, But
so they they really like the novelties wearing off. You
describe it perfectly. And Bushnell also is aware of the problem.
It's not just that the industry has expanded with all
(16:41):
these competitors, it's that Chuck e Cheese itself has expanded
way too far, way too fast. He had this interesting
quote where he said Chuck e Cheese was so new
that when we would first open a unit in Saint Louis,
you wouldn't have enough capacity. It was just okay, bar
the door. But that lasted for about a year and
(17:01):
a half. Then people would settle down. They didn't need
to go to Chuck e Cheese every time Grandma came
to town. They didn't need to go to Chuck e
Cheese once a month. They found that we'll do the
kid's birthdays and we'll go somewhere on special events, and
the frequency visits dropped from ten a year to three
a year. He had racked up additional debt twenty two
(17:22):
million dollars in debt because Bushnell had been using Chuck
E Cheese money to fund other startups. Yeah. Can I
say real quick, I've got an expression that I use
a lot in my regular life and it comes from
a TikTok video of this kid. And he's got a
paper plate with Charles Entertainment cheese on it, and it's
(17:43):
got some some like chocolate chips on it, and he says,
chocolate chips on the Chuck E Cheese plate. Oh yeah, baby,
oh yeah. So whenever something's awesome, I say, man, that
is chocolate chips on the Chucky Cheese plate right there.
Oh yeah baby, Oh yeah. Okay, I had to. I
had to fit that, and I promise my kid I
would fit that in. Okay, yeahs Because you know, this
(18:05):
branding is still with us, and it did manage to
kind of, you know, insert itself into into the zeitgeist.
And then we're going to get to the now of
Chuck E Cheese. But at this point they are not
doing well. That is not a good play, my friend.
That is not chocolate chips. On the Chucky Cheese play
to use that money to fund other startups, because we
(18:25):
know startups. This is the era, the beginning of startup culture.
You know this like kind of Silicon Valley, like fake
it till you make it attitude, And we know that
most startups fail miserably, and that money evaporates, and if
you're just pulling it from the kiddie from you're already
struggling business. That is a recipe for disaster. Yeah, many
(18:47):
startups these days are created entirely in hopes of selling
them to a bigger company later. It's a different mentality
than what you would want for for restaurants. So Bushnill
and team have to file for bankruptcy in nineteen eighty
four as a result of all these deletarious factors. Bushnell
gets pushed out. Showbiz buys up the failing franchise, and
(19:10):
it operates both Chucky Cheese and Showbiz locations independently. Because,
probably because at this point Chuck E. Cheese was so
well known that they want to kill him off, they
renamed the company Showbiz Pizza Time, which does sound like
the name of it does sound like the name of
(19:30):
several weird off brands restaurants I've been to in other countries.
Someone's like, make something sound America, call it pizza time.
No give it, hit it with that. Rasmu'tazzi pizza time.
We don't even know. It's not even to start it
on Rasmua task. I was talking to you. You met
my friend Steven when we were out in La and
(19:51):
I was talking to him about this subject and he
was like, I swear I went to Chuck E Cheese
and Showbiz Pizza at different times when I I was
a kid growing up in the eighties. And the answer
is quite possibly, definitely. It is that kind of a
Mandela effect, though, you know what I mean, where it's
like which one was it? Was it Shazam or was
(20:11):
it Kazam? Was it Chuck E Cheese or was it
show It was probably both. And then there came a
point where you'd probably have ones that were under one branding,
that worked in that area and that already were doing
good business. They just left well enough alone. And then
they you know, they probably monitored it and saw which
ones were doing better, and they left them as they
were because but they also they shared characters. At this point.
(20:32):
If I'm not mistaken right, because I remember the song.
There was a commercial it was Showbiz Pizza where a
kid can be a kid, and then later it became
Chuck E Cheeses where a kid can be a kid.
And that's why I was super confused, because they did
coexist simultaneously, and then I think they were kind of
(20:52):
squashed together. And now there are no more show businesses.
There's only the mouse the big Cheese. We'll get to this.
So right now, Bob Brock and Fetcher are victorious, but
only for a time. Remember Fetcher is the creative guy.
