Wow, with all that killing, it kind of makes me feel empowered.
“Do as I say you olds. We’ve killed lunch, J. Crew, hotel loyalty programs and brunch. Maybe next it’ll be you.”
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You may be right! my 5 year old niece’s new favorite stuffed toys are “Mangle” and “Foxy” from FNF.
Still, it probably wouldn’t fly with a lot of parents. 
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Yes! Been there many times.
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Millennials, my ass! This is not the first time the Evil Executives that do the bidding of Mr. Cheese have put the axe down. Witness the best animatronic jamz the world has ever known: Showbiz Pizza Place and it’s Rock-afire Explosion!
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I agree!
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I only went to Chuck-e-Cheese’s once as a kid, but that was enough for me to have very specific nightmares about those creepy robots… The worst part (according to my warped memory) is that when the awful song was done, the spotlights would dim, but the robots’ creepy eyes would still be wide open, looking out at you from the darkness. Fuck that shit!
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you’re welcome
(at 34 sec.)
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I only went there once, but that company also owned Crystal’s, which I loved – it was like a Chuck E.'s without any animatronics; the inside was like how I’d imagine a Victorian opium den would look. They had then-new video games, but also machines like love testers, fortune tellers etc. Disney cartoons in the theater.
They also owned Taco Bueno. I’m not sure if the quality went downhill, or it was never as good as I remembered, or both – but I haven’t eaten there in about 30 years.
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Would now be a bad time to point out that Millennials share the same position in the generational cycle (Hero) as the GI/Greatest Generation (The same generation who defeated the Nazis)?
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Yeah, Chuck E Cheese took over the market and replaces Rock-a-fire with Munch’s make believe band or whatever and killed the the genre by their lack of cool. Who is to blame for Circuit city other than circuit city.
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Presumably because they are now parents of young children, and therefore the target of whatever marketing is behind all this.
NARRATOR LOOKS AT CAMERA.
NARRATOR: It was in the video.
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I can’t see the video - even after turning off my security extensions.
Brit here. Chuck E Cheese never came to the UK as far as I remember, so it was one of those surprising institutions when I came to the US (especially the Bushnell angle, but I digress).
The thing that immediately struck me is that the name Chuck E Cheese sounded like a euphemism for the act of vomiting inexpensive pizza.
And the old logo (above) really looks to me like the guy is recovering in the aftermath of a really huge heave, looking at all the semidigested pizza he’s just yarked onto the floor and thinking “wow, look at all that. Man I need a drink”
The new logo, though, looks way too thin and lithe, like they were trying too hard to suggest healthiness and just ended up with an uncannily verminous sewer rat.
The worst Chuck E Cheese, though, is the intermediary one used in the tv ads.
There’s something about it, the way it’s imitative of 80s/90s-era saturday morning toons but shockingly badly drawn, with all the weird shiny clothes, that makes me think it’s carrying some kind of semiotic plague. It evokes “your name the hedgehog”-style furry art where each detail looks suspiciously like it might be the artist’s kink.
All said, though, thank you for America’s best brawls.
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TV station video is usually the jankiest most broken stuff on the net, alas – sadly CBS doesn’t put it on youtube.
Those animatronic bands were hideous. They scared my 4 yr old son to death - and he hated their pizza too. He said that the pepperoni tasted so bad it must have been made from “ancient pigs.”
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Sanjay and Craig had their take on Charles d’Fromage, as my family calls it (to try and class the place up a bit).
Bring yo money!
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Yeah the real reason is that 99% of kids hate those robots. And 95% hate the “live” Chuck E. I’ve had many a preschool field trip end in a hasty roundup of fleeing, panicked children. Which is hard when some of them are trying to climb you to hide.
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He spoke at Maker Faire a few years back, and talked about origins of Pizza Time Theater, later Chuck E. Cheese. Memorable take-away: The robot M.C. character was originally a coyote, but the costume shop sent a rat suit for the dog-and-pony show for investors, so they went with that.
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