Brock is more the corporate money centric type. So Fetcher
(21:18):
loses out. Shopiz is still hemorrhaging money, and management says, okay,
part of the reason this is not more profitable is
because those rock of Fire explosion acts are just increasingly elaborate.
They're increasingly expensive, so they start sidelining Fetcher and they
use voice impersonators to play his characters. Fetcher is getting
(21:42):
increasingly disillusioned with the corporate world and he starts tinkering
with other projects. He builds new animatronics, high tech rock
afire toys that honestly a lot of people couldn't afford
he starts working on the anti gravity machine. He called
it it's a predators, sounds like a predecessor to email.
They could send messages over telephone lines. And then in
(22:05):
nineteen ninety his company, Fetcher's Company, Creative Engineering, was kicked
out of Showbiz completely. Fetcher lost the war. He was
able to take rock Afire Explosion with him because he
refused to sell the character rights to Showbiz and he
was convinced. He was like, I believe in my rock
Afire gang. I know that they can do something outside
(22:26):
of this pizza joint. So he said, I'm going to
keep working on the robots. And because Showbiz no longer
had the rights to those characters, this is where the
confusion occurs. They converted the remaining Rock a Fire robots
into Chucky Cheese characters, replacing their exteriors and kind of
(22:47):
a Westworld style thing. They left the original machinery intact.
This was called concept unification. And there's another example of this.
It's a little conspiratorial. But if you go to the
Hall of Press Residents, right everybody knows Disney Hall of Presidents,
you'll notice that one in particular, it looks very weird.
(23:07):
It's it's the statue or animatronic character of former President
Donald Trump. It looks a lot like somebody started building
it with the intention that it would be President Hillary
Clinton and then had to change it. Oh man, election
came through. Pull up a picture. I'm telling you, that's
(23:27):
super cool. I actually was. When I was at Disney recently.
I intended to go to the Hall of Presidents, but
it's one of those things that happens on a schedule.
You can't just wander in, and I just missed. I
missed the timing for it because the fireworks happened, and
I wasn't going to miss that obviously. But this is
super interesting, Ben. This like reskinning of these like you know,
Terminator exoskeleton kind of guys. And as we I think
(23:51):
we mentioned briefly, there is a you've alluded to a
minute ago. There's a really cool documentary called I think
it's just called the Rock a Fire Explosion Band or
maybe just Rocks. It's easy to find and you could
watch the whole thing on YouTube actually, but Fetcher is
a main character in it, and it basically is about
all of these Rock a Fire super fans that kind
of band together these aren't rich people. They band together
(24:13):
and buy the Rock of Fire Explosion animatronics from Fetcher
or I think that's right, because they buy it from
and then they say they build it and then like
a trailer, didn't make it all the way to the end.
So I'm not quite sure what the but this is
good that way. I'm not spoiling it for anyone. There's
definitely some intrigue and it shows you Ben. You we've
talked about this off air, the kind of nightmarish hellscape
(24:35):
that is fifteen of these things skinless and pantomiming there
whatever lip sync things at the same time, like a
row of lucky cats that like a Chinese novelty store.
You know, it's really really pretty scary stuff. And clearly
the impetus for games like Five Nights at Freddy's, which
(24:56):
is like the jump scares with these like creepy you know,
rock a Fire animatronic robot things. Absolutely yeah, and the
documentary is well worth a watch. Spoiler the Rock Afire
Explosion show, those characters are. They end up being sold
to other restaurants and entertainment centers, which further amplifies the
(25:18):
possible Mandela effect because you could have seen them at
someplace completely different like Pistol, Pizza Pizza, Billy Bob's Wonderland
and so odd. All right, so Showbiz has unified its concept, right,
and they're still facing outside competition. One of their biggest
(25:40):
competitors becomes something called Discovery Zone. This is an entertainment
center targeted toward kids, but it's a different vibe. They've
got an indoor jungle gym, they've got a lot of
hands on activities, interior playgrounds, education driven. I don't know
why when I hear Discovery I think maybe it's like
there's you know, optical illusions or something like that, or
(26:02):
there's something. Maybe I'm totally wrong. It's because I worked
in a place called Fort Discovery that was actually run
by the US military and it was like a science
e type museum. So Discovery Zone probably not that. But
then hands on activities, I do have to assume there
may have been some sort of educational component when I
hear hands on activities, mostly mma cool hand to hands right,
(26:26):
yea with pizza death in a steel cage. Right. So
the sales at Showbiz start to slow down and there
are more disappointing sales in the early nineties, so Showbiz
Pizza Time drops the word pizza from the restaurant name,
and this is where they start just calling it chuck
(26:47):
E Cheese. They get a new kid friendly logo of
Charles Zinte mid Cheese and he has like a thumbs up, like, hey,
we passed our health inspection. And in night five they
begin a series of massive remodelings. They called this Phase one,
and they added kid check Kiosk, which like, let's parents
(27:12):
have a little more security with their children. They also
added free attractions so that it didn't feel like it
was a continual money sink when you took your family
to visit. Chuck E himself officially goes from kind of
ratlike to definitely a mouse. They said enough time has passed,
(27:32):
and then they tried something. They tried something weird. They
got really experimental. They made something called the Awesome Adventure
Machine in nineteen ninety seven. Okay, okay, tell me more.
By the way, Discoveries own not educational at all, and
to this day there now there are only two locations
(27:53):
at malls, one in Kentucky and one in Ohio. So
they clearly didn't win the war either. And just in here,
that's actually a remake. I was researching the same thing
as you know. It turns out those two are just
paying homage to the original Discovery Zone, so the original
is not even around at all. Right, they went, they
liquidated in two thousand and one. Got it? Do the
(28:13):
sound cute back right now? Great? All right? Awesome? Uh
we love it when we can fit that one in organically.
(28:35):
So yeah, this awesome adventure machine. It's a little mad
science pictures. Someone say it's too complex, it's unstable at
this stage, and then the corporate type going, I don't care,
I put it in. The restaurants said it. The children
send it to the cheating demain. So this thing, though
(28:56):
it didn't work out in nineteen ninety seven, it was
a new kind of a test stage and it gave
rise to the Chuck E Cheese stage show concept called
Studio C. Studio C only has one animated figure that's
child's in a tabit cheese. Yep. I've seen this version too,
and as an adult with going to kids' birthday parties,
and it was definitely not what I remembered and contributed
(29:19):
to my confusion. And this is this is important because
it's a huge cost saving measure. The other characters are present,
but they're on TV monitors, so you only really need
one one cyborg. They're not cyborgs. Honestly. It reminds me
of the way a lot of roller coasters now or
at certain amusement parks are doing more the like motion
(29:43):
video stuff rather than actually having to build tracks, you
know what I mean. And then obviously the really high
quality ones like Disney and Universal, they'll use both sometimes,
you know, but it's a real cost saver if you
don't have to actually move around or have the real
estate required to have a big old track. Same with
all of these seriously expensive moving part you know, animatronic
(30:06):
figures that break down and have to be maintained and
all of that kind of stuff, so um smart on them.
You know. It's sad that the kids of this era
won't remember the terrifying joy that was the Rock of
Fire explosion bando. Yeah. And to the point about roller coasters,
it's also way less expensive insurance wise. You know, I
(30:29):
can't get decapitated by a video. Uh yeah. And many
years ago at the local amusement park of note here
six Flags Over Georgia, someone did die. They get decapitated.
Yea true story. So there are business reasons behind a
lot of these entertainment choices. Now in the story, all
(30:53):
of the units have been completely turned over, remodeled, and
themed to Chuck E Cheese Luke Patians. So Shobiz Pizza
Time Incorporated changes its company name to Chuck E. Cheese
Entertainment Incorporated in nineteen ninety eight. Which, yes, I know
that's a little bit like saying VIN number or ATM
(31:14):
Machine Charles Entertainment Cheese Entertainment Incorporated. But they're they're making
it work. And then they move on to phase two remodeling. Ah.
Phase two, that's when they really start leaning into what
you aptly described as a casino for children kind of environment.
And again, you know, as an adult who has you know,
(31:35):
been to a few casinos, not my thing. It's not
something I would have clocked at all when I was
a kid, because you just get thrown into these places
and you're like, wow, this is amazing. But they all
lean much more heavily on gaming rather than like actual
console video game cabinets, you know where you're like playing
you know, a preexisting property. These are more like roulette
(31:55):
type games. To earn tickets that you can then exchange for,
you know, thing like stuff that are as we know
even in like David Buster's similar model, but they at
least have like cool video games. And I'm sure some
Chucky cheeses have video games, but I seem to recall
when I went very light on the actual branded video
games that we know and love, like the you know
(32:16):
whatever Tetrises of the World and things like that. Much more.
These either either dinky little rides, you know, like the
little airplane it just goes like back and forth, like
at the grocery store, or these kind of games of chance,
and we know that that stuff really can get under
your skin and kind of feed this like addiction of
(32:36):
I've got to win the thing, I gotta get the stuff.
You know, I've got an itch, yeah yeah, and doctrinate
them young. Right. This this is weird, but it is successful.
In July of nineteen ninety nine, Discovery Zone files for
(32:57):
chapter eleven bankruptcy Child's Entertainment. Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated buys out
their remaining assets and intellectual property. This gets rid of
their only major competitor and they become the dominant family
entertainment Center in the United States. Back to Shopiz Pizza's
(33:18):
official history, they say the early two thousands were boon
for the company, sales increase. They were constantly opening new locations.
They go to Phase three remodels where they say, we're
gonna have new enhanced games, We're gonna have a toddler zone,
we're gonna disc with all that stuff was lifted from
(33:38):
Discovery Zone. That, yeah, one hundred percent, so they're like
Discovery Zones. Main thing was these ball pits and you know,
tumbly kid environments. You know that you could run around it.
We all probably had a place in our youth that
was maybe more local or regional. For me, it was
a place called put Putt Golf and Games. And they
(33:59):
kind of follow the same model. You could see it
happening because you know, you have to keep up with
the Joneses, right, and they have these giant play places
that would be up in the up of the sky,
kind of connected to the ceiling. We have one here
in Atlanta that I think is relatively regional called Andretti's
that's like a go kart kind of joint, and they
have one of these like sky tube kind of situations too.
(34:20):
So this copycatting because the stuff isn't exactly intellectual property,
it always runs rampant when somebody kind of cracks the
code one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, another great example
would be the baseball cap. Right, no one can really
nope own that. You just own what goes on. It's right,
(34:40):
you know what, we should check into the history of
the baseball cap. By may be incorrect, but that'll be
a way. That's a good idea. Let's just make a
note of that. Yeah, that's a really good idea, history
of the baseball cap. We're cooking live, folks, Okay, So
Chuck e Cheese. They are so successful that they say
we're no longer going to sell franchises. They open the
three hundred company owned location in March of two thousand
(35:04):
and then they start buying back the franchises from the
individual operators or owners, and a lot of yeah, a
lot of them. They wanted to expand they're like, my
two Chuck E cheeses are doing really well. I want
to build a third one. And then corporate would say,
we don't do that anymore, but we will buy yours
back from you, and so they buy up all of
(35:27):
these different units, and they even try for a minute,
they had something that I never visited, a small town
chuck e Cheese that had an all Euthenet buffet, a
costume Chucky on the floor, and they charged submission to
the door. But eventually these were all given that studio
see animatronic treatment because people still went for the animated
(35:51):
characters they did. That was the kind of selling point
because at this point you haven't, like I said, you know,
whether it be regional or like a massive national chain.
Most people have a thing like this in their neighborhood,
you know, in their city. There was a place, you know,
another place where I grew up that was called Fundsville
and it was all this kind of stuff they had,
(36:12):
like bumper boats and basically like an always on kind
of carnival kind of atmosphere. So to have that extra
selling point, which was the show aspect of it, was
about the only thing that they could provide that was
any different than any of these other spots one hundred percent.
You know, that's that's the main draw. You don't go
(36:34):
to McDonald's and not expect French fries, right, So this
because what makes it different from any other places then,
So anyway, the cool Chuck era could not last. A
cool Chuck era is the way our pal doctor Zach
decided to phrase this, and I agree with him. The
company is heading, like the rest of the United States
(36:57):
into the Great Recession, and it was able to keep
itself in the black during this time, but a lot
of the tricks that used to stay afloat we're starting
to run thin. This is a novelty concept, which means
that what it is no longer a novelty to people.
They're just gonna stay home or they're going to go
play in the park. These franchises that they have been
(37:22):
absorbing were increasingly scarce. The company had saturated the market.
They couldn't expand much further, and they said, okay, we
got to stop opening units as quickly and as widely
as we have. We need to offer we need to
offer other paths right to ourselves. So they begin reoffering
(37:46):
franchise options in the United States to save the company money,
and they're going to use that money to invest in
their existing stores. And this is something that a lot
of companies should do more often. Instead of opening the
new stuff, you got to invest in what you already
know works. And you like how I say that with
companies as as though all industries are the same. It's
(38:09):
a little broadbrush there. But anyway, the company started to
remove their free entertainment options too in a lot of locations.
No more skytubes, no more toddlers, owe just more games
that you have to pay to play or in stores
that had the room the stuff you mentioned earlier, nol
bumper cars, other other premium attractions, like how when you
(38:32):
go to six Flags you still have to pay for
laser tag even though you already paid the price of
admission to get into the park. Max you get it.
That's unfair, so lame, so lame. So in the summer
of two thousand and twelve, Chuck E. Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated
was trying to catch up with the times. They knew
(38:53):
all of the things that we're talking about, you know,
the these are this a company that's run by you know,
relatively smart people, and they know that you can't you
can't rest on your laurels or whatever, rest on your
cheese pizzas. That's horrible. But I'm saying it because I
said it, and I said what I said. A lot
of this was about kind of modernizing the character and
(39:15):
what was popular in the two thousands, Pixar, you know, cgi,
let's let's let's make it where people can like Really,
that's what Disney was really all about two a lot
of these like three D rides. You know, I'm focusing
more on like video and than the on actual movement.
So they wanted to catch up. And they're turning at
this point Chuck E. Cheese Charles Entertainment into a rock star.
(39:38):
They were either rebranding the voice, making him a cool
skater guy kind of if I'm not mistaken, right, yeah,
yeah he is. He's getting too cool for school. Most
of the press did not like this. They said this
(40:00):
is disastrous. They said, this isn't popular. It's not going
to be popular. The general public was like, what have
you done to Charles? I love the idea of the
press having an opinion of it. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
we gotta weigh in on this. Chucky Cheese rebranding still happens.
That still happens now. You can find all kinds of well, actually,
I bet we could find some think pieces about Chucky
(40:22):
Cheese in the modern day. Maybe. Anytime nostalgia is at play,
you are going to have stakeholders, people that are gonna
wear how dare you you know, like the super fans
of Rockefire Explosion featured in that documentary, or surely has
something to say about all of it, or literally any
Marvel film or sci fi franchise shout out to star
trek Max. So look, the company knows that this is
(40:47):
not translated into profits or sales, and so they say, Okay,
we're going to release our annual report. It's plaintext. It's
the kind of thing you haven't seen since the early
nineteen eighties when Pizza Time Theater or bankruptcy. And in
twenty fourteen, Apollo Global Management acquires Charles Entertainment Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated,
(41:10):
and they buy the five hundred and seventy seven stores
across the world for about nine hundred and fifty million dollars,
making Chuck E. Cheese a privately held, wholly owned subsidiary.
Kids don't care about this, just cutting to the chase.
Kids don't care about any of this behind the scenes stuff.
(41:31):
What they care about is whether something is interesting and
entertaining to them. It looks like at least per folks
like Kitty j Over atmash Dot com that children are
increasingly less engaged with robotic musical characters. So twenty seventeen,
Chuck E Cheese announces they're gonna revamp their locations. They're
(41:53):
gonna remove some animatronic acts and stages. They want to
make a large dance floor where children can conga with
a live Chucky Cheese that comes from a back room.
And when he comes out, he makes it rain. He's
throwing tickets out everywhere, and then he's like, dance with me, Chee.
(42:16):
Dad's to the Beyesie the rats. Who is now pie
pipering the children? Yes, some reason that just conjured up
an image of like a Hunger Games like style, like
a movie like postystopian like world where we all dance
for Chuck E Cheese. Yeah. No, he's a god. He's
worshiped as a god in this version of reality that
(42:39):
you're describing back really quickly. Just just just that one
thing that always stood out to me. I don't think
I ever did it. I think you only got to
do it if you were the birthday of a person.
Do you remember the cage you'd go into where like
money and tickets and stuff would blow around and you
just had to grab your grab it with your little fists,
get as much as you can. Good. It's a weird one.
(43:02):
Max was nodding emphatically. Man, I'm not sure if you
remember that or not. Oh yeah, that's yeah. It was
like a wind tunnel kind of thing where I would
like blow all around really hard to actually actually grab.
I also have never been in one of those two,
but I know people who have been in them, and
I've always I don't know, might people signful towards them.
(43:23):
I've feared one with actual cash. Yeah, oh yeah, that's
a that's a thing too. Yeah, and that is the
earlier days, that is more difficult to catch. So if
you if you listen, if you were playing one of
those as a kid and you weren't able to get
as much as you hoped, don't feel bad. A lot
of adults have a hard time too well. And I
think to your point, Bend, it originally was mainly cash,
(43:47):
and then I think that probably got a bad rap
because a cash is filthy, uh, and it's probably just
rubbing all around on your little child body. And also
it just kind of feels a little ikey, not just
because the German bits, but just because of the like,
I don't know, capitalism kind of hipsters is like, come on, children,
just grabbed for the cash. It's sort of like that
(44:09):
scene in Batman, you know, where he's throwing the fake
Joker dollars and everyone's like rioting in the streets. That's
started the vibe that it imparts. And this is where
this is where we get closer and closer to the
modern day. Now, the live mascot thing does make sense
because kids like, that's a Disney formula again. Kids love
(44:31):
engaging with the live mascots, right, and now we have
to ask how far this can go? Unfortunately, do you?
According to a press release just a few years back,
in June twenty twenty, Charles Entertainment, Cheese In Entertainment Incorporated,
excuse me, Charles Entertainment, Cheese Entertainment, Incorporated, filed for Chapter
(44:55):
eleven bankruptcy and this was predicted. This it seemed almost
inevitable as the pandemic reared its head. They had a
pretty in depth financial reorganization and this came about entirely
due to the massive hit they took during the early
days of COVID nineteen when pretty much every restaurant in
(45:18):
Arcade was shut down. The same store sales fell by
more than twenty percent in the first quarter. Without getting
into the financial weeds, what you need to know is
that Chuck E Cheese needed a two hundred million dollar
loan just to get through bankruptcy, and this would allow
(45:40):
the chain to reopen their closed stores and continue operations
like carry out and delivery and stuff as well. And
it all looked lost, it all looked for not. However,
get this a little bit of good news for a second.
Six months later, CEC Entertainment announces they pulled themselves out
(46:01):
of bankruptcy. They were financially healthy. Their restructure did away
with seven hundred and five million dollars in debt. And
that's like, that's where you learn America, baby, am I right?
Like if you were a corporation, you know, bankruptcy is
just sort of like a situation you get into and
then you're gonna be fine if you restructure. It's very
(46:24):
very strange stuff. But before we get to like tangents
trivias in our last updates, we got to say something
about Bushnell. He's a pioneer man. He still has a
thing about restaurants. He has become a restaurant tour. He
has founded or taken over several restaurants over the past
forty years, and he even tried something similar to showbiz
(46:46):
with something called you Wink Letter, You Wink. Okay, it's
a restaurant where tables get touch screens in two thousand
and six. It's sort of like what Chili's. It's sort
of like so many places, do you know, Yeah, I
mean you will look to touch Look. I guess this
is two thousand and six, so this is I don't know,
(47:08):
pre iPad, pre robot sushi restaurant, right, So so you
know this would have been again timing, right, because then
you have this whole business model kind of upended by
you know, easily available technology that any restaurant can just
install an app on and have a thing plugged up
(47:28):
to a charger on the table where you can like
spend ninety nine cents on playing a word game while
you wait so you don't have to talk to your family, right, Yeah,
I mean this is the thing. He's still if this
is the thing, if you are pioneer in a concept
right in any shape, form or fashion, then you are
(47:48):
taking on a risk that other people simply do not
have to take on. This is why leap frog, this
is why the concept of leap frogging technology exists. And
a lot of those competitive in this character entertainment restaurant space,
a lot of them were benefiting from the risk that
Bushnell took in his career, which spans, as Fast Company
(48:12):
put it, spans well into a half century. Bushnell never
stopped chasing this idea of entertainment and socializing him food
and drink. He you know, Pong was the first game
that had required two players, and Pong ended up in
a lot of restaurants. The end of that article, honestly,
(48:33):
it kind of falls into like this shout out or
this tribute to Bushnell's work, And I'd like to just
hit this one thing that really stood out from the
Fast Company article. They say, maybe that's the secret behind
chuck E Cheese and during relevance. It's not about technology
(48:56):
or singing animals. The place is a cultural trojan horse
brought families together, helped arcade games become acceptable, and made
eating into family entertainment. I think that's very nice. It's
a very nice thing to say. I don't know if
it's the first to the post in eating as family entertainment.
We'd have to figure out when, Um, oh, what's like
(49:19):
medieval times? That was probably eighties. Doesn't that seem eighties?
It feels maybe nineties. It feels fifteenth century to me. Oh,
they got you, they got Max. No, this is true.
I mean, look, it's sort of the family restaurant, you know.
I mean the idea of even something as simple as
like a free coloring book for kids, you know what
(49:41):
I mean, Like just this idea of a place where
you could all come as a family, there's something on
the menu for everybody. Even the idea of a kid's menu,
you know, like that was kind of innovative at the time,
and so I think all of this kind of springs
from that. And and honestly, you know, Bushnell was, um,
you know, we talked about how he was sort of
(50:01):
like fascinated by these family restaurants and wanted to kind
of take them into the into the next generation or
whatever in the future. So I mean, these these concepts
were just sort of escalations of things that definitely already existed.
But times nineteen sixties, no joke, no joke. So there
we go. Okay, all right, just had to put that
(50:23):
out there. Get in frestory of the family restaurants. I
just want to know, like when like history of family restaurants.
It looks to be the rise of family restaurants started
after World War Two and has grown into an important
part of that makes sense. It was this idea of
kind of like this was something that was attainable for everybody,
(50:45):
you know, Like in the seventeen hundreds, this article on
gun through two ds dot com, which I think is
a family diner of some sort, but they point out
a gun through two D's and the seventeen hundreds, it
wasn't uncommon for wealthy families to send a servant to
pick up dinner, you know, which was then eating at home.
The idea of dining out in general as a family
(51:06):
was was not really attainable. It wasn't until you know,
the early nineteen hundreds that children were even allowed into restaurants.
You know, I'm not gonna say let's all be time travelers,
but I think there are certain restaurants that probably shouldn't
have They should have age restrictions, you know what I mean,
(51:26):
not just bars, but like like you know, you're out
on a really nice candlelit romantic dinner with your you know,
one and only of the month, and then you probably
don't want a screaming child, or maybe that's your ambiance.
I don't know, only if it's on theme, you know,
if that's like the theme that you've chosen for your baby. Really, well,
(51:47):
congratulations on your promotion. Let's go have a romantic celebration.
It's screaming child, bistro, screaming child. I did have a
couple of things that I discover when I was looking into, um,
how how COVID affected the Chucky Cheese, you know, Empire.
We talked a little bit about that. You know, they
did file for bankruptcy after you know, amassing more than
(52:11):
a billion dollars in debt. They were able to raise
some funds and now I believe they're in the process
of restructuring. But there were a couple of interesting stories
that really kind of hit home. For example, apparently they've
been doing that ghost kitchen thing that a lot of
restaurants do, where like, you know, they sort of came
up during COVID where you were using a kitchen in
(52:34):
a brick and mortar restaurant in order to serve food
for another restaurant brand. So you would essentially like lease
out part of your kitchen. But that's not exactly what
what Charles did. They actually created a kind of phony
Italian restaurant called Pasquali's Pizza and Wings and just served
their chucky cheese fair, you know, to unsuspecting online diners,
(53:01):
because I mean, let's be let's be honest, y'all. I mean,
chuck E Cheese pizza ain't ain't all that it's not
that good. Well, I bet you that somewhere there is
a person putting their heart and soul into what they're cooking,
and you can tell. But as a rule, generally, yeah,
chuck E Cheese is not going to be the same
pizza as your local mom and pop store. Yeah. I
(53:22):
know most of us have that bad experiences. I'm just
defending the one person out there whom I hope, who
I hope is breaking the stereotype or exceeding expectations. And
as of you know, the restructuring, This may not be
the most up to date information right now, but more
(53:42):
than thirty four locations that were open when coronavirus hit
have closed, and that's in you know, states across the country.
And piggyback on that research, Associate Extraordinarires, Zach Doctor z
Williams found a pretty interesting and slightly disturbing detail about
what happens when a Chuck E. Cheese location is closed.
(54:06):
The Chuck E Cheese costumes and I believe the animatronics
are the very least the light heads that go on
them are decommissioned in a pretty alarming and brutal way
that really fits in with Max's dystopian kind of like
god like scenario where Chuck E. Cheese is worship only
(54:27):
in this situation, he's actually sacrificed. There's video that surfaced
of employees at a location that was being closed smashing
the cartoon character head with a sledgehammer, like ripping the
covers off magazines. Yeah, yeah, and apparently this is a
(54:50):
corporate policy because it makes sense, right because you wouldn't
want that head to fall into the wrong hands and
then have the brand like be smirched. Who knows people
could wear them and like do crimes, you know, so
you just don't. They had to just get rid of him,
They had they had to smash it up. Yeah. And
there's that great Atlas Obscure article right by Paula Meggia
(55:12):
which talks about this in detail why Chucky Cheese has
a corporate policy about destroying his mascot's head. You might say,
I don't want to I don't want to go to
the new Chucky Cheese. I want the animatronics. I know
the company might be weirdly defensive. They still have where
they do have robots, they're still powered by a floppy disc.
(55:33):
That's a true story. Check out the bite for more
on that. Shout out to nor I'll sabay. But if
you yearn for that nostalgia, folks, and nostalgia is a
heck of a drug, then never fear. You can go
see a collection of memorabilia from the old days of
showbiz Pizza in Sandy Hook, Mississippi, thanks to Damon Brenlan,
(55:55):
the owner of Smitty's Super Service. No, no, I I
haven't been to this place. I've actually barely been to
many locations in Mississippi, just regular places. Not even think
I've ever been to Mississippi ever. Well, maybe the first
time we go, we go to this Smitty's Super Service.
(56:16):
This sounds fantastic. He's got fully functioning animatronics. It's set
up to look just like the restaurant and that's funny
because I wonder how he got around this, because I
mean with the rocket fire explosion stuff, they bought it
directly from the dude who created them, who would not
sell the IP. But this goes against the whole idea
of them destroying the stuff because a big part of
(56:38):
the Apples Obscure article, or the point that the writer
makes is that they're they're basically exerting control over their
trademark because they wouldn't want these things to be like
available on eBay and for someone to literally do what
this person, Damon Breland is doing at Smitty's Super Service.
So I'm confused as to how he's operating under the
(56:59):
radar like this without the power of Charles Entertainment Cheese
Corporate coming down on him like a sledgehammer of the gods. Yeah,
it's an interesting question, and if it's not love for
the world, then we'll have to get back on the
road and check it out. We hope that you enjoyed
(57:19):
this week's two part episode, folks. Obviously the nostalgia is
strong with us. We hope it's strong with you. This
story goes in so many directions. We want to thank
as always superproducer mister Max Williams for hurting the production
cats here. Who else should we think? Oh Giles's entertainment
(57:39):
cheese duh. I don't know, man, he gives me the creeps.
I kind of liked his youthful rock star rebranding to
be honest. Thanks to Mac Williams, of course, Zach doctor
Z what a guy and big big thanks to Eve's
Jeff Christopher Hasiodes, Casey, Pegram Casey and uh and reluctantly
(58:04):
Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister. You can actually see a
video of of of us in our other podcast iteration
Stuff They Don't want you to know, hanging out with
Jonathan Strickland in real life at a miniature golf course
historical miniature golf course in Austin, Texas called peter Pan Golf,
talking conspiracies and just joshing around on the links, the
(58:26):
mini the miniature links. Yeah. I don't think it's out yet,
but it will be soon. You can take a look
for that at our other shows social media stuff they
Don't want you to Conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. Keep
a lookout for that video. It's a fun one, yeah,
especially if you like nostalgia. Uh, I don't know. Man,
this has actually weirdly enough, it's made me kind of hungry.
(58:48):
Oh yeah, is this about lunchtime? It's close. I think
we can swing it. Yeah, let's mail the littles's orders
some middling pizza. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(59:09):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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